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davidrt28

latest 2018 Rarefind catalog

davidrt28 (zone 7)
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago

This has already been discussed on the yahoo rhododendrons group, where I usually lurk rather than try to participate. Someone pointed out the spring 2018 selection of rhododendrons, especially elepidotes, is only a little better than you can find at local retailers and big box stores. Gone are the days when Hank and Ron were breeding, testing and/or selecting hundreds of cultivars or seedlings a year. I've already alluded to the fact that the size of display gardens has been greatly reduced since the heyday in the late 2000s.

I think when a non-rhododendron enthusiast bought the nursery back in, oh, what was it, 2012 - the writing was on the wall. I realize now that to some degree, I had my head in the sand back then. You just aren't going to sustain that type of specialist nursery without the passion of a Hank Schannen, Harold Greer, Peter Cox or whoever at the top. A specialist nursery focusing on plants that are relatively slow and expensive to produce, and have a limited customer base in all but the most favorable climates. NB they still put out a nice, large color catalog. It's just that it has a more generalist focus now, on more easily marketed plants.

In a way, collectors are lucky that 1) Hank's family was financially able to keep running it as a nursery from his death in 2009 to 2012 and 2) that it took as long as it did for things to go downhill. Ron, who had been hired by Hank in the late 1990s to be the horticultural manager, was let go in March 2016. I was buying interesting plants up to that point, and even a little beyond.

This leaves us with the remaining US specialist-level, mail order rhododendron nurseries being: Singing Tree, Whitney Gardens, and Rhododendrons Direct. Am I missing any? In the late 1990s, I think there would have been about 10 of this caliber.

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