Rogue This, But Not That

I trade books with a pen-pal, as we seem to admire and respect many of the same things. Without her I would never have cracked open a William Trevor short story or novel, for example, even though I was vaguely aware of the Irish novelist. Another friend sent me the Marie Kondo book which I blogged about a few weeks ago, and ever since I have been sparking with joy. Trading books is a good system, but it doesn't always work. From my friend I received Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border with Canada, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In turn I passed it on to another friend, a grumpy octogenarian (Reuben Hatch) who I have travelled with for years, but he returned it and I don't think he got past the first ten pages.

The first friend mentioned lives in Massachusetts, a short distance from Harvard University. She is currently reading a novel I sent, The Overstory by Richard Powers. It has received deserving acclaim, such as, “A monumental novel about reimagining our place in the living world by one of our most 'prodigiously talented' (New York Times Book Review) novelists.” Adam Morgan, a reviewer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune says “...know that reading The Overstory will convince you that we walk among gods every time that we enter a forest.”

Book-pal Gretchen Flock with Buchholz family

My Harvard pal – no she's not a 20-year-old co-ed, but she is a thoughtful, well-spoken octogenarian herself, and while I forget all of the details of our family tree, we are somehow related. Apparently from The Overstory she encountered the word roguing and wondered if, in my life with trees, have I used “roguing in any manner?” The answer is no...well, yes...hmm, a good question, one that's not easy to answer. In agriculture and forestry, roguing is the act of removing individual plants with undesirable characteristics to preserve the quality of the overall crop. It is important to rogue when growing seed crops so that undesirable properties are not propagated into subsequent generations. Hitler would have understood and approved. I don't remember in The Overstory how the roguing process was presented, and since I no longer have my copy I can't address it further as regards that novel.

I produce about one-half of the rootstock that we graft our cultivars upon, and the other half we purchase from a couple of Oregon seedling growers. Those purchased should be of the size advertised, and I prefer that they be vigorous, healthy and true to name, in other words I want them to be exactly alike, so rogue out anything that falls short. We buy from those companies that consistently deliver – albeit no plant seller is a perfect supplier, but since we are growers too, we understand the vagaries of plant production.

As far as our own production is concerned, I am paying constant attention about what we root or grow from seed. Do the employees ever get it? – the answer is, seldom. Do they know when to throw a plant away, or when they should pot it up and put more money into it? Should they handle the plant with extreme caution and respect its rarity and value to the company, or just hurry up and get the job over with? The answer is that they usually don't know...or frankly, really care. It's an awkward situation, then, but I'm experienced and patient enough to realize and understand that they will never be invested enough into my plant world to really care. That defines the typical employee, but thankfully there have been a few exceptions. The underlying problem is that the typical Buchholz Nursery employee needs a job with pay, but finds no particular joy to be surrounded by my plants, so their tasks are not adventures filled with enthusiasm.

Our failures – i.e. when we lose money – never seems to be remembered by the workers because, well, they get paid anyway. If they took a broader view, without the repeated failures and mistakes they could receive larger paychecks, but I don't think they really believe in or trust that concept.

Pleione x confusa 'Golden Gate'

Our office manager, Eric, who doubles as our alpine grower and Pleione expert, went into a fit when a half-interested (at best) employee rouged out and dumped some Pleione bulbs because they weren't as large as some of the other cultivars we were propagating. “Geeze! Retrieve them from the garbage and plant them; they are new varieties and valuable – don't just throw them away because they are smaller than the last variety you planted.” Of course he said it calmly, but since he was working closely with that employee, he wondered why he wasn't asked before the bulbs were dumped.

This blog is not intended as a rant against my employees, but it must be torture to toil in a nursery – it's always hot or cold and the plants are heavy and you have to bend over a lot – if you don't have interest in the plants. So much happens in a nursery/arboretum. New growth is emerging on last summer's maple grafts, thankfully, when they just looked like dead sticks a month ago. Male pollen flowers are swelling on the Abies already, while some pine candles are beginning to stretch upward. This is a fun place to work...if you let it be.

Acer palmatum 'Strawberry Spring'

My individual plants comprise a crop, to be sure, but I take each one personally. All will die eventually, but hopefully most will outlive me. Horticulture is a celebration of nature's diversity, where the keen plantsman does not rogue out that which is different, but rather we nurse along the dwarf, the weeper, the one with variegated foliage etc. Nature can be cruel because I don't think that most organisms survive for long, but the nursery owner mothers the weak and wimpy, the weird and different, and thus you get plants such as Cornus kousa 'Summer Fun', Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Miss Grace' and Acer palmatum 'Strawberry Spring' into garden centers, and ultimately into many gardeners' backyards. All three of the aforementioned are unique, but if my typical employee owned this company none would have ever made it to market.

So, the answer is: rogue this but not that, which would be simple if I were still a one-man nursery.

By the way, my brain is programmed to detect that which is wrong. My eyesight isn't as good as it used to be, but I have a sweet-spot in my vision at about 8'. Since I'm 6' tall my eyes are about 5.5 feet above the ground. When I walk around the nursery roads and in the fields I often look down, just a step or two ahead of myself. My line of vision is the hypotenuse, then. Almost daily I find a nail – worked loose from our pallets – on the road. No one else finds them, but then you see how I am programmed: nail wrong, costs me money to fix flat. On the other hand, one of my skills in life is that I have found many hundreds of 4-leaf clovers – because they are “wrong,” or different anyway. This ability amazes my wife and kids, and all of the girlfriends I've had previously. “How do you do it,” they wonder? Well, I've never found a 4-leaf clover by looking for one; instead, they find me.

Acer palmatum 'Bloody Talons'

So, likewise, I find many “wrong” plants, those that are different from the norm, and fortunately I've been able to make a living from it.