There's nothing like a garden trade show to get you in the mood for spring, and this year's MANTS (Mid-Atlantic Nurserymen's Trade Assn) show was its usual over-the-top self: big, brawny, bold, and one of the best and biggest in the country.
Now, a lot of the things you see at these shows are the same things you'll see year after year, so you can more or less skip along the aisles just looking for something new.
I've seen a lot of boxwoods in my day, but you can't see all of them, and this particular one I'd never seen in the past. It's Buxus microphylla 'John Baldwin' from Saunders Brothers in Virginia, one of the country's top boxwood developers.
It has a different shape than 'Dee Runk' and 'Fastigiata' and because it grows more slowly, it'll be just 4 feet tall and maybe 3 wide at 15 years. As a slow grower, it might be just right for those narrow spaces where you might normally decide to put a holly, if you weren't so sick of them.
MANTS tends to focus on plants, but I'm always looking for new accoutrements, and these new fiberglass containers from Duracraft certainly caught my eye. Duracraft is a wholesaler, so you'll have to look for these at your retail garden center, or check the Duracraft website for the store nearest you. What's new about these is the gelcoat finish, which comes in charcoal gray and antique white as well as red and black. And these are so darned new that they are not yet even on the Duracraft website. They come in other shapes, too (see below), and even more are available.
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