by Marvin N. Miller

Last month, AIB Board members Katy Moss Warner, Doug Cole, and I manned a booth in the Boston Convention Center to tout the message that floral displays, urban forestry, landscaped areas, environmental efforts, heritage preservation, and overall impression were important to cities and towns across America. Thanks to plant contributions from Nunan Florist and Greenhouses, Olson’s Greenhouses, Patrick Lyons Greenhouses, and D.S. Cole Growers, the America in Bloom booth at the National League of Cities’ annual Congress of Cities Exposition was reportedly the prettiest in the show. It certainly was the only booth touting the importance of horticulture to a city’s economic prosperity, and the only booth bragging about the ability of plants to improve the environmental conditions in and around a city. Our booth was also the only space that argued about the ability of plants to improve the sociological and psychological well-being of the citizens within a community.

We were also the only booth that had flowers as the focus of the booth. Our primulas were strategically placed on our table at waist level, so passersby could look down upon their bright colors. Our mums were on the corner on the floor, so their bright colors would catch the wandering eyes at the intersection of the aisles. The cyclamen and the Christmas cactus were intermixed at the back of the booth, both high and low, to provide depth and to help invite folks in. A few Christmas cactus were also perched atop the literature rack to help attract attention and to soften the hard edges of the hardware.

And the plants worked! They worked in much the same way they might work in a community. The plants attracted attention, in much the same way they might draw tourists to a community or shoppers to a business district. Plants helped slow the trade show traffic, in much the same way that plants can be used to slow automobile traffic in a city’s thoroughfare. They brightened the moods of the mayors, the city managers, and the city councilmen, and public works directors walked the aisles, as attested to by the many comments from our visitors, just like plants do in any community nationwide.

The plants also challenged the senses. Visitor after visitor stopped to touch the plants. Some bent over to smell a plant or two. And a few even picked up a pot to capture the essence of the fragrance that might be there. Many questioned what the varieties were. A number asked where they might find them and seemed astonished to learn they were all New England grown within a 75-minute drive of the convention center.

But the most often asked question was, “Are they real?” Our insistence that they were seemed to challenge the sensibilities of the questioners repeatedly, as on numerous occasions the passersby stopped to closely examine the pots to be assured that there was potting mix that was “in use,” holding the plants in the pots, providing moisture and, perhaps, some nutrition. Even Tim, the retired fireman of 32 years manning the National Fire Protection Association booth next to ours got into the act, testifying in his beautiful Boston accent that indeed the plants were real and that he knew the grower.

Ladies and gentlemen: These plants served their role in our trade show booth by helping to attract our target audience, those that might help us enroll a city in the America in Bloom national awards program. But these plants also underscored the need to have plants in a city. When even the civic leaders attending this show have to stop to examine plants closely and have to be assured repeatedly that they are real, even when they are convinced to the contrary, it serves as a clarion call that we have become too detached from nature! It challenges us that we need to do more, as a society, to reconnect people to plants and plants to people! It means we must do everything possible to spread the message that people need to be connected to plants in both active and passive ways, that people must consciously seek ways to connect with nature and that nature must be allowed to surround us in all we do.

It is my hope that this holiday season allows you to embrace the message that plants can offer much to make this earth and your community a better place for you and yours. I hope you will seriously consider what an America in Bloom program might do for your community and that you begin the New Year with a renewed commitment to enter and win a place in your hearts for America in Bloom. Please accept this challenge and have the merriest of holidays!