fairy magnolia

The following guest post comes from Kay Phelps, production manager at Clinton Nurseries of Florida, the Havana, Florida location of Clinton Nurseries, a regional wholesale grower of perennial and ornamental nursery stock. Here, Kay answers a few questions about Fairy Magnolia^® Blush, the first in the long-awaited Fairy Magnolias michelia hybrid series by renowned New Zealand breeder Mark Jury.

Kay Phelps with Fairy Magnolias

What are Fairy Magnolias?

Mostly grown as a thick hedge, this upright, compact and bushy plant tops out at 9 to 12 feet tall by 8 to 9 feet wide. Fairy Magnolia Blush has large, glossy, dark green leaves with dark chocolate, silky, shiny flower buds through the winter months. Then, with the first signs of spring, it gradually blooms into a blast of sweet, aromatic, pink- to blush-pink blooms. It’s not your typical grandmother’s “banana shrub” (a common name used for these types of magnolias). The blooms are not the half-inch sized bloom …. more like 2 ½  inches! (More information can be found here, on Tesselaar’s Fairy Magnolias fact sheet.)

Fairy Magnolia Blush close-up (left) and as a hedge (right)

What do you like about Fairy Magnolias?

They make a great flowering hedge or screening plant with spectacular blooming from February through May. They also have few, if any, pests and are extremely low maintenance (no maintenance, really, if you’re not concerned with height).  In Zones 7b through 11, they can be grown as an evergreen specimen plant, perhaps trained into a tree or even an espalier (see photo below). In Zone 7, they’ll serve as semi-deciduous shrubs.

Fairy Magnolia Blush as an espalier

How did you decide to grow Fairy Magnolias?

Back in 2007, after years of breeding and extensive trials, Tesselaar Plants was ready to make a new michelia hybrid available to the United States market.  As a licensed Tesselaar grower, we here at Clinton were asked if we would be willing to serve as the nursery to handle the initial production of Michelia Jury 01 for the US.  (The plant is now known as Fairy Magnolia Blush.)  I was very excited about this stunning, new, soon-to-be-released plant. I felt  it would be a great hit here in the US and was very glad to have been selected to handle the production management.

We now provide Fairy Magnolia Blush to other licensed Tesselaar growers who service garden centers in Zones 7 -11.  We also sell to our own Clinton wholesale customers in those warmer zones.

I’m very excited about new breeding and trials that are currently underway here for new Jury michelias that may be available in a few years’ time.

Fairy Magnolia Blush on site at Clinton Nurseries in Florida

What are people saying about it?

Customers have been raving not only about the beauty of the flower itself, but the fact that it’s fragrant, too. That’s something that’s very desirable, yet elusive in today’s gardening plants. People also love that it’s a flowering bush – a blooming powerhouse at that, with a bloom at every leaf axil. And they particularly appreciate the fact that it grows into such a thick, bushy hedge in such little time, with lush, evergreen foliage – right to the bottom – year round.

Fairy Magnolia Blush at Tesselaar's trial site in Silvan, Australia

Some people have remarked that Fairy Magnolias will come to replace photinias and/or camellias. Your thoughts?

I would think it would be a much better substitution for the photinia hedge.  It won’t have the fabraea problems (a terrible leaf spot disease that attacks closely spaced photinia). However, I would still recommend spacing Fairy Magnolia plants no closer than 8 feet apart. This ensures a more healthy plant and much showier stage of bloom. As for replacing camellias, I don’t believe in replacing one of the beauties that God has created. I see it rather as a new companion to the garden.

Photinia hedge

 Camellias

How and when can people get Fairy Magnolias?

They’re available this year to retailers in Zones 7b through 11.

Today's guest post comes from Phillip Townshend, global operations director for Tesselaar Plants. While I've been here puttering in my fall garden, making Halloween cake with my 3-year-old and planning a family trip to Disney, Phillip has been tirelessly visiting trade shows around the world, promoting and keeping an eye on all Tesselaar's babies!

 Phillip Townshend

Tesselaar's 2011 plant intros, time-tested favorites wow at shows around the world

By Phillip Townshend

I have been travelling for several weeks now and life has been extremely hectic, so I haven’t been able to provide a quick update until now on the highlights seen at the various shows/visits with Tesselaar's business partners.

First up in recent travels was a visit to the Independent Garden Center Show (run by Nursery Retailer magazine), which took me to the Navy Pier in Chicago. There, our Everest carex (bred by the talented Pat Fitzgerald of FitzGerald Nurseries in Ireland) was looking great on the Willoway Nurseries stand.

Also a highlight for me were the plantings on the Magnificent Mile (Chicago always does a great job in their public plantings) as well as seeing Bonfire^® begonias used in mixed container plantings at the front of a hotel I passed whilst on my morning run.

Bonfire begonias (red blooms) in hanging baskets

The purpose for attending the IGC show was to meet up with some of our U.S. grower partners (the people who actually grow the plants we bring to market) and get our planning agreed for the upcoming season. It is always interesting in horticulture, working on the long lead times required to make plants available, and we can often be setting items in place so that we have plants ready for retail up to three years ahead of them arriving on the shelves of the various retail outlets that carry our programs.

