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PLANTAMERICA began as a series of walking tours.

Roger Milliken, Chairman of the Malcolm Baldridge Award winning textile company, had come to feel that one of the obligations of the American Corporation was to continue the work of the great Arboretums that had planted trees “for the next generation”. To accomplish that at the Milliken Research Center in South Carolina, he gathered Richard C. Webel, who for many years had done the Company’s design work, horticulturalist Michael A. Dirr and Nursery owner Don Shadow.

Over a six year period they walked, talked and planted 5,000 trees. Being a great “learner”and enthusiastic beyond measure, Milliken bought books, studied pictures, and eventually even got a “Plant Trees!” bumper sticker for his car. Somehow though, the books were never as comprehensive or comprehensible as Dirr’s spontaneous treatises or his seemingly endless treasure chest of slides. “Why?”, Milliken asked. Slowly, the group pieced together an answer – which, in turn, led to a proposition.

While the growth of interest in Horticulture can easily be demonstrated by the plethora of garden publications, trade magazines and organizational memberships, the total “market” is like a multitude of Indian tribes that, although sharing a heritage, cannot or do not choose to communicate.

The reason for this is that Landscape architects and horticulturalists, for example, are culturally, educationally, and in practice, distanced from each other. Similarly, landscape contractors, retail nurseries and wholesale growers alternately answer to different drummers or are in competition. Land developers, property managers and naturalists are generally educated in different disciplines from each other – and from all of the above……and so on.

It only takes a casual look to see that Professional, educational and general interest publications reflect this separateness…..and not without cause. The same tree that to a golf course manager is a maintenance issue, to a designer is a tool, to a nursery grower is a commodity, to a horticulturalist is an isolated subject of study, and to a homeowner is often a subject of bewilderment. Thus seen, it is not surprising then that the literature is so niche sensitive.

The result is that any particular horticultural manual – which is expensive to buy, shy on pictures, and probably out-of-date within a year or two of publication – might be too esoteric for the grower, too dry for the Garden Club member, etc, etc. (Notwithstanding all the above, each of these individual groups has a demonstrated hunger for access to information useful to and packaged for it). This also sheds some light on why “the industry”, whose membership and/or subscription rosters represent a staggeringly large number of people, seems to have so little lobbying power.

CD-ROM’s and the WorldWideWeb, Webel proposed, addressed these questions because the same subjects could be accessed by different users from different points on the intellectual compass in an almost “continuous publishing” setting. Taking advantage of that along with the staggeringly large amounts of photographic information that could be stored and displayed at will because of digital compression – could lead to ways for “everyone” to access the entire spectrum odf available knowledge – if the quality was second to none.

IBM Chairman Lou Gerstner, a Webel client, offered the resources of the Company’s multi-media lab to analyze the possibilities. Their enthusiastic endorsement was accompanied by the opinion that there was no “quality” multi-media horticulture resource created to academic and professional standards. In that light, the field could be seen as a sleeping giant.

Over the next year, Webel, Dirr and colleagues talked to everyone that would listen – until they were satisfied that they had the outline of a company that, while it might be a commercial success, without question would be a professional one. Milliken agreed and offered to underwrite distribution to educational and not-for-profit institutions in memory of one of his company’s senior managers.

During this inquiry, five basic thoughts kept recurring in one form or another. Eventually, they came to guide the process itself.

There is “just too much information out there”. Rather than wanting merely an unbiased mountain of information, users said they needed access to the “authorities” – the trusted Deans of the field that had sifted and sorted and arrived at concise, believable opinions.

“Real World” Useability

After months spent listening very, very carefully, we concluded that each group of users wanted something that transformed the “resource” into a “tool”.

Simplicity of Interface

“Whistles and Bells” may be wonderful on childrens’ software for games, but much of the time in multi-media educational settings, they are counter-productive and confusing. As the Dean of the MIT Architecture School once said, a “really good design” is so simple it doesn’t look “designed”. The PLANTAMERICA response is a WindowsTM compatible, proprietary software created by partners Artificial Intelligence Associates in Athens, Georgia. Professionals beta-testing the program, written in Visual Logic (and supported by Microsoft Laboratories for the Windows 95 platform), have been effusive in their praise for it’s “user-friendliness”.

Quality, not Spreadsheets, show the way:

Too many people have tried to figure out how to make a business out of all this rather than how to make a resource out of it.

PLANTAMERICA is a New York Limited Liability Company with four operating divisions: “The Distinguished Authors Series of CD-ROM’s”, “The Educated Gardener Series of CD-ROM’s” “The Learning Network”, and “The Garden Center Series”. Offices and full-time design, scanning, fufillment and support services are maintained in Locust Valley, New York. Trademark and intellectual property rights protection has been granted worldwide.

MICHAEL A. DIRR, PLANTAMERICA’s Chairman, has had a lifelong passion for Horticulture which has influenced a generation of students, gardeners, and plantspeople. After holding two Fellowships at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and serving as Director of the University of Georgia Botanical Garden, Dr. Dirr returned to a career of writing, lecturing, travelling and full-time professorship at the University of Georgia. He has written over 300 scientific and popular publications and authored or co-authored five books. His Manual of Woody Plants, 4th Edition, is the most widely adopted teaching and reference text in the country and has sold over 150,000 copies. In addition to numerous awards he has received, the greatest testament to his contribution may well be his numerous students who permeate academia and industry.

Who else would have 92,000 slides of plants in his basement ?

RICHARD C. WEBEL, PLANTAMERICA’s President, is the Managing Partner of Innocenti & Webel – Landscape Architects & Architects. Founded in 1931, the firm is responsible for commissions that include designs at: New York’s Metropolitan Museum & Battery Park City, the Mall, the National Zoo & Blair House in Washington DC, the Greenbriar and Rockresorts Hotels, Keeneland Racecourse, Furman University & the University of South Carolina. Residential commissions cover more than 24 states. The firm has won almost every major award from the American Association of Nurserymen, the ASLA and the Garden Club of America. In recognition of this, the Harvard University Gradute School of Design has commissioned a major exhibition and a book detailing the firm’s work. Both are scheduled for the Fall of 1996.

Webel’s own designs include: the BMW North American Assembly Plant, the lobbies at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, and the Milliken Headquarters & manufacturing facilities throughout the Southeast. In addition, he is President of the Webel Fund, one of the major supporters of graduate education in Landscape Architecture.

Webel claims he never really “loved” plants until he started working with Dr. Dirr.