Winter is the time all you folks from cold states hold your statewide nursery and landscape shows. I suspect it’s to huddle together for collective warmth. Inevitably I’m called upon to leave our balmy 70-degree January weather here in Texas and head north to speak at a few such shows. This winter I hit the North Carolina Green and Growin’ trade show and The Western show in Kansas City. Luckily, I made my escape before the polar vortex moved in.

In general, I’d say that the common thread I observed running through the shows was that business owners and employees were looking to push a bit outside of their comfort zone — out of necessity. What I mean by that is, we all know we grow good plants. It’s the how we grow our businesses that is getting more challenging, forcing attendees to be more open-minded about new strategies and tactics.

Staffing struggles

I gave talks on this topic at both shows, as I have many others over the past year, and it’s always a room-filler. Staffing is a hot button for most businesses in the industry, and the audiences are always made up of a full cross section of industry segments.

Sarah Bibens, president of Woody Bibens & Associates, and executive director for The Western Nursery & Landscape Association, agrees. “From a business perspective, trucking, labor and weather continue to be what keeps folks awake at night. The business side of running a horticulture company is more challenging than the plant side for plenty of companies,” she said.

Hannah Singleton, manager of professional development for the North Carolina Nursery & Landscape Association, echoed that sentiment. “This year at NCNLA’s Green and Growin’ 2019 the most popular topics seemed to be labor — where to find it and how to keep it — [and] sustainable practices,” Singleton says.

A major staffing frustration expressed to me by attendees, which is often the case, is the ongoing disconnect between older business owners and managers, and younger people coming into the industry. The generational disconnect still seems to cause a great deal of discomfort.

New isn’t new anymore

New plants get a lot of attention from within the industry, and this year’s winter shows were no exception. That said, there were audible rumblings among attendees at these shows that purpose is gaining priority against pretty. Just being new isn’t good enough anymore. Growers, retailers and landscapers alike are narrowing their focus toward plants that offer more sustainable and Earth-friendly characteristics. There was also a bigger interest specifically on native plants.

“New plant introductions continue to be one of the driving forces in the industry,” Bibens says. “However, I’m seeing real interest in identifying those new plants that are truly better or different than their predecessors — that bring new or improved disease resistance, are non-invasive, have improved cold hardiness, offer benefit for birds, pollinators and other wildlife, and the like.” Singleton also noted there was an increased interest in programming at the Green and Growin’ show on protecting pollinators.

I had the pleasure of being invited to the Native Plant Geeks Gathering while at The Western show, a networking event held in conjunction with the Kansas City Native Plant Initiative. I met many attendees, both young in the industry and experienced, actively seeking new strategies for incorporating natives into urban landscape design. “There is a real recognition that plants that help consumers to be good stewards of the environment is an increasingly important priority in plant selection — in addition to beauty, low maintenance and garden performance,” Bibens says.

Jennifer Schamber, general manager at Greenscape Gardens, and current president of The Western Nursery & Landscape Association, sees a scale-tip in the direction of a greater understanding of what plants and landscapes can do for our communities.

“There’s a lot of excitement stemming from new research about the benefits of the products and services of our industry,” Schamber says. “There’s an overall sense of empowerment as we know we are collectively creating the next generation of horticulture which focuses less on the ornamental and more on the function.”

Niche networking

Speaking of networking, there was a focus on face-to-face time between industry members at the recent shows I attended. Networking is high on the priority list of many younger employees, who are seeking meaningful connections and mentorship. Schamber, who was instrumental in organizing the native plant networking event, reinforces the importance of creating more opportunities for people to meet face-to-face. “This is especially true for students coming into our industry,” she says. “We acknowledge the power of social media but having drinks and dinner with colleagues can spark amazing conversations that can lead us to our next great idea.”

Niche growing

The number of attendees who attend my talks on indoor growing, which I typically gear toward garden center retailers, is growing. Given this is a topic much of the mainstream horticulture industry perceives to be very niche, those looking to the future are showing up. At the North Carolina Green & Growin’ show, a good percentage of the attendees were landscapers and designers. These adventurous folks know that interiorscaping and living installations are making a comeback and they were looking to create new business opportunities indoors.

Overall, the vibes were positive for the spring 2019 season. Attendees seemed energized and eager to learn and a bit more open-minded than usual about new ideas. Willing to get out of your comfort zone is always the best way to learn.

Leslie (CPH) owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, business and marketing strategy, product development and branding, and content creation for green industry companies. lesliehalleck.com

Biennials, winter annuals and some perennials require surviving the winter to set flower. Among these plants that need vernalization, as it is called, many of them set flower after experiencing cold temperatures. In the 1930s, scientists discovered that some other plants flower because they live through short days.

Among the plants with this short-day requirement is Brachypodium distachyon. The grass is native to warm Mediterranean locations where sensing winter through short days is a beneficial adaptation, says Dr. Richard Amasino, Carlos O. Miller Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You might not get a year where it gets that cold, but the days are always short in winter,” he says.

