The impatiens are looking a bit droopy, but the tomatoes are fabulously growing and the miniature sunflowers brighten up a raised bed.
That’s the quick assessment of how the All-America Selections (AAS) winners garden is shaping up for its open house on Aug. 1.
Actually, the garden of tested edibles, perennials and annuals is open for inspection almost every day. But the Pima County master gardeners who take care of it are having a special shindig in their attempt to win a contest.
Each year the nonprofit, Illinois-based All-America Selections runs a landscape design contest for its Design Gardens, specially designated places that exhibit AAS winners.
Design Garden winners demonstrate, among other things, efforts to promote the garden to the public.
“We were nudged to enter,” says master gardener Linda Conant, who heads the committee in charge of the AAS winners garden. “Our directors said, ‘OK, it’s time.’”
The garden of several beds and containers of both flowers and edibles was created eight years ago after a master gardener applied to AAS for a designation.
It’s the only AAS Design Garden in the Southwest. Flower-and-edible design gardens closest to Tucson are in Tulare, California and Colorado Springs, Colorado. A closer design garden in San Luis Obispo, California, grows only flowers.
Creating the Tucson garden was slow at first. “We had a terrible experience with critters,” says Conant. But in the last five years the garden has been thriving.
STAMP OF APPROVAL
The garden demonstrates varieties of plants that have been honored for their superior growth.
Plant developers and growers send seeds of new plant varieties to AAS. At that point, these varieties have not been made available for sale.
AAS selects certain seed entries and then sends those seeds to designated trial grounds throughout the United States and Canada.
Judges grow the seeds next to seeds of established varieties of the same species to test its growth and production. “The new plants have to perform better (than existing varieties) before it’s declared an AAS winner,” says AAS Executive Director Diane Blazek.
Once named a national or regional winner, developers can use the AAS-winner logo when they distribute the seeds to wholesale growers. The growers germinate the seeds and make plants available to stores and garden centers.
The public also can order AAS-winning seeds from retail seed companies, which also use the logo.
“That logo means the plant has been through a rigorous test,” says Conant, “and it’s comparable or better than similar varieties.”
There are no trial grounds in Arizona, New Mexico or Utah, says Blazek, although she is trying to get one qualified in Arizona to include the Southwest in the trials.
Part of the problem is that seeds for the trials are not available during the season they would be grown in Tucson and other parts of the Southwest.
Local gardeners know that some veggies that thrive in the summer in some parts of the country won’t do well here until winter or only in spring or fall.
LOCALLY TESTING WINNERS
That makes the master gardeners’ plots an unofficial testing ground for AAS winners. “They’re testing the AAS winners that have already been trialed in the rest of the country,” Blazek says. “They’re testing the suitability for the rest of our climates.”
Conant agrees that the Tucson garden expands on the information about AAS winners. And the information is that, overall, AAS winners do well here.
“Aside from that challenging little impatiens, the majority of plants do really well,” she says. “I have not had a problem with anything. We just need to know what season it grows in.”
Master gardeners propagate plants from seeds they either buy from seed companies or get free from AAS. The seedlings grow in greenhouses until they’re ready for transplanting into the garden in the appropriate season.
For the open house, the garden will have a bed of bell peppers mixed with basil and zinnias. A pot combines ornamental peppers with marigolds. Squash shades geraniums. There’s room for Cinderella’s Carriage pumpkin and watermelon.
“This lets us demonstrate what we can do in the desert growing from seed,” says Conant.
“We want to encourage people to grow from seeds. It’s so rewarding.”
