June 30, 2006

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OVERTON – "Oh look! Begonias in full sun," said Eileen Bartlett, a Wood County Master Gardener.

"That's unusual, especially for lighter leaf varieties," Bartlett explained to her husband, Bart.

The Barletts were part of the 160 East Texas nursery growers, greenhouse managers and gardening enthusiasts who attended the annual Overton Horticultural Field Day June 26.

Designed to serve the Texas bedding plant industry, a business which by conservative estimates has an annual economic impact of $250 million, the field day has grown from testing a few varieties in 1994 to hundreds of ornamental plant varieties today.

The brainchild of Dr. Brent Pemberton, research horticulturist with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, the tests are held at the Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Overton.

This year's tests included more than 100 vinca entries, about 20 varieties of ornamental peppers, 60 trailing petunia varieties and 30 verbenas. Other bedding plant varieties tested were areonias, portulaca, zinnias, geraniums and ageratum, Pemberton said.

"The seed companies that own the genetic material pay entry fees to have their material tested," Pemberton said. "This is an important test site for them because of our high heat and humidity."

Mike Hugget, a representative of Floranova, a worldwide bedding plant marketing company, agreed.

"We use these trials exclusively for our heat-tolerant tests," For our vincas, begonias, petunias, so on and so forth."

Floranova is based in the United Kingdom, and before entering varieties in the East Texas bedding plant trials there was no way the company could manage breeding of new plant lines for the area, he said.

"Typically, before, all ... our information was coming out of our English trials, where the climate is relatively moderate," Hugget said. "So we never would know how the product would react under these conditions. ... Our job is to steer the breeders in the proper direction by giving them results from trials like these. It helps us build a better product for customers in these locations."

The field day is also popular with area Master Gardeners, Pemberton noted. Lisa Weems, a Smith County Master Gardener from Troup, said if she can't come every year, she at least comes every other year.

"It's real educational," she said. "It gives you an idea of what (plants) to try out for next year."

Master Gardeners are required to perform 50 hours of community service annually. Nita Wood is one of a number of local Master Gardeners who enjoy helping with planting and care of the Overton trials, Pemberton said.

"I do most of my volunteer work out here at Overton on the seed trials," said Wood, also a Smith County Master Gardener. "We are so proud of it, and Dr. Pemberton is wonderful to work with. He's our guru; if we have any questions, we know he can answer them."

Pemberton added without the hundreds of volunteer hours provided by local Master Gardeners every year, "the seed trials wouldn't be possible."

For more information of Smith County Master Gardeners, visit the Web at http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/county/smith/mg/mg.html .

To learn about the statewide Master Gardener program, visit the Web at http://mastergardener.tamu.edu/ .

More information on the Overton seed trials can be found at http://overton.tamu.edu/flowers/ .