Like fashion designers who introduce new clothing lines every year, plant breeders introduce a new crop of impatiens annually. They strive for more continuous bloom; bigger, smaller and fancier flowers; new colors; clearer colors and subtle variations; and patterns–mosaic, star, swirl and picotee. The competition is fierce.
That’s because impatiens account for hundreds of millions of dollars of retails sales a year, according to Bridget Behe, an expert in horticulture marketing trends at Michigan State University in Lansing, Mich. .
Clearly, many gardeners love them. But gardening professionals say they are almost too easy to use and people don’t make the most of this annual’s many fine attributes.
Here it is, almost August, and the hard-working impatiens is still flowering in its shady nook. It is considerate enough not to crowd its neighbors, and so undemanding that it drops its faded blooms. No deadheading required. It offers almost surefire success to gardeners at any level. “You give it the minimum care, and it performs to the maximum,” says Greg Stack, a horticulturist with the University of Illinois Extension.
Adds Cynthia Fletcher of Garden Concepts, a landscape architecture firm in Glenview: “You can’t beat them for color in the shade. I use them to fill in the perennial bed around the base of plants like phlox. The newer double impatiens go nicely in pots.”
The flower’s name comes from Latin for its impatient scattering of seeds when the ripe pod is touched. This response also earned the plant its common names: busy Lizzie and touch-me-not. Impatiens species can be found throughout the world in the tropics.
At stores and garden centers, most of that profusion of colorful impatiens can be attributed to varieties of Impatiens walleriana. Gardeners have one man to thank for that: Claude Hope.
Called the “Father of Modern Impatiens” by many in the industry, Hope was a plant taxonomist who encountered the species when he traveled to Costa Rica for the U.S. Army during World War II. A leggy plant, with a tuft of leaves and a few flowers at the top, it grew like a weed along roadsides and flowered in the depths of the rain forest. This species is native to eastern Africa, and early trading ships had probably carried its seeds, quite by accident, to Central and South America.
After the war, Hope moved to Cartago, Costa Rica, where he tackled the formidable challenge of hybridizing the wild flower. Other breeders of that era produced a straggly plant similar to the parent. His goal was to create a small, symmetrical one that would bloom prolifically all summer. It took him more than a decade.
He succeeded in 1965, and a few years later, his company introduced eight colors of `Elfin’ impatiens. Later came the `Super Elfin,’ which remains a top seller today. Hope’s firm, Linda Vista, now part of Ball Horticultural Co., is a leading producer of hybrid impatiens seed. Hope continued as Linda Vista’s president until his retirement and remained an adviser until his death last year at 93.
Around 1989, a related species made the scene in the U.S. The New Guinea impatiens, bred by Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania from several species gathered in and around Papua, New Guinea, displays larger flowers and variegated foliage. It also tolerates a bit more sun.
The double impatiens, with its roselike flowers and romantic names such as `Confection’ and `Duet,’ may be the most fetching flower in the family.
Breeders labored for about 12 years to develop a yellow impatiens, according to Colby Wolfe, a horticulturist with W. Atlee Burpee and Co., which introduced the first in 1993. `African Queen’ is a trumpet-shaped flower with streaks of orange at the throat. `Fanfare,’ the first trailing impatiens, designed to fill hanging baskets, made its debut this year. `Firefly,’ the new mini-impatiens, covered with 1/2-inch flowers, also will be competing for attention in this already crowded field.
With all this versatility and reliability, why is it that impatiens get no respect?
“Overused,” sniff some. “Misused,” sneer others. One nursery owner says that the colors of some hybrid impatiens are so gaudy that he finds it difficult to sit near them. Still, the pros say they find them useful.
“I don’t think they should be frowned upon,” says garden designer Bonnie Ford of Bonnie Ford & Associates Inc. in Evanston. “Just don’t line them up in a row. We don’t do that with perennials, but for some reason we think we have to line up annuals like tin soldiers.”
Ford suggests grouping three to five plants of the same color together so that they look natural, like one large plant. “They attract the eye, give a bed dimension,” she says. “I’ve used woodland phlox that way.”
For gardeners who prefer the old-fashioned, Burpee’s heirloom catalog suggests the more vertical Impatiens balsamina, native to Southeast Asia. Thomas Jefferson grew it at Monticello, according to Wolfe at Burpee.
With all the colors and patterns available, garden designers rhapsodize about white. Merle Sharpe, owner of Personal Spaces Garden Design in Evanston, says she uses “tons” of them. “They help to bring up the look of darker foliage in the shade–like a touch of white on a dark dress,” Sharpe says.
Some do’s and don’ts for using impatiens
Here are some suggestions for using impatiens.
From Merle Sharpe of Personal Spaces Garden Design in Evanston:
– Don’t buy mixed flats. You can end up with combinations that are not pleasing: Pink, salmon and red, for example.
– Do pair impatiens with coral bells (heuchera), Japanese painted fern or hakone grass.
– Do try ferns and white impatiens in containers. Mix green and silver foliage.
– From Carol Senderowitz, owner of Smallscape, a garden design firm in Chicago:
– Do pair New Guinea and common impatiens with white or lavender lobelia.
From Marcy Stewart-Pyziak of the Gardener’s Tutor, a garden design firm in Manhattan, Ill.
– Don’t plant great masses of impatiens unless you want your house to look like a park or an institution.
– Do interplant them with perennials that have attractive foliage, such as Siberian bugloss, hostas and epimedium.
From impatiens breeders and experts:
– Do give impatiens the right location: part to full shade for common Impatiens walleriana, full shade for Impatiens balsamina.
– Don’t expect New Guinea impatiens to handle full sun, even though they were sold initially as sun-loving plants. A Northeastern exposure or morning sun and afternoon shade is best for them.
– Do give all impatiens well-drained soil; work organic matter into the planting bed.
– Don’t overwater or overfertilize. Don’t let impatiens dry out, but don’t let the soil get soggy. Too much fertilizer will cause lush foliage and few flowers. Fertilize soon after planting and once or twice after that, unless the soil has been amended with nutrient-rich organic matter. For containers, add a very diluted water-soluble fertilizer every two to three weeks.
— Mary McLaughlin
