Small and Smaller

January 20th, 2015

Gardening’s first big event of the year kicked off last week in Baltimore at the 45^th annual Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show – the place where most of our region’s landscapers, garden centers and garden-related retailers go to figure out what we gardeners might want to buy.

The MANTS show is where garden centers go to nail down their plant and product lineup for the coming year.

It’s a huge, not-open-to-the-public show that attracts 10,000 professionals and nearly 1,000 companies that sell everything from the latest, greatest new plants to the little plastic labels that get stuck in their pots.

I got an inside look at the 3-day, 2015 version of MANTS (as it’s called in the trade), and came away with one theme I heard over and over again – compact. Compact as in “shrink those plant sizes.”

“Dwarf plants are popular, but people want them even smaller,” said Shannon Downey, who was manning the Proven Winners ColorChoice booth.

She says yards are shrinking, and more people are looking for options for patios and balconies.

“Plus, people are so afraid of pruning things the wrong way that it’s just less work and less to worry about if everything stays small,” she adds.

Maybe you’ve seen the Proven Winners’ butterfly bush called Lo and Behold ‘Blue Chip’ that stays under 3 feet tall.

This year you’ll see ‘Blue Chip Jr.,’ which is a few inches smaller and less brittle in the branching.

But even that one isn’t the line’s smallest. The new Lo and Behold ‘Pink Micro Chip’ is a lavender/pink-blooming butterfly bush that stays under 2 feet tall – a far cry from the hulking 10-foot butterfly bushes most people grew a decade ago.

Over at the BrazelBerries booth, reps were showing off some of the compact new fruit bushes that are demure enough for pot growth. One was ‘Jelly Bean,’ a little 2-foot blueberry “ball,” and another was ‘Raspberry Shortcake,’ 2- to 3-foot red raspberry bush that’s also thornless.

Even shrinkier was the new Pixie grape plant that the California-based SuperNaturals Grafted Vegetables company was showing.

These are miniature grapes that stay under 20 inches tall, grow leaves not much bigger than matchbooks, and produce clusters of pea-sized purple grapes.

SuperNaturals’ partner Alice Doyle said they’re mainly “for fun,” but they’re also tasty and perfect for a small-space gardener who just wants to experiment with a single grape plant on a patio.

SuperNaturals’ other new product – the ‘Ketchup ‘n’ Fries’ TomTato – was getting far more attention, though – including mentions on Good Morning America and Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report.

The new ‘Ketchup ‘n’ Fries’ TomTato grows cherry tomatoes above ground and potatoes below on one plant.

This one is a new grafted plant that attaches a cherry tomato plant to the roots of a potato. The result is a crop of tomatoes above ground and a crop of potatoes under ground – hence the clever ‘Ketchup ‘n’ Fries’ name.

“You cut off the head of one and cut off the bottom of the other, then clip them together,” says Doyle. “It’s not as easy as it sounds, though.”

She says this plant sold out quickly when it debuted in England last year. It’s likely to do equally well here, too, even though I saw it selling for nearly $20 a plant in the Territorial Seed catalog.

People really like the curious.

They also like Downton Abbey, which is why California-based Weeks Roses is debuting a new rose named after the show’s Anna Bates character.

The rose is called Anna’s Promise, and it’s a golden grandiflora with pink blush and bronzish petal undersides – “a fitting representation of Anna’s character,” according to Weeks.

Already, a second Downton Abbey rose is in the works for a 2016 introduction – to be called Pretty Lady Rose.

I’ll be writing a MANTS-related garden column for the Patriot-News and Pennlive.com on a few other cool new things coming out in 2015 next week, so watch for that on my Pennlive blog.