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Southern California Wholesale Nursery Turns 4004-22-16 | News

Southern California Wholesale Nursery Turns 40
Hosts Customer Appreciation Event with Flower Carpet???(R)???AE???? Rose Specialist as Guest Speaker

Anthony Tesselaar, whose company markets the hardy, drought and disease tolerant Flower Carpet???(R)???AE???? roses worldwide, spoke of their beneficial aspects to an audience of landscape professionals in Orange County, California.

In celebration of their 40 years in the wholesale nursery business, Orange County, California-based Village Nurseries recently invited landscape professionals to an afternoon of food, fun and information.

An estimated 150 landscape architects and designers, landscape contractors and more attended one of the two afternoon sessions at the company's landscape center in Orange, California. The events included talks by Nicholas Staddon, known as "The Plantsman" for his expertise in that arena, and Anthony Tesselaar, who has been championing Flower Carpet???(R)???AE???? roses and other low water use plants for decades.

"We can grow everything and anything just about, in very tough conditions," Tesselaar told the audience. "It's just a matter of adapting to the conditions you have."

He says his company travels around the world about five months out of the year looking for plants that have "best genetics." Once they find plants that pass their initial analysis, they bring them to their own gardens.

"Then we'll start trialing for a minimum of three or four years," reveals Tesselaar.

Tesselaar and his crews test for adaptation, disease tolerance and drought tolerance. Certain testing led them to discover that plants tend to be overwatered by about 30 to 35 percent, that "most plants can live on a very low water regime," and that plants need a minimum of three inches of mulch.

As for watering, Tesselaar advises to water at night, use drip irrigation, and don't leave the system on continuously as that leads to tunnels that can channel the water away from the plant.

"What you use is pulse drip irrigation," recommends Tesselaar. "Turn it on for a couple of hours and turn it off for three or four hours."

When speaking about Flower Carpet???(R)???AE???? roses, Tesselaar credits them with having the best disease tolerance of all of the world's ground cover roses.

"That's why we've currently sold eighty million of them around the world," he asserts.

Summing up the advantages of Flower Carpet???(R)???AE???? roses, Tesselaar told the attentive audience that they require minimal pruning and water, less sun, no chemicals, and have proven longevity.