Apr 15, 2016
What a Trip! By Tim Hodson

Well, the 2016 edition of California Spring Trials is now history.

Team GPN started its Spring Trials adventure at the Proven Winners location at Kirigin Cellars winery in Gilroy last Saturday and ended the tour on Thursday at Green Fuse Botanicals in Santa Paula.

We had to dodge a few raindrops in the northern part of the state at the beginning of our expedition but by the third day the sun came out and stayed out — which made for a very pleasant trip.

During our six-day journey, we saw a ton of new introductions as well as many new merchandising concepts that retailers can use in their garden centers.

Last Saturday, we were on hand when Syngenta Flowers recognized the winners of the Goldsmith Seeds Floriculture Business Advancement Scholarship and the Glenn Goldsmith Breeding Excellence Scholarship. It was great catching up with Joel and Richard Goldsmith as they presented Travis Higginbotham and Patrick McLoughlin with their awards.

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The breeding companies have a lot of new varieties on tap for the marketplace as well as additions to existing lines that you are going to want to check out for your business.

In case you missed it, Jasmina Dolce was sending out daily updates on some of the things we saw along the way in her Culture Connection e-newsletter. Here are the links to each day:

Abby Kleckler, managing editor of our sister publication Lawn & Garden Retailer, was also providing regular updates on many of the innovative merchandising ideas and displays that we saw.

Here are the links to her reports:

We’ve created a photo gallery on www.gpnmag.com to show some of the new introductions that were on display — we will continue to add more photos in the coming days.

Also, be sure to check out our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages where we posted additional pictures and videos.

We’ll have extended coverage of California Spring Trials in the June and July issues of GPN and Lawn & Garden Retailer, so stay tuned for more!

— Tim