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July 31, 2020

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GARDENCOMM NEWS

Need a few more reasons to attend? We have them.

#5 Comfort –Skip the freezing hotel conference rooms! Wear whatever you’re most comfortable in, and sit in your cushiest chair as you access the entire event from the comfort and safety of your own home - or any place with an internet connection.

#4 Cost – Has the cost of travel, hotel accommodations, and food…all of which can add up quickly, restricted you from attending past GardenComm annual conferences? This year you’ll save on all those additional expenses and get the full benefits of the GardenComm educational and informational sessions for one, low conference fee. Just one good idea alone can pay for your registration!

#3 - Reconnect with old friends—and make new ones. You may not be in the same room, but you’ll be sharing the same virtual space. Think of the person in the video square next to yours as your virtual bus seatmate. Friendships forged at GardenComm events can last a lifetime.

#2 - Keep your network up to date. Even though we aren’t meeting in person, staying in touch with representatives from the trades, media, and other garden communicators is vital to staying on top of what’s happening in our growing world. The time and money you spend this year just might germinate into ideas, connections, and motivators that will move your work as a garden communicator forward.

#1- Be Inspired. You never know where or when you might get your next big story idea. Maybe it will be when you meet a star-studded cast of new-to-the-market plants? (Because, let’s face it, you love your garden, but you may be getting a little tired of staring at it after so many weeks of sheltering at home.) Attending educational sessions, joining in chat, learning about new varieties, and regional meeting updates, all have the potential to inspire content ideas that sell.

Join us August 10 – 13 from 3-5p ET Daily plus a newly added Happy Hour from 5-6p ET on Monday. Interested in attending #GardenCommVirtual but not available Aug 10-13? Good news! All registrants will be able to access recordings of the sessions for up to 90 days after the conference.

Thank you to our virtual conference sponsors: All America Selections, Bloomables, Bloomin Easy, Botanical Interests, DRAMM, Iseli Nursery, National Garden Bureau and Proven Winners. To learn more about sponsorship, email us.

Congratulations to Our Silver Winners

GardenComm congratulates the winners of the 2020 Media Awards Silver Medals, a special designation recognizing the top talent in more than 50 competition categories. These winners will now be entered for judging in the Gold Medal Round, where awards will be given for the best of each award class. Gold Medal winners will be announced during the 2020 Virtual Conference during the GardenComm Media Awards and Honors Presentation.

And Congratulations to the GardenComm newly elected officers and thank you to all those that ran.

NATIONAL DIRECTOR: Region 6 - Erica Grivas

REGIONAL DIRECTORS: Region 1 - Cris Blackstone, Region 2 - Kim Roman, Region 3 - Pam Bennett, Region 4 - Peggy Riccio, Region 5 North - Chris Link, Region 5 South - Randy Schultz, Region 6 – North - Grace Hensley, Region 6 South - Noelle Johnson

Support Plant a Row

Support Plant a Row and help make a difference in your community. Click here for more information.

Special thanks to our 2020 Virtual Conference Sponsors

Want to Sponsor a Virtual Conference Session or a Webinar? Let Us Know!

Get your message out to our members through sponsorship. Interested in sharing your content with our members? Click here or contact us at info@gardencomm.org.

#Garden365 Calendar of Promotions Now Available

It’s not just any day. It’s a great day to promote Gardening! In an effort to inspire and support national ‘day of, week of and month of’ celebrations, National Garden Bureau has worked in partnership with GardenComm to create and launch a new web page listing many popular dates. These are fantastic opportunities for garden communicators to promote gardening. The current list is the “best of the best”; there is something that will appeal to just about everyone regardless of age or their level of gardening experience. Use this list to plan for your speaking, blogs, videos, content calendars and social media posts to educate, have fun and inspire gardeners to get out and get their hands in the dirt. In many cases, suggested hashtags are included so feel free to use those to raise the tide of gardening.

PRODUCT SHOWCASE

Hollywood^TMHibiscus

Hollywood Hibiscus are natural performers for growers, retailers and gardeners. They are world famous for

Consistently high bud counts

Durable and multi-day lasting flowers

Bacterial leaf spot and white fly resistance

Compact habits

Attracting Pollinators

LEARN MORE

Upcoming Events

GardenComm’s 2020 Virtual Conference, Aug 10-13 at 3p – 5p E.T. Daily. Click here for more details.

COVID-19 Resources

PRODUCT SHOWCASES

Endless Blooms. All Season Long.

Make your garden come to life with Sunfinity^® Sunflowers that thrive and bloom continuously all season long.

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Extend time between waterings by up to 4 weeks

With the widest selection of full-blooming varieties, Optimara continues to advance the industry with new plant varieties and innovative growing techniques, constantly refined over years of research and development. We create new, exciting plants and care products which are trend-setting and truly functional. Our effort is to continue offering customers a unique selection of flowers in a beautiful product line.

