Bossman Chris Beytes beat me to the announcement of FNGLA’s new CEO. And since it was so well written, why reinvent the wheel? Here’s his writeup about Tal.

After 24 years of service, CEO Ben Bolusky is stepping down from the top spot at the Florida Nursery, Growers & Landscape Association (FNGLA), the country’s largest state nursery and landscape association. Replacing Ben will be Talmadge “Tal” Coley, a Florida native who’s been serving as the Senior Director of Advocacy & Government Affairs for AmericanHort. Tal also has been serving as executive director of the Nursery & Landscape Association Executives (NLAE) of North America.

Prior to his role at AmericanHort, Tal worked for Concerned Veterans for America. A veteran himself, Tal served four years in the United States Air Force as a Russian cryptologic linguist. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the University of North Florida and the University of Miami, respectively.

“I am humbled and honored to be the next Chief Executive Officer at FNGLA,” he said. “The opportunity to return home to Florida and advocate for an industry I feel so passionate about is truly a dream come true. Leading FNGLA into this next chapter and building off the incredible foundation Ben Bolusky has provided is a mission I am eager to take on.”

After an onboarding period, Tal will officially take the reins during FNGLA’s annual convention in June.

Interestingly, Tal will be only the fifth top executive in the association’s 70-year history, the other four being Jim Griffin, Jr., Charlie Dunn, Earl Wells and Ben.

Said long-time COO Linda Adams, who joined the organization in 1984 (the same year I was elected vice president of the Space Coast chapter!), and worked with Earl and Ben, “The association has been quite brilliant/lucky to have a CEO in place whose personality and expertise matched the key association and industry needs and opportunities of the time. I think that will be the case with Tal.”

Thanks for sharing, Chris!

I’ve been a little slow in sharing the winners of the 2022 International Plantscape Awards. The in-person awards ceremony was held in January during a special event held as part of the Tropical Plant International Expo—and it’s already March! My bad, as the kids say nowadays.

I’ll start with the biggie of the annual awards, the Hall of Fame honoree. This year the top industry recognition honors the memory and legacy of Bruce Jensen of Bruce Jensen Nurseries. Bruce, a Canadian whose father was a Danish immigrant, fell into the family business of growing. He worked on a number of projects throughout Canada and elsewhere. At its peak in the mid 1990s, Bruce Jensen Nurseries was providing maintenance service to more than 650 accounts with 85 employees on staff. He was inspired for new plants and new interiorscape plantings by the many trips taken with his wife Barbara, eventually exploring all seven continents. Bruce and Barbara’s daughter Jillian was there to accept the award.

All of the 2022 International Plantscape Awards are listed in a digital magazine called I-Plants Magazine, and I encourage you to check out the winners. I don’t normally recommend readers to take a gander at other magazines, but I really like how some of the winners have videos included of the installation process. Take the one on page 13, for example. So that’s how they get large-caliper trees into an interior planting space like that. Very cool!

Check out the I-Plants issue featuring the 2022 International Plantscape Awards HERE.

Last time in Tropical Topics I had included a bunch of new Trending Tropicals from Costa’s booth at TPIE. I missed one! And it’s one of my favorites.

It’s Xanthosoma and grows to a manageable 2-3 ft. tall. It also checks the box for trendy white-and-green variegation. That patterning is just so striking. Okay, so Xanthosoma isn’t “new” new—it was actually released last year. But I’m told the numbers of it are way up and it now comes in a 10-in. size, as opposed to just the 6-in. it was available in last year.

Something else spotted at the Costa booth is this.

I would categorize this as a “don’t try this at home” display technique—or at least, don’t try it for too very long. It’s a bit of a topsy turvy tomato-esque look that would hold until the ferns start to dry down.

Your best guess as to how to recreate these bottom-side-up ferns? Drop me a note about it at ewells@ballpublishing.com.

Also last time I included a houseplant posting research project from a “team of experts” at a company called House Fresh. This time I have another set of research results from Clear It Waste Collection (“quick, affordable, eco-friendly rubbish removal in London”). The company commissioned a Reddit study to see which houseplants were most talked about online. The data was collected on February 2 of this year, with the Top 10 most talked about houseplants being:

• Pothos—10,205 Reddit Posts
• Philodendron—10,136
• Snake Plant—10,123
• Spider Plant—10,098
• Peperomia—9,666
• Peace Lily—9,660
• Alocasia—7,799
• ZZ Plant—7,633
• Rubber Plant—7,383
• Golden Pothos—5,943

Who’s to say those Reddit mentions correlate to purchases or popularity? Perhaps the users were talking smack about those plants or complaining about how much they are so over those varieties. Sometimes the only survey results you can trust are the counts of dollar bills in your till. What do your sales of these varieties say to back up either theory?