in 2019 the Perennial Plant Association’s annual symposium is held in Chicago, a city I have longed to explore for its incredible horticulture. This post is part of a series where I share the highlights of the trip and is part 1 of 4 on our first day of tours.
Our pre-conference tour started with a visit to Intrinisic Perennial Gardens. Brent Horvath, the face and energy of Intrinsic, gave us a great tour of the nursery. He is an incredible plant breeder with an eye for selecting and breeding colorful forms of common plants. I mean, who thought we would ever have red and purple giant bluestems?!
Brent told us that his nursery serves both to sell plants for retail at farmer’s markets and other events and to be a breeding ground for new plants.
Here’s a few photos with some nuggets of knowledge and inspiration along the way.
THE NURSERY
In this older section of the nursery, Brent Horvath of Intrinsic Perennial Gardens gave us an overview of the company’s history.
Here Brent shows the PPA group many new plant releases he’s developing.
The nursery was also very clean and plant blocks well organized, which made for some nice photos.
A batch of ‘Blonde Ambition’. The horizontal seedheads always get me.
A green wall in its infancy.
THE SUCCULENT THEATRE
Right off the bus, this incredible display of succulents caught my eye. They had been cleverly layered by running planks across stacked bulb crates. I loved seeing this arrangement becaue I’ve been looking for inspiration for how to display our potted collection at home and school. Also, theatres seem to be an “in” thing.
Brent’s collection of succulents at Intrinsic Perennial Gardens.
So neat and tidy!
This Aeonium ‘Lily Pad’ caught my eye with vibrant green rosettes.
The Display Gardens
Brent has 10 gardens at Intrinsic Perennial Gardens where he is able to trial and display the results of his breeding projects and the plants he grows at his nursery.
Brent showed us a small circular garden that’s 9 feet wide. It was a great model for just how small an effective naturalistic planting can be.
The Grass Garden, a planting where he evaluates members of the Poaceae.
This short Sporobolus caught my eye. John Hoffman identified it as ‘Tara’.
In the grass garden Brent stands with a ‘Blackhawks’ Andropogon, a nice purple form that he selected.
See dem sedum? In the parking lot was a planting of various sedums and related species. Brent said he originally laid it out alphabetically, which was probably a great idea as a reference since he did write a wonderful book on Sedum.
Dry shade garden where various species are evaluated in a habitat that causes great consternation for gardeners.
This wild and fancy-free patch called Trudy’s Garden was tucked in between polyhouse frames.
Andropogon ‘Red October’ tends to elongate a bit later than ‘Blackhawks’.
Brent had a clever way of marking the plants where he intended to collect seed. He flagged them with blue tape.