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Back to Garden Features index page ..... Anthony Tesselaar - International Plantsman By Sandy Felton Do you ever wander through your local nursery and wonder where all those lovely exotic and beautiful plants come from? Who bred them, grew them, nurtured them and finally brought them to your nursery for you to buy for your garden? I have to admit that I never have - then I had a conversation with Anthony Tesselaar, the international plantsman from Australia, and suddenly all those colourful tempting plants took on a whole new meaning. Anthony was recently in the UK and we had the opportunity to chat about his plant philosophy. Anthony Tesselaar International is an international horticultural management and marketing company based near Melbourne in Australia. They work in eleven different countries, including the UK and Europe, and are better known here for their Canna Tropicanna Plants and an exciting new begonia – Bonfire. Anthony and his team search the plant breeders of the world to find new and exciting plants. They then spend up to seven years on plant trials – the company has extensive trial gardens in Australia as well as in several othercountries including Ireland, France and the USA and several trial growers in the UK. Very few plants make the final stage to marketing – for example out of some 257 plants on trial only five or six will come out successfully as meeting the exacting Tesselaar criteria.
He is also emphatic that plants need very little looking after or spraying so they have got to be disease tolerant. "We are very strong on that point" he says, "we reject an awful lot of plants we see because they are not disease tolerant – nothing is ever disease free but they have got to be disease tolerant." He looks for plants which have character, that are there to enhance the garden rather than be the garden – in fact brilliant plants that stand out from the crowd. Plants like Bonfire begonia, (pictured above) a sensational flame coloured plant which is versatile and requires very little maintenance. One of its assets is that the plant recovers well from heavy rain and is therefore the perfect addition to any garden facing the UK climate. He is a passionate gardener who really loves plants and understands that other passionate gardeners are intensive plant people who are always looking for something a little different. He wants to get more people into gardening and so ensuring that easy care plants are available is one way of encouraging them. "We are not just selling plants we are selling emotions" he says "gardeners are a bunch of happy people, they enjoy life, they are less anxious, less stressed, so my philosophy is whatever I can do to get more people into gardening is really the way I want to go. The only way to get people into gardening is to satisfy a need which gives them colour, easy Log onto www.tesselaar.com for more information on Anthony Tesselaar International. © Reckless Gardener Magazine 2005 Mill Cottage New Media |
Anthony’s plant philosophy is simple: "Its got to be easy to grow, be colourful and when planting it out, its not only got to be colourful its got to give you more than a week of pleasure and its got to look good."| Buy Online
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