The 2023 Mid Atlantic Nursery Trade Show (MANTS) welcomed more than 11,000 attendees, including exhibitors in Baltimore from Jan. 11-13 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Known as the Masterpiece of Trade Shows, MANTS jump-started the 2023 green industry trade show season on a high note bringing together horticulture industry leaders from around the country. A sold-out trade show floor showcased more than 900 exhibiting companies in more than 1,530 booths. Attendees from 42 states and 14 foreign countries spent three days connecting with colleagues, discovering new products and seeking new plants, nursery stock, landscape and garden items, heavy and light-duty equipment, tools, outdoor living essentials and other allied industry products.

Pennisetum orientale ‘Karley Rose’ has just about everything going for it that a nursery, gardener or landscape professional could want in an ornamental grass. It is quick to establish, has spectacular, long-lasting pink plumes and deep green foliage, which grows in an upright shape. It is hardier than most Oriental Fountain Grasses, and it is drought tolerant once established. This gem was discovered over twenty years ago among a group of Pennisetum orientale by David Skwiot of Sunny Border Nurseries, Inc., Kensington, Connecticut. He then named this beautiful fountain grass cultivar after his daughter, Karley Rose.

This article from Nursery Management dives deeper into this tough perennial grass, known for its pink plumes.

The Piet Oudolf field at Hauser & Wirth in Somerset is the much-photographed and universally adored example of a style of planting that has been gathering momentum since the Victorian era. In defiance of an increasingly industrialized landscape, garden-making has steadily become more conscious of the vitality and importance of wilder and naturalistic landscapes as they disappear in an ever-more urban world.

This article from Lottie Delamain with House & Garden takes a closer look at the characteristics of Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf's famous style of naturalistic plantings and advises on how to get the look at home.

Broomsedge is little-known, although almost everyone who has visited or lived in the South has seen it somewhere. And the plant is not much mentioned by scholars, despite the fact that it is nearly as widespread in the historical record as it is in the southern landscape. According to the great American grass expert Alfred Spear Hitchcock, Andropogon virginicus is a native bluestem bunchgrass in the same “tribe” as sugarcane and sorghum. Look for it, Hitchcock advised, in “old fields, open woods, sterile hills, and sandy soil.”

With the surge in interest in lawn alternatives and other native choices for groundcover, the genus Carex is always mentioned high up on the list. But which of these grass-like perennials, most of them labeled as best suited to shade, can actually substitute for lawn, and which sedges can serve other landscape roles?

A four-year trial at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, the renowned native plant garden and research facility, sought to get at those answers and others.

Garden Writer Margaret Roach took to her blog and podcast to interview Sam Hoadley about the Mt. Cuba Carex Trials.

Green roofs—idyllic retreats located at the top of buildings—have become a popular way to beautify urban spaces and provide environmental benefits to structures and the spaces around them. Not to be left out, the University of Denver incorporated a green roof into the design of its new Community Commons building. The expansive green space on the fourth-floor exterior deck nods to the beauty of Colorado’s native plants and the University’s sustainability goals.

The Community Commons’ green roof is an impressive feat of urban landscaping, featuring several garden beds that surround a floor-to-ceiling glass pavilion. Among the hardy plants in those beds: Tall native grasses that bend in the wind and provide a picturesque foreground for the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the west and the downtown Denver skyline to the north.

Aesthetics aside, the green roof complements the University’s plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. Green roofs can help keep buildings cool, reduce building energy use and absorb rainwater. Just as important, any plants incorporated into the roof can capture and store carbon dioxide, considered one of the major contributors to climate change. 

Living walls, also commonly known as green walls or vertical gardens, are a great way to upgrade the looks of your home or office. They are famous for their benefits, not only for aesthetics, but also contribute to our health and overall well-being. Living walls can help with indoor air quality, and boost energy and productivity. As we continue losing our green spaces in big cities, many chose to install green walls.

You should consider improving the looks of your office, in case it has dull grey or white walls and furniture, for example. Adding a green wall to your office would give a more inspirational feel and would make it more aesthetically pleasing.

Climate change has brought fiercer storms with devastating floods and long-lasting droughts that stressed and killed plants and animals. Once we controlled water. These days, water is in control and is harming us.

What if we changed our relationship with water to better understand its behavior? What if we were more respectful and asked, what does water want? Communities that have taken a less confrontational and more collaborative approach with water have created better places in which people are happier.

In this article for Environmental Magazine, Rob Moir, PhD, (Executive Director of the Ocean River Institute and Director of Global Warming Solutions IE-PAC) takes a look at how we can better understand water.