Succulent Drop

Ellen C. Wells

Proven Winners is teaming up with the Collegiate Plant Initiative (CPI) for the second year to provide 6,000 pots of Lemon Coral Sedum—its Annual of the Year—as giveaways for CPI’s Plant Drops. CPI, a student-run organization founded at the University of Florida, will be “dropping” (i.e., distributing) plants on six college campuses this year. In fact, they dropped plants in April at North Carolina State University, Clemson University and the University of Georgia (UGA). Three more plant drops will take place the last week of September.

CPI’s goal is to connect college kids with plants and opportunities in the horticulture industry. Plant drops are a good way of going about that because who doesn’t like free stuff? And Lemon Coral is a great plant to give away to potentially poor plant keepers, as it survives most any circumstance (I know, I did my best to kill mine and yet it survived the summer in my tree well). And boy, do they go quickly. One thousand plants were given away on one campus last year in just 2½ minutes. (They must have thought it was pizza!) Plants are given away with care instructions to help students grow them successfully.

According to a press release on the subject, Proven Winners backs CPI because the company really appreciates CPI’s efforts to connect students of all academic backgrounds through the power of plants. “By giving free plants to students studying accounting, business, law, environmental studies, chemistry, art and more, they are exposing them to the world of plants,” the release states.

Proven Winners also shows its support of young scholars by distributing $25,000 annually in scholarships to students in universities, community colleges and vocational schools.

CPI is doing some great work to create more plant awareness among our future customers. Find out more about the Initiative at www.collegiateplantinitiative.org.

Matthew Chappell, professor at UGA and editor of our Nursery & Landscape Insider newsletter, was there when CPI was giving away plants at his campus. He took a video and posted it to his Instagram, showing how excited the students were to get their free plants: https://tinyurl.com/UGAplantdrop. GP