A wide-eyed Todd Perkins elevated his voice to just below a shout and pointed to a row of 3-foot-tall spiny, green stems crowned with stark pink blooms roughly 50 yards away.
"Those are mine! I bred those!" said Perkins, an award-winning flower breeder at Gilroy's Syngenta Flowers company, located on Hecker Pass Highway. "And it's not as easy as it sounds."
The flowers are a unique breed of Cleome Sparkler Blush, whose beautiful, mad-scientist origins can be traced to Perkins' mind. Watching his prized plants and others sway softly in a cool August breeze was enough to make him giddy.
"I love this business," Perkins said. "I'm like a wind-up toy."
He wasn't alone in his excitement Wednesday afternoon, when approximately 20 judges from all over North America descended on Syngenta, formerly Goldsmith Seeds, Inc., to help pick this year's All-America Selections, referred to by several officials as the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" of the flower and plant world.
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