Mum Countdown

Posted in Around the Garden on November 13 2012, by Sonia Uyterhoeven

Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.

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After a week of election post-mortems, the NYBG is now ready to follow suit with the results from our ‘choose your favorite mum’ poll. For those of you not already in the know, I posted a blog on October 26 entitled ‘Mum Madness.’ In it, I explained our breeding program for Korean mums at the Garden.

To make things easy for newcomers, here is the encapsulated version: every year we collect seed from our Korean mum collection and grow them on through the next year to see if we have any new varieties. We look for certain traits–compact growers, flowering time, flower forms, and color. When we find one we like, we keep it to propagate via cuttings.

This year we asked the public to join us in the selection process. We went out to the Korean mum Trial Bed in the Home Gardening Center and chose six mums that differed from our current collection and had great appeal, photographing and displaying them in the October 26 blog. They were also labeled in the garden and, through signage, visitors were asked to vote for their favorite selection by texting in their answers.

As with any contest or project, there are always lessons to be learned. Many people I encountered in the Garden were timid about texting in their answer. In the future, we will find multiple ways for visitors to participate, and because various technologies appeal to different demographics, we will try to accommodate everyone from the traditional to the techno-savvy. I would also like to add a personal thank you to the person who chose to send her answer directly to Plant Talk–that is always a good option.

One woman I spoke to in the Garden said the chrysanthemums were all too beautiful, making it impossible for her to choose just one. I then mentioned that she was allowed to vote for more than one, but the general message to those overwhelmed with beauty is fortitude! There are never right or wrong answers to these questions. What we are trying to discover through these surveys is a sense of what appeals to the public. Are there certain color preferences? If so, we will make a point of including those colors in our future design schemes.

More than anything else, two important aspects of our mission as a botanic garden are research and education. We would like the public to be aware of the research that is conducted on our own grounds, and to provide visitors with a showcase for all that is new and interesting in the horticultural world. As educators, we would like the public to understand where new varieties come from and appreciate diversity in nature. Above all, our garden is a place to enjoy and discover. We encourage any opportunity for our visitors to stop, interact, examine, and explore our magnificent collections.

As for the results of our colorful election, there were clear-cut winners:

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Salsa was the gorgeous red and yellow bicolor mum; she aged beautifully and was a true winner. While Cerise is delightful, I was in the Perennial Garden earlier this week and I noticed we already have a selection named NYBG Watermelon, which is a kissing cousin to Cerise with larger flowers. Despite the popularity of Cerise, I think she may be too similar to Watermelon to make the cut.

I am happy to see that Spiky Tomato received a fair amount of votes. He had an unusual shape to his flower with spiky ray petals and a rich tomato red color. In turn, I was sad that Mango didn’t have more appeal; I loved the name as well as the color. Screaming Pink, despite her shocking pink flowers, never amounted to much–she wasn’t a vigorous grower. Hopefully someone will inform the fashionistas that psychedelic fuchsia is no longer trendy, at least not in the Garden. Finally, Gold received no votes, but I think that is due to the fact that the color is quite common in the Garden.

While the past two weeks of weather have not worked in anyone’s favor, the mums’ included, we nonetheless enjoyed a pleasant turnout for our light-hearted election. That said, we would like to thank everyone who participated, and we hope you’ll come back to view the campaign winners in the future!