I am swamped with summer show winners this week. We’ll start with some winners at the recent Farwest Show in Portland, Oregon. Specifically, let’s run through the winners of the Farwest edition of The Garden Center Group’s Retailers’ Choice Awards, where retailers like you walk the show floor looking for and reporting back on items they’d love to sell. Farwest is a nursery-focused show, so you’ll see a bunch of fun trees among the winners. But let’s start with a couple of hard goods and just darn hardy plants.

Garden Like a Girl branded gloves and apparel. A husband and wife team are designing garden gloves and apparel under the Garden Like a Girl brand. The gloves are designed with reinforced fingertips, and the shirts and other apparel are made from recycled plastic bottles. With more than 70% of garden center customers being women, this brand should hit its mark. www.gardenlikeagirl.com

RediRoot BREATHE. This planter is made from 100% recycled materials and provides a variety of benefits: reduced transplant shock, increased root zone airflow and better drainage, to name a few. Inside the planter there is a grow bag fabric liner that holds soil and aids air circulation and drainage. RediRoot BREATHE is available in several colors. www.rediroot.com

ColorBlaze Wicked Witch coleus. A Proven Winners variety, this one features deep burgundy to chocolate foliage with ruffled edges outlined in chartreuse. Sun, shade, landscapes, containers—it performs well anywhere. It’s late to bloom, so its leaves keep looking fresh.

Sedum takesimense Atlantis. A show winner times two! Atlantis also won at the Chelsea Flower Show earlier this year. This variegated sedum has small, dark green serrated leaves with wide, creamy yellow margins, which tinge pink with cooler temps. Tuck into rock or container gardens. Full sun and just 4-6 inches tall. 

Metasequoia glyptostroboides Dawn Redwood North Light. Ah, my favorite deciduous conifer—in dwarf form! North Light forms a round ball with minimal pruning. It has irregular creamy-white markings over fresh green needles. It’s a full sun, slow grower reaching a mature height and spread of just 3 feet! A redwood for the rest of us, I’d say. www.bizonnursery.com

Ginkgo biloba Mariken. Another dwarf of a typical giant, Mariken also has much smaller leaves. Summer foliage is soft green turning yellow gold in fall. And the male does not produce messy fruit! Tops off at 2-3 feet tall. www.bountifulfarms.com

Cercis canadensis Flame Thrower. Introduced by Denny Werner, this redbud has pink blooms followed by beautiful deep burgundy foliage, which eventually turns bright yellow and green with age. They say each branch contains four to five different foliage colors at once. Pretty! Reaches 15-20 feet tall. www.starrosesandplants.com/

I'll be back next week with a few more winners of various awards from Farwest. Stay tuned!

The IGC Show, held earlier this month in Chicago, also had some winning plants and products. In IGC’s case, these winners are voted on as the best plants and products of the show by the attendees. New and veteran exhibitors alike could submit items for consideration, and it’s nice to see that new and old both brought home some ribbons.

For the New Product Zone, taking the first place award was the Complete Grow Kits from A Pot for Pot. Jen Polanz mentioned this company in her wrap-up report in buZZ! last week. The kits include everything one would need to grow cannabis at home—except for the cannabis itself. This includes a living soil blend, container, saucer, beneficial bacteria, diatomaceous earth, coco brick, mycorrhizae, microbe food, leaf shine, a spray bottle and trimming scissors. Plus a discount coupon for purchasing cannabis seeds. That’s a lot! www.apotforpot.com

Second lace goes to Fir Needle Products from Bedrock Tree Farm. A tree farm by trade, the company makes these soy candles with real fir needles and natural essential and fragrance oils. The candles come in a number of different jar types, including votive styles, with wooden wicks. www.firneedleproducts.com

IGC Show had two winners in the New Plant Zone, too. First place goes to this fun tillandsia arrangement of Yellow Star, Large Capitata Maroon and Tropiflora from Russell’s Bromeliads. Why this combo of air plants? Because they provide what any good combination does—size, color and texture. You can order now, but also get your orders in now for spring. www.russellsairplants.com

Taking home the second place ribbon is the First Editions Iceberg Alley Sageleaf Willow from Bailey Nursery. It’s a small-format shrub with powdery silver foliage and silver catkined/red stamened blooms in spring. Hey, use those for spring décor as you would pussy willows! It looks like a fun plant to me. www.baileynurseries.com

As I write these bits about winning plants, I’m getting quite a few emails of even more winners! Also, I’m running out of steam for winners today. We’ll save those for next time.

