HortiTrends Weekly Comment & News Digest March 29th

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We start with good news this week and it comes in the form of the spoken word of Dave Ryan who is happy with his lot in New Office & Positive Outlook for Dave Ryan Landscape Architects. In it he talks about “it’s a sign of small businesses to come, those of us that started in the middle of the recession.” We come across many examples of this including the Flower Power garden centre in Kilkenny.” Open now for 3 years it was originally a Sunday market stall for many years and is now a thriving business in a prime location. There are many examples of this new breed of business that do not have the prolonged headache of the capital and staff investments of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ era. They like Dave are happy with their lot too and see many opportunities ahead.

We came across the Flower Power garden centre on the way to the IHNSA Trolley Fair. Despite the presence of the GCAI PlantsPlus group at a training event there, the turnout was not so great. You could blame the garden centres, but they would blame the good weather that made them too busy to attend. The trolley fair dates are probably the main time of the year when the nursery sector get together for a couple of decades of the Rosary and pray for rain! The lower number of Irish garden centre buyers was however, offset by the presence of a number UK buyers. A well organised event that is heading in the right direction but still needs to get out around the wider country to new regional locations.

The garden centres in Northern Ireland and soon Dublin too, will be advising plant buyers about the High Hedges Legislation to Become Law The retail and landscape horticulture sectors have a duty of care to give expert and impartial advise to customers about the negative affects some hedges and trees can have on their neighbours and environment.

We are off now to the Tulip naming event and seminar in the Botanic Gardens Glasnevin. An article on this next week along with the republishing of an article that appeared in The Phoenix Magazine based around the tendering and awarding of the Bloom event management. We will also be looking at some of the recent horticulture related debates in the Dail.

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Thank you.

Joseph (Editor at HortiTrends)