07/29/08 Using native Idaho plants

Steve Love and his colleagues at the University of Idaho Aberdeen Research Center have put a lot of time and effort into a project to determine which native plants would be best for use in Idaho landscaping. Because of their work Love expects to see new varieties developed for Idaho and sold by Idaho nurseries. Some promising seed has already been distributed to interested growers and Love says some native plants have beautiful flowers or foliage and require far less water than most of today's landscape plants. LOVE "Some of the penstemons; they're beautiful plants and Idaho has about 50 or 60 native species of penstemons and I haven't thrown very many of the away because they're almost all really, really beautiful. One that really hasn't receive much attention anywhere and I think has tremendous potential is a group of plants called the wild buckwheats and there's quite a few species of those too and many of them are really, really beautiful plants and they bloom for a long, long period of time. Then there's a whole group of mints and hyssops that provide a lot of good fall color." Thanks to funding from the Idaho Nursery and Landscape Association Love can evaluate some of the 15 hundred seed varieties they've collected in the past three years from desert and mountain locations through out the Intermountain West. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott