Romero is noodling around with all sorts of new and different mums in her test garden, where she's searching for the chrysanthemum equivalent of a great-tasting winter tomato. She's looking for tougher, prettier, longer-lasting, stronger-stemmed and shapelier mum plants to breed and eventually sell to home gardeners as alternatives to the mass-produced ones.
"Even if it's a nice shape and even if the color is nice," Romero says of potted mums, "it's just not as interesting. And mums don't have to be bushy and dense."
In their defense, the populist mums of fall bring seasonal symmetry, comforting ritual, and a last bit of color before frost to patios, storefronts and fading flower beds. Often referred to in general terms such as garden, fall or hardy mums, they also have three qualities that quicken the pulse of gardener and non-gardener alike: They're no work, they're cheap, and they require no cleanup.
Despite the "hardy" label, most won't make it through the winter. They're usually treated as annuals - and, like poinsettias, get tossed when the season changes.
Something to be said for all that, and Jean and Ralph Parks of Media are happy to say it. These champion mum-growers - in that sense, true mummers - proudly display a 20-foot courtyard walkway they've framed with neat ribbons of homegrown, garden-variety mums in yellow, bronze and red.
They grew all 250 of them from cuttings, and on a recent nippy day the sunshine and breezes seemed to heighten their brightness - especially with the couple's white-brick house as background.
"The pots you get at the supermarket have raised awareness of mums. Everyone's got them now," says Jean Parks, who enjoys the orderliness of her courtyard design.
