The geranium was once a novel and beloved plant. Thomas Jefferson took some to the White House. But William Morris, the design genius who elevated the marigold to patterned perfection, found the geranium proof that “even flowers can be thoroughly ugly,” writes Kasia Boddy in Geranium, a new cultural history of the flower.
Today, the geranium is still disdained by horticultural mavens, and yet some 150 million plants are sold each year to those who rely on that splash of scarlet (or pink, white or salmon) to decorate their summer yards, patios and hanging baskets. Can so many people be so wrong?
If you are not convinced, there is a new reason to like this plant urchin: The breeders who work on annuals have made a major breakthrough in recent years with a new class of geranium (or pelargonium, if you are a purist) that will provide new forms,
new colors and better performance by crossing ivy-leafed geraniums with zonal types.
Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette HomeStyle section for more.