Native plants studied

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BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Home gardeners may be able to spend a little less time working and a little more time enjoying the outdoors if a project by the University of Idaho Extension Horticulture Team takes root.

The team, based in Aberdeen, is trying to create a ''designer'' line of Idaho plants, featuring flowers and grasses that can handle the cold winters and hot summers of the Treasure Valley while requiring just a fraction of the water that most landscaping plants need.

Other Western states have similar plant lines: Utah gardeners can get ''Utah's Choice'' plants, while Colorado plant lovers have ''Plant Select.''

Idaho's horticulture team has already spent years looking for the right blooms.Tom Salaiz, a research support scientist in Aberdeen, told The Idaho Statesman that staffers have been collecting native plant seeds from locations around the state since 2005.

The work isn't quick. Team members scout for blooms in the spring, searching Hells Canyon, the Owyhees and Sawtooths and other regions for promising plants. Then they note the location and return in late summer to collect the seeds.

Next, the growers chill, scar or do anything else they need to do to simulate what would normally happen in nature. the seeds are planted in a greenhouse the following year before they are ready for a real-world test.

The first batch of 50 young plants are growing at a test garden at the Idaho Botanical Garden in Boise. The agastasche from Wyoming and New Mexico, buckwheats from Idaho and Utah, columbines and wispy grasses will be largely left alone in the sandy and rocky soil for the season.

''By the end of the growing season, you'll see them taking off,'' said Idaho Botanical Garden Manager Tim Szofran.

The plants will be on a ''strict water regime,'' he said.

''They'll be pretty much on their own. Then we'll come back and see what survived,'' he said.

The plants will be evaluated for several years to see just how hardy they are before they'll be available for purchase in local greenhouses.

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