Newspaper Page Text
KRISTEN MORALES
Allan Armitage talks
to gardeners about
perennials for sale last
April at the University
of Georgia???s annual
Plantapalooza plant sale.
AVOR*M|E
Allan Armitage Retires
Y ou don't have to be a University of Georgia student to
sit down with horticulture professor Allan Armitage
and learn something.
Even if you're not good with plants, that's OK. He's not
going to make you leave with something in a little plastic pot.
But guaranteed, if you hang around for even a few minutes,
he'll soon be pulling you aside to explain why a particular
sweet potato vine smells so sweet or how a clump of dark
green leaves will soon sprout round yellow flowers that give
the "eyeball plant" its name.
It just comes naturally to Armitage, who has been teaching
horticulture at UGA for 30 years and was instrumental in start
ing the Trial Gardens at the University of Georgia. He's retiring
this summer, after he hosts an open house at the Trial Gardens
on Saturday, July 13 ($5 admission). At the event, an 11 a.m.
presentation will focus on Armitage and the legacy he's leaving
at UGA.
Tucked behind several parking lots off South Lumpkin
Street, the Trial Gardens hold specimens of perennial and
annual plants and are tended to
by the students who work there.
Georgia's extreme heat makes it
a good testing ground, Armitage
says, and plant growers from
around the world request their
plants be proven worthy in this soil before heading out to
garden centers. As a result, not only are the trail gardens able
to run without any financial help from the University, but they
also teach horticulture students about the business of plant
breeding, growing and marketing.
Some of the plants at the Trial Gardens come from breeders,
while others are cultivated by the students who work there.
Sometimes, all it takes is a simple cutting for a variety to
establish itself as a winner in the marketplace.
One hugely successful plant, Armitage recalls, came from
humble beginnings.
While driving to Atlanta with fellow UGA horticulture pro
fessor Michael Dirr, Armitage spied a deep purple variety of
verbena, a flowering plant with tiny clusters of flowers that's
prized for its drought tolerance. They pulled over and knocked
on the door of the ramshackle farmhouse to ask for a closer
look. The old woman who answered the door was in her house
coat, with wild white hair and a few teeth missing. But when
they asked to see her garden, she smiled.
"We were all gathered around this flower bed, and I said,
'Hey, Mike, it's a verbena," Armitage says. "She takes her elbow
and pokes me in the rib and said, 'That's vervain.'"
Armitage still laughs as he tells the story, impressed at
how the woman, surrounded by two of the plant world's most
esteemed experts, was quick to correct them. And her name for
the plant wasn't incorrect???it was simply an old-world term for
verbena.
Dirr and Armitage took seven cuttings from her plants, and
with those cuttings they propagated thousands of the deep
purple variety.
A couple years later, Armitage drove past the site where
they collected that prized plant. The ramshackle house with its
little garden was gone. Luckily, thanks to Armitage's keen eye
and the work done at the Trial Gardens, the plant now lives in
gardens across the South.
When Armitage arrived from Canada decades ago, he
wouldn't have believed such an undertaking was possible.
"When I came down here, I said, 'You can't grow anything
here,"' he recalls. He and his wife, seven months pregnant for
their summertime move, watched the steamy world from their
air-conditioned house in disbelief. "But I did know you could
grow a lantana and a magnolia here. So with this whole idea of
starting a perennial garden, we said, 'We can do better than a
lantana and a magnolia.'"
Armitage ended up in Georgia thanks to a tall government
building, a freighter bound for Europe and a few middle-school
math classes.
Actually, Armitage began his career as a teacher at a
Canadian high school. He taught math and biology, and even
coached a little basketball. In
the summers, he and a friend
drove around in a little red
pickup truck doing landscaping.
"I just happened to like plants,"
he said. But after seven years of
teaching, and feeling a bit burnt out, Armitage made a voy
age to clear his head. He hopped a freighter and crossed the
ocean to Europe. When he returned, he decided to head back to
school, working as a gravedigger to pay the bills.
"When we put the dirt on, we planted the dirt; we made
designs in plants," he says. "The first clue that maybe this hor
ticulture thing might be a thing, I had finished and the family
came. And they were sobbing???not only because of their grief,
but also because of the beauty of the plants.
"I said, 'Maybe we've got something here.'"
Armitage eventually passed on a job offer to manage flow
ers for the Canadian prime minister???a job that would put him
in a dress shirt and tie on the 19th floor of an Ottawa office
building???and, after getting his PhD, landed at UGA.
Today, Armitage has written 13 books and spends some
of his time organizing group trips to the great gardens of
the world. If you think you'll miss his colorful plant descrip
tions given by microphone at the annual spring plant sale at
the Trial Gardens, you can download his new app, "Armitage's
Greatest Perennials and Annuals," ($4.99, iTunes store) and
take his advice to go.
Although, he admits with a shrug, just because he'll no lon
ger be teaching doesn't mean he won't still occasionally hang
out at the Trial Gardens.
"I'm retiring from the garden???the day-to-day and teach
ing" he says. "But I got more books to write and things to do.
I'm going to miss the teaching, but I'm always going to be
teaching somebody something."
Kristen Morales
???When I came down here I said,
???You can???t grow anything here.??????
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JULY 3, 2013-FLAGPOLE.COM 7