No Time to Wait

The patient person’s pastime is giving way to immediate gratification in the consumer decade.

Since 1980, California gardeners have been buying larger and larger plants with more and more blossoms, instead of buying seedlings to nurture into bloom, said Jack A. Wick, executive director of the California Assn. of Nurserymen in Sacramento. “They’re not as interested in planting small plants with no flowers and watching them grow. . . . People seem to want instant color.”

Southern Californians have led the state in buying ever-growing quantities of plants that will look good immediately, said Dennis M. Connor, assistant production manager at Monrovia Nursery Co. in Azusa. Sales of short-lived pansies, petunias and other plants that flower soon after purchase have doubled in the past seven or eight years, he said. “People don’t have the time to garden, so when they do, they want results right away.”

The most popular color for flowers this year is blue, particularly deep blue, Connor added. Yet buyers of blooming annuals may be shortsighted.

“After a while,” he said, “you realize you have to replace it all the time.”