Category Archives: Uncategorized

Upcoming Chapter Events:

(Additional information and participation costs will be provided closer to the time of the event.  Please feel free to invite a guest or potential member to join us.  Schedule is subject to change.)

***Cancelled- will be rescheduled***Tuesday, July 21, 11:00-2:00pm: HOUZZ Beginner & Advanced Workshops (run back to back)
Location: MNLA Office, Okemos Michigan

Rosetta Hardscapes is a family-owned and operated business that started as the brainchild of three brothers who had spent their entire careers in the construction industry—Mark, Jim, and Ben Manthei. Rosetta Hardscapes launched in Charlevoix, Michigan in 2007, responding to the need for a hardscape product that mimicked the colors, textures and shapes of natural stone in a beautiful, convincing way.

The very first Rosetta product developed was the Outcropping Collection—a larger scale wall solution that creates grand walls that truly capture the look of natural stone.

Dale Deppe has watched his company grow from a small propagation nursery to one of the largest providers of proprietary plant materials in the country. The reason for this growth? Superior liners optimized to grow and finish fast, and a steady stream of introducing new flowering shrubs developed by top plant breeders across the world.

In 1981, Dale founded Spring Meadow Nursery with his wife, Liz. Today, large and small nurseries from across North America look to Spring Meadow to do their propagation and to bring them new and exciting plants. They are a market leader in the propagation of flowering shrubs, potted liners, and starter plants. Spring Meadow Nursery is also the developer behind Proven Winners® ColorChoice®, one of the most recognized brands in flowering shrubs in North America.

“The old scenario of releasing plants had to do with exclusivity. You reduce the supply to raise the costs. The plants are higher priced because they’re hard to get hold of,” said Deppe. “The Spring Meadow method is to increase the price by driving up demand. It’s a completely different way of thinking, which ultimately enriches everyone, from the grower to the retailer.”

They have over 400 varieties in their catalog, with more than 200 varieties marketed under the Proven Winners ColorChoice brand, including Incrediball® Hydrangea, ‘Limelight’ Hydrangea, Pinky Winky™ Hydrangea, My Monet™ Weigela, Little Henry® Itea, Wine & Roses® Weigela, Quick Fire® Hydrangea and Invincibelle® Spirit Hydrangea.

You can find their shrubs in retail outlets across the U.S. and Canada. You’ll also find Proven Winners ColorChoice plants at better gardening centers in the distinctive Proven Winners containers.

To learn more, please visit their site at http://springmeadownursery.com

Hortech is an innovative professionally managed Midwestern wholesale nursery, founded in 1983, which  specializes in perennial plants; conventional perennials, labor saving ground covers, hardy ferns, climbing vines, and a broad array of ornamental grasses. Offering a palette of the finest native and non native species, Hortech is unique in that their plants are test grown in their trial garden and evaluated for hardiness, beauty, and sustainability. They resist the modern concept of rushing products to market to be first, whereby the consumer’s landscape becomes the trial garden. They would rather do their own testing so that when you purchase their plants, from Midwestern garden centers and landscapers, you will be satisfied with the results.

In addition to being dedicated horticultural professionals, they grow their plants in a unique manner utilizing the checks and balances of nature. Hortech was founded by a biologist, David MacKenzie, who maintains that plant culture should be a biological, not chemical, activity. The modern practice of showering plants with chemical cocktails, is not how plants are grown at Hortech. They feel that such practices would be like replacing your daily multi-vitamin with a handful of antibiotics. The very act of trying to ward off disease would suppress your immune system and make you susceptible to disease once the antibiotics are stopped. Likewise for plants; chemical cocktails of fungicides, antibiotics, insecticides, and miticides may appear to create plant health via disease avoidance, but they suppress the plants’ own natural defenses, and once the plant is in the consumer’s landscape it undergoes an inevitable “crash” that occurs when the chemical support is removed.

Hortech plants, which are Grown Earth Friendly, establish quickly and grow vigorously without undergoing chemical withdrawal­­–because of how they are grown, in concert with nature. Their objective is to always seek and implement biological and organic methods of plant culture whereby the plant is healthy due to the proper balance of nutrition, environment, and natural checks and balances. They have figured this out for the vast majority of the plants that they grow. To accomplish this, they use soil inoculants and compost tea to ward off root rot and other diseases, ladybugs to keep aphids in check, predatory mites to consume undesirable sap-feeding mites; predatory nematodes to control weevils, praying mantis to eat leaf eating insects, etc. There is a whole host of other natural checks and balances that we foster, and each contributes to the overall health of our plants and the environment in which we grow them.

Please visit their site http://www.grownearthfriendly.com/ or contact them directly at (616) 842-1392.

February’s meeting, Tuesday the 17th, has been changed from 11:00 am to 12:15 pm.

Location: MNLA office, 2149 Commons Parkway, Okemos MI 48864

Topic: Marketing & promoting your business with social media & Houzz.

Is landscape lighting still a mystery to you?  Are you looking for fresh ideas to add to your design tool box?  Curious about the newest technology in low-voltage landscape lighting?  Sign up today for our landscape lighting seminar and learn from a leader in the industry!

APLD Landscape Lighting Design Seminar

When: July 16 from 9:00-12:00 (lunch provided)

Where: MNLA office in Okemos, MI

Space limited to 30

CGIP CEU credits – 3 hours

APLD CEU credits applied for

Presented by Drew W. Tedford of FX Luminaire

Open to anyone in the industry:

APLD members free

MNLA members $20.00 pr. person

Non Members $30.00 pr. person

Contact garth@rootbound.com for registration information