The retailers who participated in the Retailers’ Choice Awards during Cultivate’19 spotted quite a few. I’ve shown you a few winners in the last two Buzz editions, but let’s finish off the list this week with the rest.

Illicium parviflorum BananAppeal from Bailey Nurseries. Look at the golden foliage color on this specimen! Foliage is slightly anise-scented and it stays small in stature. And it’s deer resistant! Zones 7 to 9.

Petunia Midnight Gold from Ball FloraPlant. This novelty color—deep crimson/black center with a lemon border—gives off a ton of double flowers. Branches great, so give it a try in a basket.

Senecio candicans Senaw Angel Wings from Concept Plants. Large, silvery white, velvety leaves make a bold backdrop for any plants you put in front of it. A frost-tender perennial, it reaches about 10- to 16-in. high and wide.

Chrysanthemum Rainbow Circus from Dümmen Orange. This bicolor pot mum recalls the fun of the circus with its red and yellow single-flowered blooms. I’d pair it with dark colors for fall.

Ficinia truncata Ice Crystal from Flamingo Holland. Also known as Frosty Sedge, it’s an evergreen grass-like perennial with membranous white margins along its leaves, giving it that frosty look. A foot tall or shorter.

Under the Sea Coleus Pink Tuna and Red Snapper from Hort Couture Plants. The Under the Sea line is one of the most successful coleus lines out there and it has two new stunners this year. Both have a dark crimson center, with Pink Tuna (first below) having lavender-to-pink margins and Red Snapper (second below) with a bright cherry red margin.

Jack Frost Japanese maple hybrids from Iseli Nursery. This is a new line of small- to medium-sized landscape trees combining A. pseudosieboldianum’s hardiness with A. palmatum’s very cool leaf and branching structure. Includes three varieties that are hardy down to Zone 4.

Seaside Serenade Newport Hydrangea from Monrovia. Newport joins an already award-winning line of hydrangeas from Monrovia. The judges loved the deep color tones of this rebloomer.

Iris versicolor Purple Flame from North Creek Nurseries. Iris with purple foliage? It exists! Sure, the flower is nice, but it's the eggplant-purple foliage that emerges in March is the real beauty. Nice to have some interesting color before the flowers come!

Moving on to the next big show on the calendar, the IGC Show takes place next week, August 13-16 to be exact. I won't be attending this year, but my Chicago-based colleagues will be, plus Clevelander Jennifer Polanz (and you can catch Green Profit columnist Amanda Thomsen there, too, I'm pretty sure).

Just a few reminders:

It’s moved to Lakeside | McCormick. Do not proceed toward Navy Pier and expect to see the show or even a shuttle to where you’re supposed to be heading. Make the appropriate travel plans, my friends.

New Vendor Zone. It’s bigger by at least 25%, thanks to being at the new venue. There are 64 new vendors, in fact. The New Vendor Zone will be right off the main show floor, so no more trying to find your way through hallways and such to find the new stuff.

New Product and New Plant Zones. These areas will be bigger, too. In town for just a day? Need to see all of the vendors’ latest and greatest stuff? They’ll be located in one convenient spot.

Thursday’s Keynote. It’ll be a radio talk show host named Mark Belling and his presentation is “Cracking the Millennial Code: A Look at the Generation Who at Times Makes Us Laugh … And Tear Our Hair Out.” He’ll give his insight into how to sell to the generation that doesn’t want to be sold to. Catch the conversation at 9:00 a.m. on the IGC Show Center Stage located at the show entrance.

Wednesday’s concert. It’s Starship! I bet I know what song just popped into your head.

Don’t forget to register because a bunch of these events are free if you do so. Register at www.IGCShow.com/register.  

Are you perhaps a yoga teacher AND a green industry professional? If so, garden center consultant and IGC Show headlining educator Judy Sharpton could use your help! She's looking for someone to lead a five- to 10-minute yoga/meditation session in the Retail Lab area in an effort to encourage retailers to bring retreat-style events into the garden center. She’d need your help on Wednesday afternoon.

If this sounds like you, give Judy Sharpton a shout at Judy@GrowingPlaces.com.  

I think Judy is onto something with the yoga/health/wellness retreat space. The folks at the Farwest Show (August 21-23 in Portland, Oregon) are seeing that as a trend, too. They’ll have an AmericanHort-sponsored exhibit that features outdoor spaces that landscape designers and garden center staff are creating for customers. These spaces become refuges, if you will, for their owners when they want to relax, meditate or read. These retreat/refuge spaces are part of the Growing Trends Showcase.

