National Green Centre Day Two highlights

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – A steady stream of show-goers Monday helped push the total attendance for the second National Green Centre to just beyond the 2,200 mark, which represented a slight increase over the numbers of the inaugural event, held a year earlier in St. Louis.

Formerly known as “The Western,” the National Green Centre has been billed as “The Next Generation” trade event since it broadened to a national scope in 2011. And like the first event, the 2012 show/conference was marked by programs and products geared for the future.

“We’re very pleased that our attendance has increased,” National Green Centre Executive Director Sarah Woody Bibens said. “This seemed to be an enthusiastic group of attendees. The education sessions had excellent interaction. We’re hearing from people that they were challenged and inspired, and, of course, that’s what we are hoping for.”

Here are some highlights from the second, and final, day of the event:

Hot ticket: The panel discussion on “Horticulture in 2062: What the Industry Will Sell” had folks buzzing throughout the halls after the session. The panel included Steven I. Apfelbaum, chairman and owner of Applied Ecological Services; Greg Nook, executive vice president of JE Dunn Construction; Ted Spaid, co-founding principle at SWT Design, Matt Stueck of Suburban Lawn & Garden Inc.; Jason Walker, a consumer from Minneapolis; and Bill Calkins, independent garden center business manager at Ball Horticultural Co.

The discussion suggested that wherever you are the “hort food chain,” future success will be based on your ability to meet both customer needs and expectations, which tend to change rapidly. Flexible and versatile businesses will be the ones that flourish – and, thus, be around in 2062 to continue to be flexible and versatile.

Hot product: Garden center operators continued to frequent the Plantjotter booth for the second day in a row. Plantjotter is a dynamic web-based application that enables gardeners to create a personalized website to record everything they want about their gardening efforts.

It can be used to jot down notes to keep track of what’s working, what’s not and ideas for the future in the garden journal. It also can be used to record what you planted when and where as well as bloom times in your plant list, or to store photos with notes to remind you of your brilliant work in photo albums

For the initial launch of Plantjotter, the general garden calendar and the plant database are targeted to Northern gardeners. However, all of the features can be used by anyone no matter where you garden. Alternative calendars and an expanded plant database will be added in future enhancements.

The 2013 National Green Centre will return to St. Louis and is set for Jan. 6-7. Plans are for the show/conference to alternate between the Kansas City and St. Louis areas in the future.