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What’s Trending
| Chris Beytes and Jennifer Zurko
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>> Published Date: 2/28/2013
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Trendy TPIE
January’s Tropical Plant Industry Exhibition (TPIE) in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, is about a whole lot more than just tropical plants. While there were scores of new products, we sought out a few trends to illustrate what we’ll be seeing this year:
Succulents and easy-care foliage. Trendy and easy, succulents and their cousins sansevieria continue to be hot here and abroad with interiorscapers, gardening magazine editors and anyone looking for architectural interest in a long-lasting plant. Attendees were looking for pre-made succulent bowls, such as those shown by Sunshine Tropical Foliage and Riverview Flower Farm. We especially liked the assortment of sansevieria from Denmark’s Greenex, which they produce in Brazil.
Color. It started in 2011 with the debut of Blue Mystique phalaenopsis from Silver Vase, which caused an uproar among traditionalists and a buzz among retailers. Europeans have been dying plants for years (that’s where Silver Vase gets the technology); maybe we’re finally starting to accept the idea here. Both Costa Farms (www.costafarms.com) and Deroose Plants (www.derooseplants.com) showed off painted or dyed succulents, Deroose focusing on echeveria and haworthia (pictured), while Costa’s new “Desert Gems” line uses a proprietary dye process to color the spines of mammillaria.
Vines. Vining plants remain hot, as evidenced by two award-winning mandevillas. Suntory (www.sunparasol.net) added yet another color to its Sun Parasol line, Pretty Deep Red, which earned TPIE’s Favorite New Flowering Plant award. And at the back of the hall, retailers discovered Fury Fire & Ice mandevilla by Hidden Acres Nursery (www.hiddenacresnurseryfl.com), which features rich red flowers on variegated foliage. It earned a Cool Products Award.
Verticality. While we didn’t see any expansion in green wall technology (just two exhibitors), we did see a pair of exhibitors offering stackable planters suited more for garden use, especially with vegetables, herbs and strawberries. The system by Verti-Gro (www.vertigro.com) uses dense foam square planters stacked on a post, with an integrated watering system; while Mr. Stacky (www.mrstacky.com) planters are plastic, four-lobe, that can hang or stack.
What’s old is new again. Dish gardens have returned as premade Fairy Gardens at Flori-Design (www.flori-design.com). Everything is glued down for safe shipping. They also do a good business in terrariums and have combined the two into what they’ve dubbed the “Fairarium.”
What didn’t we see at TPIE? Functional benefits of plants. Only a few exhibitors are actively promoting the many health and well-being benefits of plants, even though all the studies we’ve seen lately indicate that this is a feature the coming generation of consumers will respond to.
—Chris Beytes
 MANTS
The Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show (MANTS) had the usual suspects of new introductions of nursery stock and woody ornamentals. But there were a few highlights that made us stop to take a closer look.
Edibles are still hot. The Lifeberry goji berry plants from Spring Meadow Nursery through Proven Winners ColorChoice offer the consumer the opportunity to grow their own stash of these healthy berries without having to pay the high prices at the grocery store. Under the Lifeberry umbrella, they’re introducing two different varieties—Sweet Lifeberry and Big Lifeberry. Hardy to Zone 5, gojis are a spreading-type shrub with long flexible stems that produces fruit through the first heavy frost.
Garden art reborn. The Braun Horticulture booth always has fun products, so I stopped to see what they had going on. With their acquisition of Green Peace Wire Art, they’re now offering the Set in Stone line of decorative garden accessories. Created with metal and resin shaped like stones, each piece looks like it weighs a ton, but they were made to be very lightweight and whimsical.
High-end containers. New to the MANTS scene is Cultivated Gardens, designer Rosie Sauser’s company that produces high-end porcelain garden containers. Every style features soft, muted tones like the Classic Conical pots in the photo. Rosie may just be starting out, but she’s already getting some great publicity. Rosie said that the Classic Conical pots were just photographed for Martha Stewart Living as part of a piece about Martha’s favorite gifts for the gardener.
Tools for women. This is in my “why-wasn’t-this-invented-sooner” category. Women-owned Green Heron Tools was created in 2008 to provide female farmers and gardeners with tools, accessories and apparel when they realized that there wasn’t anything on the market especially for women. The blade, which is recycled steel, was re-designed to go into the soil at an angle because their research showed that women dig in from the side—not straight in like men. The ergonomic handle is made from no-break, copolymer polypropylene plastic that requires less material during the molding process. Plus, the wood for the shaft (which is ash) was harvested from a Verified Sustainable Forest in the Appalachians. The whole shovel weighs only 4 lbs. and comes in three sizes (hooray for a short shovel for the short girls!).
Green Heron’s motto is “Women’s and men’s bodies are different; our tools should be, too.” I say “woot, woot!” to that! GP
—Jen Zurko
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