Some other Farwest events you won’t want to miss are the Solution Center mini-session for both IGC owners/employees and greenhouse growers. The talks are designed to cover issues that are top of mind to folks like you—human resources, marketing, biocontrols, plant trends, social media stuff and more. The sessions will also give your feet a much-needed break from walking the show floor! So head over to the Solution Center schedule HERE and schedule in your break for the day while participating in a conversation that you’ll benefit from.  

Last winter I told you about Willoway Nurseries’ community outreach experience with their local library. They'd donated a potted Alberta spruce tree that they decorated in a “Plants Do That” theme. Well, that same library invited them back to present a children’s program, and by Cathy Kowalczyk’s account, their program was a hit. Here’s a rundown of what they did.

The youth program theme at the library for this summer was “A Universe of Stories.” With all the activities and programs focused on our planet and outer space-related topics, the Willoway Team presented “Planting the Sun.” In two separate one-hour sessions, we shared our knowledge and love of plants with 52 youth, ages 7 to 12.

We shared a video that was featured on scholastic.com called “Plant Power.” This colorful, animated video is packed with pertinent information about plants and how important plants are to everyone in our world. After the video, we offered a Q&A session and everyone who raised their hand with a question or answer received a packet of flower or vegetable seeds. The kids asked some amazing questions about plants and were engaged in the whole process.

We brought a variety of plant seeds to show them and explained the process of how seeds are formed and what's involved in that seed becoming a new plant. We also provided pots filled with soil, sunflower seeds and a complete care sheet for each participant. We showed them how to plant the seeds and reviewed the care sheet to maximize their success rate with their sunflower plant. Thus, the title of our program, “Planting the Sun.”

Prior to our program, we staged out sowing sunflower seeds each week and showed the kids what their sunflower should look like between the third day after sowing when the seed sprouted, through six weeks after sowing when the plant had developed a flower bud. This made them understand what they should see in the upcoming weeks as their plant develops.

At the end of the program we discussed careers in horticulture and showed a video from the BLOOM! website about different job opportunities in the green industry.

The kids were interested in everything we had to say about plants, were so excited about their sunflower plants, and were eager to go home and plant their packet of seeds. We developed a list of activities for the kids to further their understanding and appreciation of plants and also gave them copies of the PLANTS DO THAT publications (thank you National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture—these are fabulous publications). Our hopes are that we made an impact on 52 kids’ lives and they'll continue to develop a passion for plants and spread the word to many more people.

It was a great way for our company to support our community, get youth involved and interested in plants and to also share career opportunities in the green industry. We give credit to the Seed Your Future, BLOOM, Scholastic and NICH organizations for materials and inspiration for our company to venture out into the community to spread the word about plants and career opportunities. The great news is we've been invited back to the library to do a similar summer program next year!

What community outreach project has your organization worked on this season? Tell me about it at ewells@ballpublishing.com.  

I included this in yesterday’s Tropical Topics e-newsletter, but it bears repeating—and with a retail spin! Don’t forget, folks, that you have a great opportunity to cash in on the intense interest in houseplants during the upcoming National Indoor Plant Week the third week in September (15-21). Hopefully, you have some plans to hawk your houseplants, promote the heck out of some books or just generally encourage the consumption and use of plants indoors.

Need an idea? Here are several:

• Stock, promote and do giveaways of some of the latest houseplant-specific books. There’s Leslie Halleck’s “Plant Parenting” and “Gardening Under Lights,” which you can order from Workman. (Get the details on the books HERE.) Leslie’s gonna go all out on houseplant promos via social media that week, so get in on that.
• Lisa Eldred Steinkopf, author of "Houseplants" and "Grow In the Dark," will also be giving away copies of her book and will blog post about houseplants. Stock her book so you can do that, too! You can order a signed copy via her website: thehouseplantguru.com.
• I have a cute little book called “Crazy Plant Lady” by an author I haven’t met (Isabel Serna). The press release says this “unbeleafable” book is “The perfect plant gift for the new generation of self-proclaimed crazy plant ladies.” It’s another Workman publication.
• Get in on the Collegiate Plant Initiative’s Plant Drop. Peace Tree Farm is doing that at Cornell. They’ll be giving away a thousand coveted houseplants. Or maybe connect with your local school on your own. Chances are the students will find you for more.

If you have additional ideas for promoting National Indoor Plant Week, let me know about it so I can share it in the next Buzz, or reach out to me about it so I can promote it to the industry on Facebook.

Is summer over? Over the last two weeks, I've seen a pallet of Halloween candy arrive at Walgreen’s, watched clerks at Pier 1 do the summer-to-fall switch out, had a request for pumpkin-flavored kombucha and heard a SiriusXM DJ wish everyone a happy end to the summer.

There are plenty of folks just like me who want to enjoy every last minute of this season. What are you doing to help them squeeze every last drop of sun out of summer that they can?

My Osa is enjoying as much summer fun on the beach as a dog possibly can.