by Joyce Latimer
US: National Floriculture Forum goes to Philadelphia
From the website:
“The National Floriculture Forum (NFF) is an annual educational meeting for greenhouse growers, industry leaders, university faculty, graduate students and government scientists from academic institutions, governmental agencies and the greenhouse industry.
This group of floriculturists have been meeting since 1999.
The NFF brings together diverse floricultural communities with the objectives to 1) address issues of importance to the floriculture industry, 2) form collaborative relationships and 3) improve communication within the American floriculture industry to share and disseminate information.”
http://endowment.org/nff/
Thirty-one attendees, including over 10 graduate students, arrived in Philadelphia on the heels of Winter Storm Stella. Most of us added the optional tour day to our trips to visit the Philadelphia Flower Show, billed as the world’s largest and oldest indoor flower show. As you can imagine with a theme of “Holland,” the color and diversity of the show was superb!
Our official Forum started on Saturday with our annual tour which included Flowers by Bauers, a hydroponic cut flower operation specializing in local flowers in the Jarrettsville, Maryland area and an extensive tour of Longwood Gardens, including a behind the scenes tour of the production areas.
Sunday was our business day with research updates by faculty and graduates students along with a special presentation by industry champion, Lloyd Traven of Peace Tree Farms. Lloyd is a primary supplier of forced material for the Philadelphia Flower Show and gave us great insights into the challenges and successes of dealing with the great variety of plant material. Of course, Lloyd also shared his philosophy on advancing horticulture in today’s world – great advice for our students as well us ‘old folks’ as we meet the challenges ahead.
Tentative plans have our National Floriculture Forum in early March 2018 in the sunny Apopka area of Florida! We would love to have more growers and other industry professionals join our meetings. Feel free to contact me or Dr. Mark Bridgen (mpb27@cornell.edu) of Cornell University for more information.
Written by Joyce Latimer for eGroBlog