When I write about tariffs in buZZ!, I’m typically thinking of them as they pertain to common IGC items such as pottery, plastics, home goods, tools and so on and so forth. Joe Roberts of ForemostCo, which is knee-deep in the foliage business, wrote in last week to basically say, “Hey, don’t forget that plant material is also coming in from China.” That is a very relevant point, Joe. Here’s what he had to say:

“I wanted to share some thoughts on how tariffs are about to have a real-world effect on us and our customers. There is still confusion as to what is in the September 1 [tariff] list and what has been moved to the December 15 list, but it is clear live plants are going to be affected. In our case, we will feel the tariffs in two ways:

1. We import plants from China, which we supply directly to our customers. Examples are bonsai, lucky bamboo, pachira. We will have a 10% increase in our FOB China cost, which translates to roughly 7% of our sales price once freight and margin are factored in. 
2. We import a significant amount of tissue culture which we grow on into liners at our Phoenix Foliage facility in Florida. These liners are then supplied to our customers for growing on. In this case, that 10% tariff translates into roughly 5% of the sale price of our liners.

As is the case with most growers, we do not have enough (any?!) “extra margin” allowing us to absorb this increase in COGS. We have no choice but to pass this cost on to our customers. Like everyone, we fight tooth and nail to keep our costs in check. It is a real shame that a cost that adds no value is being added to our customers’ products.

Thanks for this live plant take on impending tariffs, Joe. In response to tariffs, some people have said to me, “We can make XYZ here in the U.S. then.” I’m sure some of you have expertise in the yays and nays of making that happen. Who wants to WEIGH IN on that topic for me?  

The latest produce trends are leaning in the exotic direction. So says the Progressive Grocer Daily News, the folks keeping the pulse of the fresh grocers’ market. Avocados? Not so “specialty” anymore. Think jackfruit, with their conical spines and sweet flesh and edible seeds; the magenta-skinned and green-spiked dragon fruit, carrot-orange fleshed turmeric root and the spicy and addictive flavor of Hatch chiles.

What do exotic fruits and veggies have to do with you? Obviously, if you also have a produce market, consider adding one or two of these specialty items to your lineup. But I’m including this item because the ARTICLE relating these specialty items has a list of key takeaways that pertain not only to grocers but to garden centers, as well. And those takeaways, tweaked for horticultural purposes, are:

• Don’t dismiss unique and sometimes unusual-looking specialty and exotic plants as unsaleable; most of the time, sales will surprise you.
• Samplings, recipes and information sheets about exotic/new plants and uses of the constantly changing variety of specialty plants are highly recommended.
• Some specialty items are relatively higher-priced than the average plant, but don’t assume that customers won’t purchase these unique items, as many shoppers, especially Millennials, are in search of what’s new and different.

What plants do you believe are the “exotic fruits” of horticulture? Weigh in with your thoughts HERE.  

Labor Day is just a few days away, which means it's officially mum season. Mums are a popular crop for grower-retailers, so if you are growing them, consider using Ball Seed’s new Garden Mum Growth Tracking Tool. It’s an easy-to-use online tool: Just tell it when you want your mums ready by and how tall you want them, and it gives you a place to enter weekly plant growth. As you fill it in, it’ll tell you if you’re too short, too tall or on the mark—and how to adjust accordingly.

Ball Seed also has a new, very useful resource web page that lets you search garden mums by color, category, timing, etc. Find all of these tracking and resources tools at www.ballseed.com/gardenmums.  

To think about winter. Oh, it’s coming, my friends. I received my first winter-themed product press release this weekend. It’s for doormats with wintry themes from a company called Entryways. The three doormat sample photos they sent depict antlers, birch trees and moose. Fun designs, especially the birch!

But as you know, doormats aren’t worth the salt you wipe on them if they, well, can’t handle the job. And these apparently can, trapping ice and mud and general winter ickiness. The Antlers doormat is 18-in. x 30-in., ¾-in. thick and handwoven with coconut fiber. Both the Birch and Moose Lodge doormats are 17-in. x 28-in. and ½-in. thick, and made from coir. These have a PVC slip-resistant backing for safety. Wouldn’t want to slip! Visit www.entrywaysusa.com for more information.