Tough, Adaptable and Bold

Mountain States Wholesale Nursery celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. (clockwise from upper left) Ron Gass, Bart Worthington, Kelly Jones, Ron Alewine, Janet Rademacher and Maureen Gass.From subtle to brilliant hues and smooth to spiny surfaces, desert-adapted plants bring an air of mystery and excitement to the landscape. Beyond their beauty, this plant palette requires less water than traditional ornamentals. Ron Gass and his team at Mountain States Wholesale Nursery have spent the last 40 years cultivating these types of plants and educating growers and gardeners about their benefits.

Mountain States Wholesale Nursery in Glendale, Ariz., sells more than 450 taxa of trees, shrubs, groundcovers, perennials, accents, ornamental grasses and vines that are adapted to desert regions. 
 
What started as a small contract-growing operation for freeway projects and mine tailing restoration projects in Arizona has morphed into a nursery covering three locations totaling 475 acres of outdoor production space and 10 acres of greenhouses.
 
“The use of desert-adapted plants as landscape materials has evolved from the selection of our durable natives, which served to anchor difficult and demanding revegetation sites, to an ongoing search for beauty, color and variety,” Gass said. “In today’s landscapes, our plant choices have broadened to include hues and forms which far surpass our earlier hopes of adding texture, refinement and brilliance to already proven durability.”

Education is key
During the last 40 years, Mountain States Wholesale Nursery has worked tirelessly to create and support educational programs that highlight desert-adapted plants.
 
“Without the educational programs sponsored by so many organizations and institutions, and without the contributions of enthusiastic writers, the knowledge and pleasure of landscaping with this diverse palette would have remained limited to isolated pockets of enthusiasts,” Gass said. “Instead, the combined efforts of many individuals have resulted in a unique plant palette that provides a distinct sense of place.”
 
Earlier this year, Gass was awarded the Paul Ecke Jr. Commercial Award from the American Horticultural Society. The award goes to one “whose commitment to the highest standards of excellence in the field of commercial horticulture contributes to the betterment of gardening practices everywhere.” AHS selected Gass for his dedication to collecting and propagating water-thrifty plants to promote their use in American landscapes.

Landscape lovelies
The nursery’s largest marketing effort is to landscape architects who specify Mountain States’ plants. The nursery also sells to landscape contractors, rewholesalers, golf courses, retail garden centers, botanical gardens and developers. The nursery primary ships to Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Texas. Sizes range from liners up to 36-inch boxes.
 
Mountain States has introduced some 200 new plants to the trade. In the beginning, Gass collected seed from the wild and started growing native plants that weren’t commercially available, such as Baileya multiradiata (desert marigold) and Calliandra eriophylla (pink fairy duster). These were followed by ornamentals that are now commonplace in the trade, such as Senna nemophila, Luecophyllum laevigatum, Nolina microcarpa and Muhlenbergia rigens.
 
Some of Mountain States’ proprietary introductions include Muhlenbergia capillaris Regal Mist, Acacia redolens Desert Carpet, Leucophyllum langmaniae Rio Bravo, Eremophila maculata Valentine and Prosopis × Phoenix.
 
Eremophila hygrophana Blue Bells and Chilopsis linearis Art’s Seedless are two of the nursery’s most recent introductions.
 
Before they’re sold to the trade, plants are tested for five years, which includes working out the propagation and production protocol, and observing the plants’ performance in a landscape setting, said Janet Rademacher, director of business development at Mountain States.
 
Each month in Mountain States’ newsletter, the staff picks a favorite plant. The sales team has connections to the plants they sell. It means they’re out in the field looking at plants, not just Excel files.
 
“If the sales team is not excited about a plant, it tends to sit in the nursery, become overgrown and eventually end up in the mulch pile,” Rademacher said. “We sell plants we are passionate about and feel comfortable recommending to clients.”

Production particulars
The nursery propagates most all of its material. Plants are grown from seed, vegetative cuttings and grafts under the caring eye of Kelly Jones, propagation manager. All of the nursery’s trees and some shrubs are grown in Rootmaker products to eliminate root girdling, Radedmacher said. The plants are grown in a mix high in native soil.
And plants grow year-round in the Arizona climate.
 
“We face challenges with the intense summer heat, and some plants can suffer heat stress and sunburn,” Gass said. “Our 450-acre growing facility in southeastern Arizona is sited at a higher elevation – 4,600 feet – so we do have the option of sending heat-sensitive plants there for ‘summer camp.’”

For more: Mountain States Wholesale Nursery, www.mswn.com.