The 2019 edition of the IGC Show is in the books! I did not go this year, unfortunately, but my Ball Publishing colleagues did. They’ll be covering all aspects of the show—its move to McCormick Place, the premier of Cannabis Corner, all of the cool new products—in various outlets in the next few weeks/months, but I was able to tease out a couple of products for inclusion in Buzz.

From Amanda Thomsen, these woven baskets from Pottery Pots. Gotcha! They are not actually woven! They are made from fiberglass and only look woven. Woven baskets to hold large potted plants are very “in” right now—I bought several just a few weeks ago, in fact. Fiberglass holds up to watering and the travails of the outdoor environment. Plus, they look cool.

Allison Westbrook spotted this line of hand-felted wool décor from dZi (pronounced dzee). These adorable little cacti are in a paper "pot" made of sustainably harvested Himalayan lokta paper over recycled paperboard. dZi is a fair-trade company that works closely with their partners in India and Nepal to increase economic opportunities for the locals.

They also make felt birdhouses, the most popular being the Butterfly Garden Birdhouse. A new novelty is the Taco Truck Birdhouse. Allison says that if she were a bird, she would love to live in a taco truck. I would say many of us would love to live in a taco truck as humans.

If you’d like more info on their products, visit their WEBSITE.

Maybe you stock Vera Bradley products in your gift shop. If you do, Unity Marketing’s Pam Danziger posted a piece recently for Forbes.com that has some advice not for folks selling the Vera Bradley brand, but for the brand itself. Her advice? “Get back to Main Street.”

Have your sales of Vera Bradley peaked and trailed off? Apparently, they’ve gone from a high of $541 million in 2013 and have dropped steadily to $416 million for 2019. Not good. Not good for the brand and not good for you independent retailers.

Here’s something that has happened since Vera Bradley went public in 2010: They flipped their distribution from 33% direct-to-consumer/67% specialty retail to 79% direct/21% retail in 2019. For a brand that built its empire via the independent retailer, moving away from those who most emotionally connected with the brand has not worked out all that well.

Read Pam’s piece about Vera Bradley HERE and see if you can relate with what the independents interviewed for the piece had to say. One part in particular—about how the company’s move to introduce new patterns monthly but also drop some monthly, thereby training customers to wait for those to go on clearance—just seems like a Business 101 fail.

Do you sell Vera Bradley? Tell me about your recent experiences at ewells@ballpublishing.com.

I have quite a few readers who aren’t retailers but are the manufacturers/developers of some of the plants and products that end up out there in gardening consumers’ hands. If you are one of those folks, you should be thrilled to find out that submissions for the 2020 Green Thumb Awards are now being accepted. As a reminder, the Green Thumb Awards are presented by the Direct Gardening Association for new products that fit into one of three categories: Ornamental Plants, Garden Products and Accessories, and Edible Plants.

Is your new plant or product unique? Does it have some sort of new technology? Or, does it solve a gardening problem and appeal to a bunch of gardeners? As an example, the Bamboo Home LED Grow Light Garden won an award last year and is an example of using technology and solving an in-home gardening problem—and it’s a pretty handsome apparatus, too.

Not a member of the DGA? Quite alright! As the DGA president Matt Bollinger said in a press release, they want all companies to join the competition to “reflect the very best of the new products available throughout the garden industry.” That could be you!

The deadline for entries is September 17. Enter HERE.

And by pick, I mean it’s time to choose which ones you grower-retailers will be growing for next spring. Griffin Greenhouse Supplies can help! In fact, they have a 284-page catalog filled with all the goodies you can grow.

Griffin’s 2020 Seed-Plant Catalog has their complete listing of seed varieties, in addition to their new and top-selling vegetative varieties. Best of both worlds. The digital edition of the catalog has some bonus “extras” contained within, such as crop culture guides, selection tools and a whole bunch of added resources they just couldn’t cram into the print edition. Both editions have more than 3,200 seed annuals, perennials and edibles (200 new and improved!) and 1,100 vegetative annuals and perennials (350 new!).

