lowes perennial council

The following guest post is from Phillip Townshend, global operations director for Tesselaar Plants. As Phillip continues to travel around the world, checking out the latest in plants and garden products at horticultural trade shows, he sends in these occasional reports (which either make me jealous because of all the cool plants he's getting to see or jealous because of all the tropical weather he's experiencing). This time, since he's traveling to IPM Essen – one of the world's largest international plant trade shows held in Germany, which has about the same cold weather as where I live in Rochester, NY – I only get to be jealous of the plants. But of course, before he left, he had to tease me about enjoying all that sun and heat in Miami:

Well, it's 2011 already – heading off to Essen again.

It seems like barely 12 months since my last blog about heading off to the Essen show, and as you have no doubt seen in the news, this year has been a little easier to depart Australia given the horrific floods we have had recently. These floods, of course, come on the back of 13 years of drought in Australia. As the old adage goes" "It never rains, it pours …"

Seriously though, there are multiple charities looking for donations to support the victims of the floods, some who only recently had rebuilt their houses after devastating bush fires in Australia.

To give you some impression that despite all of these challenges how much we love our part of the world, I thought I would include an excerpt from a poem about Australia communicating the challenges, yet beauty, of the place we live:

"My Country" by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968)

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold-
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Anyway, it is that time of year again when I have to tear myself away from summer in Australia to visit the cold of the Northern Hemisphere. Fortunately, this year I have been able to ease into the transition by visiting Miami (to attend the Lowes Perennial Council meetings at Costa Farms), where I must say the weather is fantastic at this time of year (see pictures below from the Costa Facility in Miami, where they put on a great show and hosted all attendees to a level where none of us wanted to leave – especially those heading to colder climates, where they have what I like to call the “white torture” (snow)).

As you can imagine, no one can visit Miami without going to see the magnificent sights of South Beach, and after 34-plus hours of traveling, I was not disappointed to arrive and find that there was a classic car show (a passion of mine). The phenomenal weather also made visiting a delight, as did the fantastic Art Deco buildings that always are a sight to see, either during the day or at night when the neon is fantastic:

Note: Should anyone in the Miami region require the services of a highly skilled (and some say witty and attractive with a devil-may-care attitude – although none that I have heard) operations director for a horticultural company – all offers will be considered. Qualifications include cigar afficiando, mojito appreciator and a dress sense that fits with the linen pants and loud shirts of Versace.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Despite the cold conditions, I am looking forward to attending IPM Essen again this year to see what’s new in horticulture and the cutting edge trends in the industry. I will blog some thoughts on what I see that captures my imagination  and attention on arrival.

 -Phillip