Top stories from Greenhouse Management’s website

AAS announces 2021 Landscape Design Challenge winners

All-America Selections’ 2021 Landscape Design Challenge theme was Diversity in the Garden, inspiring the AAS Display Gardens with a platform to create their own diverse garden using the resources they choose to represent the theme.

For the challenge, AAS provides the gardens with recent AAS Winner seeds and plants. The gardens have the option to incorporate older AAS Winners in their design to illustrate the theme. Gardens are encouraged to generate publicity and hold events to share the story of All-America Selections and AAS Winners.

Gardens are divided into three categories based on the number of visitors per year:

Category I: fewer than 10,000 visitors per year
Category II: 10,001 – 100,000 visitors per year
Category III: Over 100,000 visitors per year

Building better begonias

Begonias are among the top five most popular plants found in flowerbeds, and Florida leads the way in production with sales valuing $11.8+ million, according to the USDA. But heat waves and drought have hurt begonia production in the southeast and many varieties cannot withstand the high heat and humidity Florida summers bring.

The University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences shared news of the research findings of scientist Alfred Huo’s mission to find a begonia that can withstand the pressures of a changing climate, thanks to a joint grant of $175,000 from USDA Agricultural Marketing Service and Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Proven Winners and The Plant Company partner to offer unique houseplants

The Plant Company, a houseplant supplier based in Stuarts Draft, Virginia, has joined with PW to market houseplant varieties under the Proven Winners brand. The goal of this new partnership is to help retailers increase sales and profits by selling larger quantities of superior houseplants.

“The main goal for starting The Plant Company was to supply our customers with the best quality indoor house plants available and supply those consistently year-round,” says Jason vanWingerden, CEO of The Plant Company. “When the opportunity arose to partner with Proven Winners, we quickly realized the similarities in beliefs for innovative genetics and consumer success.”