Last Monday a friend of mine stopped by the office and dropped off a couple of plant "kits" for my kids. I didn’t spend much time looking at them at first, but I brought them out that night when I got home to show to the family and…they’re really neat! Called Eco Plant Pals, these little kits include a container, some media, and some seeds for one of 18 different plants. Each of these plants has their own names, like Chris Catnip for (you guessed it) a catnip plant and Laura Lobelia. It’s all about the marketing with cute pictures and names. See all of the cute kits here.
I’ll tell you right from the start that they cost too much (retail anyway), but they’re cute, and the girls are excited to plant them, so what can I say? I believe that anything that gets kids excited about planting is a good thing. Everything in the kit is biodegradable which is nice. I do have one complaint though. Not a huge one, but one worth mentioning all the same. Plant number 18 is Butterfly Beth and it’s a butterfly bush. As many of you know I absolutely love butterfly bush, but I am also aware that in certain parts of the country this shrub is considered an invasive plant. While all of the other plants are, as far as I can tell, pretty benign (most are annuals — there is a Robert Redwood though!) I have to question calling Butterfly Beth a good choice ecologically.
Yes, she’s an invasive, but isn’t she cute!
It even says “Beth readily produces millions of seeds to spread herself around. Wherever you find Beth, you will find a group. She grows fast and easy and can take root in many different places.”. I don’t think that $2.99 is bad considering packaging, shipping, etc.
One man’s “native” is another man’s “invasive”.
Consider that most of these plants will likely die of neglect before they ever get the chance to reproduce.
Too bad Beth would be “deported” from Washington state. The median strips along I-5 are full of Beth’s friends. For those of you who think invasive plant issues are nonsense, look at it this way: do you really want to be attracting butterflies and other beneficials to freeway median strips to eat and reproduce?
Cute indeed, although I agree about Beth. I have pictures of buddleias growing from crevices in buildings two stories up in Scotland! I also wonder about the likelihood of successfully growing some of them. The fly trap? The cactus? And, of course, it’s a gimmick. But heck, if it gets kids interested, why not? You can move them onto real packets of seeds later.
Several years ago I was given a gimmick garden gift, a geranium in a can. We opened the sealed can (with a can opener), watered it per the instructions, and, to my surprise, it grew. Eventually I transplanted it, and it’s become a giant geranium bush, thriving on neglect. Otoh, I keep giving away all of the chia pets I’m given. Why in the world do people think avid gardeners want chia pets?!
Karen, I think your last question hits the nail on the head. I think that most people don’t understand the drive to garden. I gave a Wendell Berry book to someone one time to help explain why I think the way I do. His response: to buy a houseplant. There is a serious disconnect between much of society and the natural world. Although I dislike the thought of how much energy goes into pr
oducing these flashy packages, I would be a hypocrite to complain after admitting to the amount of metal used in my Tonkas and Hot Wheels when I was a kid and these days to how many gardening books I own that aren’t printed on recycled paper. My sixteen-month-old already loves the pea gravel in the front garden and the bird bath and my hand trowel more than his flashy plastic contrivances that his grandparents buy him, but he’s an oddball (thank, Gaia!). It seems like the gimmicks are more important to the actual buyer–the parents who might not quite understand how to teach kids about plants and their vital importance to us because our education system in many towns didn’t teach them this in the first place. I know that it took a crazy old 300-level botany professor to make me understand what my mom and her father had been trying to teach me for years.
Karen, I think your last question hits the nail on the head. I think that most people don’t understand the drive to garden. I gave a Wendell Berry book to someone one time to help explain why I think the way I do. His response: to buy a houseplant. There is a serious disconnect between much of society and the natural world. Although I dislike the thought of how much energy goes into producing these flashy packages, I would be a hypocrite to complain after admitting to the amount of metal used in my Tonkas and Hot Wheels when I was a kid and these days to how many gardening books I own that aren’t printed on recycled paper. My sixteen-month-old already loves the pea gravel in the front garden and the bird bath and my hand trowel more than his flashy plastic contrivances that his grandparents buy him, but he’s an oddball (thank, Gaia!). It seems like the gimmicks are more important to the actual buyer–the parents who might not quite understand how to teach kids about plants and their vital importance to us because our education system in many towns didn’t teach them this in the first place. I know that it took a crazy old 300-level botany professor to make me understand what my mom and her father had been trying to teach me for years.
I have tried to get my kids to get interested in plants and the eco system to and it has really worked for us. Getting kids excited about planting is the thing that can save our future.. They have even started to restructure my wives garden now and it all started with a ready made kit for kids. Now they are more interested in natural breeding of flowers and plants that grow in our environment and trying to grow them from seeds they find in our garden. im a proud father 😉