My Wife and My Mother Like It

By Jeff Howe, VNLA President

Happy summer everyone! This is the time of year when everyone’s phones are ringing, and emails are numerous, and work is wide open. The VNLA is returning to normal, and we have been busy with VCH and the final conversions to enable the use of Pearson Testing Sites across the state. This will be online and ready for testing by mid-summer. Our annual Field Day is August 4th and is going to happen this year! It is at The Farm Brewery at Broad Run Virginia, a great brewery owned by Community Landscape Services. We are all looking forward to getting together in person and sharing stories of how we made it through Covid.

Spring is also the time of year when I get spells of illness (not related to Covid) from plants blooming that we are no longer supposed to like. The blooms of the rogue Callery Pear trees are finally over but not forgotten. We are plagued by the blooms of Forsythia, the unnatural harbinger of spring and bright yellow we have grown accustomed to seeing everywhere. What else is it telling us? It is telling us that another pretty invasive imported plant (which is a sterile plant with no benefits to bees or butterflies) has grown its way into the hearts and affected/influenced financial successes for many of us.

Forsythia has put me in a tricky situation because some clients (besides beloved family members) still love it, along with other plants we are not supposed to use anymore. We used to use it in design especially for slopes where almost nothing else would grow. Then again, we used to use Burning bush and Barberry and Nandina in design as well. We understand many growers and garden centers and landscapers depend on these plants along with many others which are clearly not good for the environment but important to sustaining the lives and economic stability of the business.

What are we to do when my mother wants more forsythia and my wife wants a new butterfly bush? I don’t have a good answer, nor do I have a complete understanding of why they are still grown or sold when science says we should probably not encourage use of non-natives. We as knowledgeable horticulturists can offer reasonable plant substitutions, make suggestions and even offer companion plants to our inquisitive families, friends and clients. We also as designers, contactors, growers, gardens centers, municipalities should not expect all nurseries to flip a switch and stop growing and using some things they/ we have depended on for decades.

How are we supposed to balance what should and should not be grown or planted in our Commonwealth? Just because a plant is liked by those who do not know the consequences of using it, should we continue to design or grow it in nurseries or plant it in landscapes? Probably not. Just this week, I had a call from a client of many years. She wanted to fill in a spot with English Ivy because it will “go with all the ivy” she already has. After explaining several alternate choices, the next sentence out of my mouth was “we can probably recommend someone who will plant it for you.” That was followed by, “There are some highly reputable nurseries in this state who grow many cultivars of Ivy.” A strange response from me but the truth, nonetheless.

The intentions of our company are to do our part to help the environment and educate our clients even if it sometimes means some lost financial opportunity. I anticipate designers and architects will be along with more and more natively strong plant list. I hope our nurseries can provide the unique pallet that is natives. I wish garden centers and landscapers would educate and sell and install many species that are not invasive, but I understand this all will take time.

As nurserymen and landscapers, we will continue to make plant selection decisions based on multiple factors. Whether that choice is commercially viable or economically sustainable is up to us and how we run our businesses or who we work with and how we finance our livelihoods. We will continue to have friends and family who still want to enjoy a plant that is considered to be invasive or non-beneficial to bees and butterflies or even destructive to the environment. Why shouldn’t they have that right? I have heard that we cannot and should not try legislate behavior.

As I struggle with this conundrum, I wonder where we as an association will be in 5, 10 and 20 years with the nonnative, invasive plant cultivation, sale and installation controversies. I do know that our members will be at the forefront of educating each other and our clients and we will cultivate better species and we will do our best to maintain profitability in the process. It may be as simple as labeling or as complex as a tax to offset the cost to our environment. The bottom line is we cannot and should not try to legislate behavior but rather educate and propagate what is best for the environment. Whether our mothers and wives still want to have it in their yards should be up to them but not completely. I also heard or read somewhere and liked “Our natural resources will not be protected or restored unless a critical mass of people is motivated to change their behavior.”