I promised to keep you apprised of what plants and products took home a Retailers’ Choice Award from Cultivate’19. As you may or may not know, those awards are a pretty high honor, because these awards recognize plants and products that your fellow retailers are just dying to sell.

ForemostCo, a grower and distributor of some really cool tropicals, took home a Retailers’ Choice Award for their line of four pretty cool crotons. The genetics come from Thailand (hence the name) and give these crotons much larger and incredibly vibrant leaves and some very non-croton-like forms.

Thai Dye Twisted

Thai Dye Gnarly

Thai Dye To The Max

Thai Dye Tubular

These check all the boxes for what interests houseplant and tropical plant collectors: cool colors, not-ordinary shapes and new, new, new. Find them and stock them is what I’m suggesting.  

Our Canadian friends over at A.M.A. Horticulture have been attending and exhibiting at Cultivate/Short Course for more than 25 years. This year, they brought along one of their newest employees, Alex Frew, so she could do what Cultivate allows hort industry members to do best: learn and network, and then bring it all back so they can share with the rest of the team.

That is all very well and good, and lots of companies bring newbies along, but here’s what I like about what A.M.A. did—they followed up with Alex and asked her about her experience. I’m sure they are sharing it company-wide, but by sending me Alex’s responses, they’re both spreading her experiences nationwide and giving you the idea of doing the same post-event debriefing with your team.

Here are some responses Alex shared with her A.M.A. team:

Q. What stood out for you at Cultivate’19?

A. I am constantly amazed by the innovation and industriousness of growers. If you’re outside the industry, you might think there’s only one way to grow a tree, for example. In reality, growers are trying all kinds of new things to perfect the craft. At the show, you can see all these different techniques in one room and that’s really inspiring. Some things that really stood out were the rows and rows of new varieties and the new robotics technologies coming onto the market—especially the latest robotic sticking machines! As someone who loves science, I’m excited to see what we can do with automation and robotics.

Q. In your opinion, what is the advantage of attending a show like this?

A. It’s an important opportunity to see what’s up and coming in virtually every sub-sector of the horticulture industry: trees, fruit, flowers, hydroponics, propagation—you name it. For me personally, it was a good chance to find out where the industry is headed and where the hot markets are going to be.

I think the other big advantage is networking. It’s great to see our customers and spend time learning about what they’re growing, what they need and what challenges they’re facing. The phone and photos have their limitations, so it’s great to have these discussions face to face. And as a new team member, it was really helpful to finally put faces to names!

Q. Coming away from the show, what advice would you give to other young horticulture professionals?

A. Don’t be afraid to share your ideas because they could help your organization move in new directions or attract new audiences. For example, during the show we met with a customer whose daughter is coming into the family business. She was full of exciting ideas to attract new people to their garden center—a flower wall, a café—and a lot of her inspiration was coming from things she had seen on Instagram or Pinterest. My advice is to take yourself seriously as someone who can contribute to cultivating the future of horticulture, because you can!  

Speaking of Canadians, the second annual New Blooms for Canadian Nurseries and Retailers took place last Thursday, July 18, at Deb’s Greenhouse in Morinville, Alberta. The event, which focuses on new plant varieties, market trends and growing info, had more than 75 attendees covering just about every sector of the industry. They enjoyed a whole bunch of speakers, too, from both breeding companies and extension.

It’s like a mini and stationary California Spring Trials, too, since attendees had the opportunity to check out trials of 300 or more plants grown in local Edmonton conditions. How these plants grow locally is so very important! Unlike Spring Trials, folks got to vote on their favorite overall variety, and coming in tops was the SunStanding Jazzy series from Dümmen Orange (pictured below), the variegated version of their SunStanding hybrid impatiens. Other faves of the day were Main Street Beale Street Coleus (also from Dümmen Orange) and the Tall, Dark and Handsome geraniums from PlantHaven International.

It’s happening again next year, too! Put the third annual New Blooms event on your calendar for July 16, 2020. 

The fact that the IGC Show is moving to a new venue—Lakeside|McCormick—has given them an opportunity the show organizers haven’t really had in the event’s 10-plus years of existence. They have new space and spatial configurations to work with to bring attendees fresh and different programming. It’s like moving into a new home and having the rooms and garage in completely different spots!

What show organizers have decided to do with some of the space is create the IGC Retail Lab, a 3,500 sq. ft. space to hold the retail symposium and interactive design forum. They'll be collaborating with garden center makeover maven Judy Sharpton. In this IGC Retail Lab, Judy and others will help IGCers learn to incorporate modern modular gathering spaces that sell based on consumer demand in four areas. Those are: 

• ReWild, or bringing the wild back into the backyard garden
• ReTurn, or how the garden can recall the nostalgia of simpler times
• ReJuvenate, or how IGCs and their products help relax tech-stressed customers
• ReTreat, or how IGCs can help gardens become a place of solitude and retreat

“The purpose is not to create just fun places where somebody can come and have a wedding,” Judy said in a press release, “but to create a way to actually sell product in these gathering spaces by communicating the trends.” This area will host TED Talk-style discussions and merchandising demonstrations and is free and open to all attendees. Judy will also be demonstrating how these four trends can be merchandized. Don’t dare miss that opportunity—to not only watch her in action, but to also ask the expert some questions!

Register for the August 13-15 IGC Show at www.IGCShow.com/register.  

Are you a grower-retailer? Good! Then the good folks at Ball Publishing have arranged for another super-informative webinar—free of charge for you—that’ll help you up your growing game. This one is “Growers Talk HydraFiber.” What makes this HydraFiber webinar different from the other several webinars BP has offered with the manufacturer (Profile Products) over the last few years? Because the growers actually using the product are the ones discussing it! What it is, the pros, the cons, how it differs from other growing media and how it really works IRL (in real life, for those who need a translation).

The growers dishing on the product will be:

• Scott Barnitz of Bob’s Market in Mason, West Virginia (annuals)
• Chad Cagle of Colorpoint, Paris, Kentucky (hemp)
• Steve Garvey, Dallas Johnson Greenhouses, Council Bluffs, Iowa (annuals)

These folks will be joined by one of Profile Products’s technical guys, Daniel Norden, who will share some examples and be around to answer any of your technical questions.

Join the group for this frank discussion and learn something about what could become your new growing media.

Tuesday, July 30, at 1 p.m. Eastern/12 Central. Register for the webinar at www.growertalks.com/webinars.  

Pam Danziger of Unity Marketing, a favorite luxury retail market researcher of mine, needs a little help. She’s writing a piece for Forbes.com about Vera Bradley and is interested in interviewing folks who stock the brand in their stores. She’d like to get a “shop floor perspective,” she says, and wants to know how it performs, your experiences with the brand, etc.

Is that you? And do you want to be quoted in Forbes? Or just help out a person with information you may have? Then reach out to Pam at pam@unitymarketingonline.com or call her at 717-336-1600.

I spent this last weekend on a self-guided open artist studio tour in the Tiverton/Little Compton area of Rhode Island. Our tiniest state has some of the grandest countryside, with each turn around a corner presenting some sort of breathtaking vista.

Anyway, I came away from the tour with three observations:

• Many of the best personal art studios (i.e. not formal gallery spaces) had gorgeous flower gardens.
• There’s no tax on the sale of art in the Ocean State. I wonder if that helps out the artists to any substantial degree.
• Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder. And if you open your eyes wide enough, it’s all beautiful.  

By the way, that farm pictured above is for sale for cool $3 million. Anyone wanna invest?