LEARN MORE

HORTICULTURE

How horticulture has responded to COVID-19 with strong leadership

Greenhouse Grower

If there’s one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it’s that strong leadership is one of the most important factors that can keep a business moving forward in the face of such a severe market disruption. That’s true for every industry, but it’s especially true for horticulture, as growers going into their busiest time of year were suddenly challenged with not knowing if their customers were still taking orders (or if they were even open), and with figuring out how to maintain the safety of their workforce while keeping them socially distanced in a controlled environment.

Horticulture professor spreads word about importance of trees, nature

The Mercury

Lavis, a horticulture professor at K-State, spends much of her time working with plants in the great outdoors, and her students get hands on lessons in caring for nature. Hands-on lessons are key to an area like horticulture, and Lavis’s students maintain gardens outside of Throckmorton Hall. Students plant bulbs and shrubs and learn to operate various pieces of equipment.

PRODUCT SHOWCASE

Begonia BIG^® White Green Leaf

Benary’s most exciting BIG addition: Extremely well branched with short internodes so it’s covered with blooms. Outstanding garden performance lives up to the BIG Begonia name. Earlier to set blooms then perfect mounded habit later in the season. Extremely heat tolerant!

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Many beloved garden flowers originated in this mountain hot spot — the oldest of its kind on Earth

Science

The Hengduan Mountains adjoining Asia’s massive Tibetan Plateau are a place of superlatives. Four major rivers, including the Mekong and the Yangtze, flow through deep valleys. In winter, snow blankets the peaks, and in summer fierce monsoon rains pelt them. And one of the world’s richest alpine plant communities, boasting more than 3000 species, cloaks the slopes.

JOURNALISM

Yes, fake news is a problem. But there's a real news problem, too.

New York Times

What do you call it when a hedge fund buys a local newspaper and squeezes it for revenue, laying off editors and reporters and selling off the paper’s downtown headquarters for conversion into luxury condos or a boutique hotel? The devastation has become common enough that some observers have resorted to shorthand for what collectively amounts to an extinction-level event.

Race and justice in journalism, with Nikole Hannah-Jones

KUOW

The goal of the series is to explore the history of slavery, and map “the ways in which it has touched nearly every aspect of contemporary life in the United States.” Hannah-Jones received a Pulitzer Prize this year for her work on the project, which has received much critical acclaim.

Local journalism is on its knees — endangering democracy. Who will save it?

The Guardian

One of the worst affected industries during the coronavirus outbreak has been, ironically, a profession that should have been reporting on it.Scores of newspapers have laid off staff, or closed entirely, in the past four months, in what one expert has predicted will be an “extinction-level” event for the industry. The more recent cuts come to an industry which has long been in decline, robbing large swathes of the US of news coverage, and it’s the state of journalism.

BUSINESS

Help for small-business owners: The money questions

The Wall Street Journal

How entangled should your personal and business finances be? For many small-business owners, the line is blurry, which can put them in a precarious situation when things go south. Here, WSJ’s personal finance team answers some common questions to help business owners through these trying times.

5 business lessons learned from a global pandemic

Forbes

The Covid-19 pandemic caught the entire world by surprise. Every person and organization, from schools, non-profits and churches to major corporations and small businesses, has been impacted by this global catastrophe. However, despite the trials and challenges posed by the pandemic, there are certain lessons to be learned from a tragic event like this one, especially for business owners, small and large.

It's never too late to take your business online, especially during a global crisis

Forbes

The Covid-19 pandemic has rapidly expedited digital transformation across all industries. With stay-at-home orders still in effect throughout much of the world, and activities like sporting events and indoor dining most likely on hold until there’s an effective vaccine, businesses that were on the fence about e-commerce are now turning to e-commerce for survival. Covid-19 has been such a powerful force that it’s accelerated e-commerce growth by an estimated four to six years.

SOCIAL MEDIA

The Modern Dilemma of TikTok Journalism

Columbia Journalism Review

The rise of TikTok has recently kicked off a debate among journalists and publishers about the safety and ethics of using and promoting the platform without giving adequate weight to the myriad of ways it might ultimately be compromised.

Trump Administration Petitions FCC on Social Media Content Rules

Reuters

A U.S. Commerce Department agency recently petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to reinterpret a 1996 law to require transparency in how social media companies moderate content, after President Donald Trump asked it to intervene in the matter.

Facebook and Twitter are targets in Trump and Biden election ads

Fortune

Social media has become the target of a dueling attack ad campaign being waged online by the sitting president and his election rival. They're shooting the messenger while giving it lots of money.President Donald Trump has bought hundreds of messages on Facebook to accuse its competitor, Twitter, of trying to stifle his voice and influence the November election.

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