Gardening Trends: Part I
Posted in Learning Experiences on February 4 2014, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education.
Winter is a wonderful time not only to peruse catalogs and feast our eyes on new introductions, but to spend the quieter moments searching out our favorite venues for congregating with like-minded people.
I have several conference and lecture series that I attend to liven up my mind and shake off the winter cold. Of them, one local favorite is the Metro Hort Group’s Plant-O-Rama, which takes place every year on the last Tuesday in January. Metro Hort is an association of horticultural professionals in the New York City tri-state area, and this annual conference is hosted every year in Brooklyn and made available to everyone at an affordable price.
This year the main speaker was David Culp, author and Vice President of Sales at the well-known Sunny Border Nursery in Kensington, Connecticut. Culp spoke on new directions being taken in horticulture, looking both backwards and forwards along the timeline of plantsmanship with an eye toward gardening trends. I came away with some new insights intro drivers and dynamics behind those trends. What struck me most is that there’s a two-way process between the consumer and the supplier; consumers are critical in driving demands and creating trends, but the industry—the producers—often has the upper hand, and uses it to effect its own ends.