Plant nursery owners have some complaints. Some are about the quality of the new plants they are getting. Some are about the prices they have to pay for trademarked and patented plants. And some are about the odd names that a lot of the plants are getting.

The Maine Landscape and Nursery Association held a panel discussion with three plant experts the night before its annual convention at the Augusta Civic Center last month, and the result was an inside look into how plants come to market.

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“Bella Anna” hydrangeas are beautiful, but their

The panelists were Michael Dirr, recently retired as a horticulture professor at the University of Georgia, author of many books (including the bible of woody plants) and someone who has introduced hundreds of plants to market; William Cullina, executive director of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and the author of several popular gardening books; and William L. Mitchell, director of the Stockbridge School at the University of Massachusetts and former professor of horticulture at the University of Maine.

The colored pots that have been showing up at nurseries over the past decade are not universally popular with the retailers who sell them. The nursery has to pay a fee to the company that holds the patent or trademark on the plant, extra money for the pot, more money for the label that identifies the plant, and then a marketing fee on top of everything.

“You have spent $3 before you put the plant in the pot and add the medium (soil),” said Dale Pierson, owner of Pierson Nurseries in Dayton.

And once you have paid for the pot, some of the companies don’t want you to plant anything else in it, so if a “green” client returns the plastic pot to your nursery, you can’t re-use it.

“People assume that the branded plant is higher quality,” Cullina said, “but often that is not the case.”

Jeff O’Donal of O’Donal’s Nurseries in Gorham said that marketing is more important than the plant, and that a survey has shown that “77 percent of people believe that a branded plant is a better plant.”

Dirr had some sympathy with the nursery owners, even though the “Endless Summer” hydrangea he introduced comes in blue pots that were among the subjects of the complaints.

A company Dirr helped start in 2008, Plant Introductions Inc., has gone away from the colored pots. Instead, it charges a licensing fee for each plant and for the tag; the total cost is less than a dollar.

Another problem is that plant propagators send plants out for sale before being sure they will perform as advertised.

An example Dirr mentioned is the pink arborescens hydrangeas. “Invincibelle Spirit” came out first, and Dirr’s “Bella Anna” came out a year later. Part of the problem with these plants is that the stems are not strong, and the plants have a tendency to flop.

“No one wants to wait anymore,” Dirr said, “but we’ll keep going until we get it right. Good is the enemy of great, and we want great plants.”

There is a great market waiting for reblooming hydrangeas, Dirr said, but the first one to come out, “Bloomerang,” has fallen short of expectations, with fewer and smaller blooms on the second bloom of the year.

The disappointment from these introductions provides a lesson for home gardeners. 

Perhaps they might not want to buy plants during the first couple of years after they hit the market, even though I admit to writing about a lot of new plants, including “Invincibelle Spirit,” “Bloomerang” and “Pink Lemonade” pink blueberries.

You need to know what is hitting the market so you can follow it, but you don’t have to spend your money on it right away. After the plants have been around for a couple of years, you can ask your local nursery professionals whether they are worth buying.

The plant-name discussion had several tracks.

Cullina explained that the scientific — or Latin-based — plant names are being changed as the result of new technology, including DNA sampling. Plants once were considered part of the same family because they looked similar, but science has shown they have a different lineage. 

“It is important to the researchers to find out how they are related,” he said, and that plants in the same family have the same ancestors.

Professionals say these changes confuse customers, though they understand the need for such changes.

What is more confusing is when the patent names are different from the trademark names. The patent names, which expire after a couple of decades, can be complicated and difficult to pronounce. But trademarks can be renewed, and companies marketing plants make the trademark names more simple and memorable.

Dirr said he would like to see someone set up a plant database to serve as a clearinghouse for plant names. 

“It would create order out of chaos,” he said. “It would list the 15 different names and give you the right one.”

O’Donal complained that some customers come seeking a plant they have read about under one name, but is labeled at the nursery under a different name. “You can’t convince them it is the same plant,” he said.

When asked to discuss trends in the industry, Mitchell worried about who is going to be running the plant nurseries and greenhouse operations in future years, pointing out that most of the people in the audience had gray hair — and that their customers do too.

“The young people are focusing on organic agriculture and the buy-local movement,” he said. “We have to hope that they will move over to ornamental horticulture.”

And while baby boomers have been the most important customer base of nurseries, they are getting too old to do a lot of planting. Younger people are living mostly in apartments, and are not going to be spending money on plants.

Tom Atwell has been writing the Maine Gardener column since 2004. He is a freelance writer gardening in Cape Elizabeth, and can be contacted at 767-2297 or at:

tomatwell@me.com