By analyzing Brachypodium, Amasino and other scientists found genes that are associated with this short-day requirement for vernalization. Their research was published in the eLife paper “A florigen paralog is required for short-day vernalization in a pooid grass."

What did the researchers find?

While some natural varieties of Brachypodium need short days to flower, others don’t, Amasino says. This fact helped the scientists be able to look at the varieties that do have genes that require short days to cause flowering, because by looking at some plants with the genes and others without, they could use molecular techniques to find the genes.

When scientists make modern discoveries through genetics, such as when they find diseases, media often announce that a single gene — proverbially “the gene” — has been discovered for that disease. Amasino explains that this type of messaging can be misleading.

“When we talk about a single gene causing something, we’re usually talking about the defect, not the normal operation,” Amasino says. “We’ve found the single-gene defect that leads to loss of short days to cause vernalization. But the system that causes short days to cause vernalization itself — it’s going to be many genes doing many important biochemical things.”

What happened in nature?

Some native plants vernalize so they don’t have to compete with summer-growing plants, Amasino says. Brachypodium likely developed the short-day response specifically to better recognize winter in the Mediterranean.

“If you’re in a Mediterranean climate, short days are a really good, reliable indicator of winter because you’re in a fairly mild climate, it might not always get that cold, but the days always get short,” Amasino says. But imagine a plant in, say, Ohio, or here [in Wisconsin]. It might be buried under snow all winter, so sensing cold is a more reliable indicator of winter if you’re up here.”

Then there’s the question of how other natural varieties of Brachypodium lost the short-day requirement. Many genetic mutations are random, Amasino says. For instance, dogs and cats make their own vitamin C, but humans have lost that ability. However, he says, the loss of short days in Brachypodium doesn’t seem as if it was so up to chance.

Short days may have caused some Brachypodium to flower too early, and a late freeze could have damaged them, Amasino says. Based on looking at how Brachypodium genes spread, he and his colleagues think some varieties of the plant lost the short-day requirement so they could grow north of the Mediterranean, where there are harsher winters.

Amasino and the other scientists plan to look for more genes to understand the process of how short-day vernalization occurs.

“In years past, we actually have learned how members of the cabbage family, biochemically, undergo vernalization. A lot of my lab’s effort over the years has been discovering many of the details of how cabbage vernalization works,” Amasino says. “It’s different in the grasses — it’s a different system — and this is just the first of a lot of discoveries, I hope, that will give more and more detail of how it works.”

I’ve always been a voracious reader who enjoys getting lost in a good book, especially during frigid Ohio winters. As a teen, I enjoyed Chilean author Isabel Allende’s Spanish-language young adult books. When the opportunity arose to see her speak at the local library, I jumped at the chance. With a copy of one of my favorite Allende books in hand, I sat spellbound as she took the stage and wove a captivating narrative about her life, struggles and inspiration. I jotted notes in the margins of the program pamphlet, and still recall many of the things she said.

Afterward, I eagerly awaited my chance to meet her and get my book signed. Our meeting was brief, but full of meaning. Knowing the person behind the books made them seem more alive, and she is still one of my favorite authors today.

In-person interactions are greatly undervalued in today’s society, as it’s easier to send a text or email or comment on Instagram rather than visit someone in person. As editors, our face-to-face meetings with greenhouse growers like you may be limited to trade shows, conferences and the all-too-infrequent greenhouse visit.

Recently, I had the opportunity to support sister publication Garden Center in its inaugural Garden Center Executive Summit in downtown Denver. Reminiscent of the networking and business management-focused conferences of times past, the Executive Summit offered an intimate setting in which both fellow garden centers and experts from outside of the industry could connect and share their knowledge.

And connect, they did. As a “fly on the wall,” I floated in and out of rooms as needed, and was able to observe and interact throughout. I spoke with a few attendees who said that they knew fewer than half of the people in the room at the beginning. By the end of the conference, they had cultivated many new relationships and business contacts, and their conversations extended well past the scheduled sessions. As an added bonus, I met some of the folks I interviewed over the phone back in my Garden Center editorial days years ago, and reconnected with others. What a treat!

This month, I challenge you to turn one phone or email interaction into an opportunity to interact face to face with a colleague or client, whether it’s someone new or a trusted friend. The benefits far outweigh the extra effort.

Karen E. Varga, Editor
kvarga@gie.net
216-393-0290 | Twitter: @Karen_GIE

The new Campanella Campanula series from PanAmerican Seed fits very easily into the latest home trend of placing living color in the spaces we spend the most time — indoors! Campanella has large, bell-shaped blooms that fill pots better with more flowers. The bells are charming and easy to care for, making it great for a plant novice. Campanella is also vigorous, meaning it is suitable for larger pots for bigger impact. Here are a few growing guidelines to produce a quality crop of this on-trend flower.

For more: panamseed.com