A Year to Celebrate!

National Garden Bureau (NGB), the non-profit organization promoting gardening on behalf of the horticulture industry, has been stepping up its outreach efforts in the past couple of years. You're seeing and hearing more about the always-popular All-America Selections program. And buzz is building about the American Garden Award, recognizing the favorite plants among the gardening public.

NGB's "Year of…" program is another element in the organization's marketing toolbox. But its most recent incarnation certainly isn't low-key. NGB kicked it up a notch when it announced its picks for the 2012 "Year of the" program. For the first time ever NGB has added a perennial class to the program, so there are three crops to announce for 2012:

• Year of the Herbs (presented in cooperation with the Herb Society of America)
• Year of the Geranium
• Year of the Heuchera

KEY WORD: FREE. NGB is offering free marketing tools to help retailers promote these crops. The National Garden Bureau website (http://ngb.org) features full-length fact sheets for each crop. These fact sheets are provided as a service from the National Garden Bureau. The use of these articles is unrestricted; simply credit National Garden Bureau as the source.

Also, for any garden center that needs just a portion of these fact sheets in printable format, there are full-color tri-fold flyers available in the Downloads section of the NGB website. The organization has also created both 5 X 7-inch and 8 x 10-inch signs for easy printing as additional ways to help promote these three "Year of the" crops.

Garden Center magazine recently spoke with Diane Blazek, NGB's executive director, to get more details on the new and improved "Year of" program.

GARDEN CENTER: What are the benefits retailers can reap by tying into this program? Will it be promoted on a national scale?

DIANE BLAZEK: The benefit to retailers is that it gives them great flexibility in promoting these three crops but, at the same time, a lot of promotion assistance throughout the U.S. and Canada. By flexibility, I mean that they can jump on the bandwagon but not have to carry and sell just one specific variety. They can choose the herbs/geraniums/heuchera that are right for their climate and customer base.

And the garden writers love this promotion! Just one look at the Press Room section of our website, shows how many garden writers love this topic. So, we're giving garden centers a lot of assistance in creating buzz among the gardening public about three different but large categories of products that they sell.
 

GC: What prompted NGB to include perennials in the mix?

DB: Historically, NGB's membership has mainly been companies involved in annuals and vegetables, but that has been broadening. And since our mission statement is to promote the increased use of flowers and plants, it made sense to include perennials.
 

GC: Regarding "Year of the Herbs"—how will you be partnering with the herb society? Can you give some more details on this?

DB: Herbs are our "edible/vegetable" choice this year, and we chose that because of all the interest in culinary gardening. As we started to research the topic, we came across the Herb Society of America. So, I contacted their executive director, Katrinka Morgan, and we worked out a partnership. We each now have reciprocal memberships in each other's organization. They are the experts on the topic of herbs, so they wrote the Fact Sheet found on our website and, they provided many of the photos found on our website.

In exchange, we are mentioning them and linking to their website in every press release we do, we invited them to work our booth at the recent Garden Writers Association Symposium in Indianapolis and introduced them to key garden writers. They are a great organization with a wealth of good information—so we're just trying to help raise their visibility.