Apr 29, 2005

Florida Field DaySource: Florida Field Day

Join the University of Florida; the Florida Nursery, Grower, and Landscape Association; and Grandiflora for their annual Floriculture Field Day May 18-19 2005, in Gainesville, Fla.

You can view the field trails with more than 500 entries of the latest new releases and the holdover performers from the University of Florida’s winter trials. Focus crops for this spring include : cordyline, amaranthus species, novelty geraniums, trailing petunias, osteospermum/dimorphotheca, portulaca and purslane, lantana, ornamental pepper, hardy hibiscus, New Guinea impatiens, thunbergia, coreopsis and other miscellaneous vegetative crops. All seed comparisons were produced by Costa Color, Homestead, Fla.

More than 37 educational sessions with speakers such as Lloyd and Candy Traven of Peace Tree Farms, Kintersville, Pa.; Frank Galloway on bog plants and travels of a plant collector; Jim Pugh of American Farms, Naples, Fla.; Bill Klinger of Lake Brantley Plant Corp., Longwood, Fla.; Monty Knox of Knox Nursery, Inc., Winter Park, Fla.; Jim Barrett, Jamie Gibson and Rick Schoellhorn from the University of Florida; and many more. The field day has four educational tracks on retailing, new crops/landscape, production issues and outdoor hands-on demonstrations on topiaries and mixed containers from the Walt Disney World horticultural professionals Melissa Shepard and Renee Worrell.

The Web site for this event including a schedule of educational programs and speakers as well as registration information is www.fnga.org/flori-seminar/gen-info.asp.

Sponsors are Hatchett Creek Farms Graco Fertilizer Co.; Costa Color; Syngenta; Agri-Starts, Inc.; Florikan E.S.A Corp.; PanAmerican Seed Co.; Wyld West Annuals; and Landmark Plastics.

The breeding/marketer companies represented include : Agristarts I, Agristarts II, Agristarts III, Ball Seed, Ball FloraPlant, Bethel Farms, Blooms of Bressingham, Bodger Botanicals, Bodger Seed, Danziger “Dan” Flower Farms, Ecke Ranch, Fides North America, Fischer USA, Germania Seed, GGG International, Jackson & Perkins Wholesale/Suntory, Lake Area Nurseries, PanAmerican Seed, Park Ave Farms, Proven Winners, S&G Flowers, Selecta First Class, Super Fresh Marketing, Tesselaar, Thompson & Morgan, and Yoder Brothers.