After IGC, it was then off to meet with the breeder of the Flower Carpet^® series of roses (Mr. Reinhard Noack of Noack Rosen in Germany), who has one of the nicest display gardens I have been to. Reinhard not only incorporates his own plants in the garden but has a fine eye for garden design and has some great complementary plantings that show how versatile Flower Carpet is and how it can be used in various settings. If you get a chance when travelling, and the season is right, be sure to include a visit to the Noack Rosen trial garden on your itinerary.

In a field of Flower Carpet roses with Reinhard Noack (left)

After this, it was off to the Plantarium trade show in Holland, for their annual horticultural event.

This trade show continues to get bigger every year, and is well worth attending both from a trade and consumer perspective – the show opens on the last day for consumers and there are some great plant bargains to be had as exhibitors like ourselves try to minimize the amount of material we have to pack up by selling/giving away items.

This year, our focus for the Tesselaar stand was the preview of the new Bonfire selections (to be released to consumers next year in spring 2011): Bonfire Choc Pink and Choc Red. Our grower partners excelled themselves with the display plants they supplied for the show and, with some great imagery from our photographer and nice display plants, we picked up third place in the Press Award for new products (for Choc Pink)!

Bonfire Choc Pink

This is a fabulous plant, slated for release in early 2011, and has the same great growth characteristics as the original Bonfire but with a completely different look – blush pink flowers against dark chocolate/plum foliage.

Despite the banners having a model of quality in the image, that is me included in the picture of the stand looking a little less model-like, but still resplendent amongst the begonias and quite happy with how our stand looked for the show.

 At the Bonfire Choc display

Finally, after a successful trip across multiple time zones, I returned home to wintry Melbourne, Australia just in time for the football finals – which hopefully, my team will win again … Go Cats.

And whilst the weather might be cold, it is the perfect time of year to see why we love working with the Jury magnolias (bred by magnolia industry icon Mr. Mark Jury). Check out the blooms on the Black Tulip^®, the size of the bloom of Felix Jury^® and the flowering machine that is the recently released Fairy Magnolias^®.

Black Tulip magnolia

Felix Jury magnolia

Fairy Magnolias

Well, that's all for now. More travel reports to come on Tesselaar's time-tested (and new-for-2011) plants!

Ever dreamed about vacationing in Australia? I know I have. Well here, at least, you can take a trip through its most beautiful site (aside from the 'roos, sand, sun, surf and Sydney Opera House, of course) – the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show. Spend a few minutes down under and enjoy some dramatic flowers and fantastic foliage with this guest post from Phillip Townshend, global operations director for Tesselaar Plants.

With the chocolate coma starting to fade and the Easter Break well and truly over, I thought it time to send a quick update on the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show, which was held just prior to Easter from the 24^th through the 28^th of March. This internationally famous show, held for the past 15 years at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Garden (below), is still an explosion of color and design. It's also the biggest annual flower garden show in the Southern Hemisphere!

Highlighting the creativity and passion of Australia's top floral and landscape designers, the Melbourne show is the horticultural industry’s premier showcase for a stunning array of inspirational displays and environmentally friendly ideas. As always, highlights included the floral spectacular inside the Great Hall of Flowers, the Children's Garden with its animal petting zoo and numerous show gardens created by some of Australia's most lauded landscape designers (all of which left me wondering why I never see the design opportunities the professionals do when working in my own garden).

Particularly inspirational for me was the outdoor exhibition of garden sculptures (below) organized by the Association of Sculptors of Victoria. All sculptures are for sale and range in price from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. I really like the huge metal sculpture of a rose. The next time someone asks me how tough Flower Carpet^® roses are, I'm going to show them this picture!

Of course, we were at the show on business, too. And as always, Tesselaar was actively involved, hosting the media tent and celebrating our wildly popular new plant introduction, Fairy Magnolias (below) with cupcakes and pink bubbly.

One thing that really surprised all of us was the absolute interest in the new Fairy Magnolias. Everyone loved the versatility of the plant (suitable for specimens, hedging or espalier (see second image, below) and how floriferous it was, with a bud at every leaf axil.

In a nutshell, the main points that people liked were the flower, light fragrance, the fact that it was a flowering bush that could be used for hedging, the year-round lush green foliage and rapid growth.

And Tropicanna® Canna (which will soon appear in stores in the Northern Hemisphere) continues to wow garden designers, with its inclusion in many of the show's displays.

 Here I am with Tropicanna Black (its purple-black leaves soon to be topped by a coral bloom with bright-yellow edging) and Tropicanna Gold (its green, yellow and golden leaves soon to showcase a sunny, yellow-gold flower). And below that, you can see the original Tropicanna Canna that started it all in a garden setting, soon to show off its bright tangerine bloom.

Anyway, should you be planning a trip to Australia any time in the future, try to visit during the Melbourne International Flower & Garden show. It is truly a spectacular celebration of the Australian lifestyle and our great outdoors, with some of the world’s leading floral and landscape designers, all in the beautiful Carlton Gardens with great food and lots of family fun!