And there’s no excuse to procrastinate if you have the digital edition—and you can access that now by simply clicking HERE. For the print edition, you’ll have to give them a call at 1-800-323-7253.

Speaking of plants, Eason Horticultural Resources (EHR) has a new salesperson to help you select what you’re growing. And it’s a familiar name, too—Jim Monroe of Hort Couture. In addition to promoting and developing all the unique varieties in that brand (I hear there’s some really interesting edible pansy news coming out soon), Jim will be covering select grower and retail accounts in the U.S. and will be building new business, too.

Thanks to his work with Hort Couture, Jim has valuable experience in the world of off-shore cuttings/plugs/liners that’ll help growers of all sizes, including the small and independently minded grower-retailers like yourself.

I don’t think he has a specific territory yet, but if that develops, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, if you want to work with Jim at Eason, you can contact him at jmonroe@ehrnet.com or also at jim@hortcoutureplants.com.

Scholarship monies, that is. I have two announcements about organizations awarding some funds to some very lucky students, and another announcement about how students can apply for another set of scholarships.

I’ll start with the $18,000 in scholarships recently awarded by the Southern Nursery Association’s Sidney B. Meadows Fund. They’ve given 12 students from nine southeastern universities $1,800 each toward their 2019-2020 academic year. The 12 recipients are:

• Katelin Borden, University of Florida
• Sean Patrick Caton, University of Georgia—Robert L. Vanlandingham Scholarship
• Garrett Shane Ford, University of Georgia—Arthur A. "Buck" Jones Scholarship
• Zachary William Jones, University of Maryland—Art & Millie Lancaster Scholarship
• Claire Elizabeth Krofft, Auburn University—Lee C. Howell Scholarship
• Joanna Lambert, Louisiana State University—Dr. James & Faye Foret Scholarship
• Nathan Allen Maren, North Carolina State University
• Juan Fernando Moscoso, University of Arkansas
• Darle Bailey Riordan, University of Kentucky
• Angela Rowe, University of Georgia
• Angelia Dynette Ryker, University of Tennessee—Dr. Bryson L. James Scholarship
• Zia V. Williamson, University of Georgia

Danny Summer, the fund’s executive VP, says a record number of highly qualified students applied for this year’s round of scholarships. The funds are extremely important for making ends meet while in school, so keep that in mind the next time you hear of a request to make a donation to any scholarship fund. Meanwhile, it’s never too early to think about next year. The Sidney B. Meadows Fund application will be available online by January 1 at www.sbmsef.org.

If you, a student, are looking for some funding before the next round of the SNA scholarships, or if you’re not in any of the Southern states and are looking for some funding, the Horticultural Research Institute has more than $20,000 distributed through seven special HRI endowment funds for students looking to make horticulture their lifelong pursuit. These funds are good for the 2019-2020 school year.

Students (or parents of students), you have until September 13 to submit your application. You can get started on it HERE.

Bossman Chris Beytes had in his email signature line a quote that went something like this: I thought my neighbor just had a messy yard until I read his obituary and realized he was older and just needed some help.

Well, I came across an item on CBS News recently that reminded me of that same situation. An Alabama woman, Randa, found a note on her door from a “concerned neighbor” that called her home an “eyesore” that impacted the resale values of other homes in the neighborhood. After some blurred-out questionable language, the note’s author said, “Do better.”

Instead of focusing on the state of her yard and the resale value of her neighbors’ homes, Randa had instead been focusing on her 3-year-old autistic and non-verbal son, Jaxen, and his recent diagnosis of neuroblastoma stage four cancer. A very good reason to not mow the lawn, I’d say.

Randa posted the note and her son’s story on Facebook, and from there, an army of volunteers came together to help mow the lawn, clear brush away and even help with getting supplies for Randa and her son. A local landscaper, Joey Harding, had just lost his own daughter to the very same cancer, and helping out Randa and her family was helping him cope with his own loss.

Gosh, I’m tearing up just thinking about it. Include “bringing communities together” as another benefit of landscapes.

Here’s the LINK to the CBS segment if you want to watch it (grab some tissues).