A partnership in plants

Bill and Hillary Clinton. Marie and Pierre Curie. Bill and Melinda Gates. If you take a good look through any industry in just about any part of the world, you’ll find business partners that just so happen to also be husband and wife teams. While some may insist that it’s never good to mix business and family, there have been many couples, especially in the horticulture industry, who have proved this adage wrong.

We’re featuring one of these horticultural power couples on the cover this month, Jill and John Hoffman of Hoffman’s Nursery in Rougemont, N.C. We spoke with this couple and two others, Lloyd and Candy Traven of Peace Tree Farm in Kintnersville, Penn. and Andrea and Richard Cleaver of Culberson Greenhouses in Mayflower, Ark., for this month’s cover story to find out what makes them tick, how they handle balancing the day-to-day stresses of marriage and running a business and why it’s been the right move for them.

Their paths to horticulture may not have been the same, but the strength and support that they find in each other is something that all of these couples have in common. “I realize that I could not do this, I never would have been successful if [Candy] hadn’t been there,” Lloyd Traven says. “I talk about her as my muse, my inspiration for this… [And] it’s a great life lesson to have somebody who doesn’t just talk about it, but does it.”

After you finish reading the stories behind these incredible couples, we’ve got more in store for you to help you kick your production into high gear in 2016. Get a sneak peek at new blue hibiscus varieties coming down the pipeline in upcoming years on page 22, and deepen your pest control knowledge in our special section starting on page 27. Need a primer on PGRs? Turn to page 40 for a guide by Chris Currey, assistant professor of horticulture at Iowa State University. Watch for more articles from Chris in both Greenhouse Management and Produce Grower this year. Trying to figure out if you should mechanize or if it’s worth your investment to add supplemental lighting to your greenhouse? Check out the articles on pages 44 and 46, respectively.

Whatever your New Year’s resolutions or 2016 goals are, Greenhouse Management is here to support you and your business. Is there a topic you’d like us to cover this year that we haven’t talked about in a while? Have a problem that we can help you solve? Drop me a line at kvarga@gie.net and let me know.

Happy New Year!

Karen E. Varga, Editor

kvarga@gie.net

216-393-0290 | Twitter: @Karen_GIE