Re: GMG 2007 Garden Trends Report

**"Susan McCoy" B*@impact-pr.com**

Outdoor Living Takes a New Twist in 2007:  From dinner on city rooftop
gardens to watching football in suburban outdoor living rooms, Americans
have once again fallen in love with the great outdoors.

	“The outdoor living boom has clearly moved from being ‘just a trend’
to a lifestyle,” says Susan McCoy, outdoor living trendspotter and president
of the Garden Media Group.

	According to McCoy, consumers have discovered that outdoor living is
more than dressing up patios with a few containers. Instead, people are
transforming their ordinary backyards into ‘specialty rooms’ complete with
kitchens, bars, TVs and even heaters for cool nights. Flowers, shrubs and
trees are being used as accents, room dividers, carpets and curtains.

	McCoy believes outdoor living has been fueled by three things: our
obsession with living a healthier lifestyle, easier-to-grow plants for
instant success and a vast array of stylish and affordable all-weather
furnishings, fabrics and appliances. 

	“Today the average homeowner can walk into the home and garden
department at any major store and find outdoor end tables, all-weather floor
lamps, waterproof art and even affordable entertainment sets along with big
and bold flowers and plants,” says McCoy. 

	And as we go outdoors more often with our family, friends and pets,
it is only natural that we begin to think more consciously about how safe
our own backyards are, giving way to the biggest new twist in outdoor
living: the “eco chic” movement.

	According to a recent Newsweek article entitled “Going Green,”
“environmentalism appears to be on the upswing” and is changing everything
from the type of cars we drive to the food we eat and even the way we
garden.   

	Bruce Butterfield, Research Director at the National Gardening
Association, agrees, predicting that the demand for earth-friendly products
could "quadruple in the next few years."

	To transform your backyard into an outdoor living area with eco-chic
style, here are GMG’s 2007 outdoor living trends, presented to garden
editors and writers at the 58th Annual GWA Symposium in Philadelphia.

For a complete list of what’s shaping gardening, visit
www.gardenmediagroup.com. 
GMG 2007 Trends Report
What’s In What’s Out

         What’s In		What’s Out

Outdoor Living is In. 	Indoor Living is Out.  
Escape Gardens Are In. 	Everyday Gardens Are Out.
Streamlined Gardens Are In.	Shabby Chic Gardens Are Out.
Eco-Chic Gardens Are In.	Chemical Needy Gardens Are Out.
Small Space Gardens Are In.	Colossal Gardens Are Out.
Larger than Life Accents Are In.	Peak-a-Boo Accessories Are Out.
Foliage in Focus Is In.	Flowers Only Are Out.
Multi-tasking Gardens Are In.	Time Consuming Gardens Are Out.
Fancy Plants Are In.	Basic Plants Are Out.
Designer Veggies Are In.	Store Bought Veggies Are Out.
Masses of Any Color Are In.	Colorless Masses Are Out.	
24-Hour Gardens Are In.	Daytime Only Gardens Are Out.

Outdoor Living is In. Indoor Living is Out.  “Outdoor living is no longer a
noun. It’s a verb,” says Susan McCoy, president of the Garden Media Group.
“We are entertaining in our outdoor living rooms, cooking in our outdoor
kitchens, conducting business in our outdoor offices and even grooming in
outdoor showers.”  Thanks to new product offerings like weather-resistant
appliances, furniture and electronics, there’s virtually nothing we aren’t
doing outside we haven’t spent years doing inside the home, including
watching TV.  A recently released survey from Better Homes and Gardens
confirms this trend.  The survey states that building a major garden or
landscaping project is the second most popular home improvement choice.
“Today’s consumers in all tax brackets are creating their own outdoor living
style, whether it’s adorning their patio with floor lamps from a discount
retailer or installing full-blown entertainment areas complete with
fireplaces, plush seating and sound systems,” says McCoy.  “Living large
outdoors is a luxury everyone is embracing.”

Escape Gardens Are In.  Everyday Gardens Are Out.  Time-starved consumers
balancing work, family and leisure time are hungry to feed their need for
escapism.  Homeowners want creative ways to make their backyards
personalized sanctuaries so it’s no surprise people are borrowing ideas from
their favorite vacation destinations. Thanks to advances in plant breeding,
flowers and shrubs not typically inclined to do well in certain hardiness
zones are being successfully grown around the country.  Look for
breakthroughs like the Bahama Bay™ Hibiscus collection
(www.bahamabay-hibiscus.com) with 12 different colors that bloom from spring
through fall.  New plant collections like these are revolutionizing the way
homeowners defy garden reality in their own backyards.

Streamlined Gardens Are In. Shabby Chic Gardens Are Out.  As we continue to
simplify our lives, consumers are opting for sleek but approachable
contemporary designs.  Savvy homeowners are turning in their former
shabby-chic styles for more sophisticated, structured looks.  Eric Liskey,
editor of Garden, Deck & Landscape magazine, says the desire for
well-defined design is extending outdoors and changing garden design.
“Gardens with strong architecture are in,” says Liskey.  “Bold lines,
well-defined angles and colorful foliage are becoming very stylish,” adds
Liskey.  “You’ll see mass planting of Phormium in borders and hanging
baskets filled with brightly-hued coleus.”  Peter Cilio, Director of Design
and Production at Campania International, says its Pacifica collection of
sleek, glazed containers brings the sophisticated, modern look full circle. 

Eco-Chic Gardens are In.  Chemical Needy Gardens Are Out.  Gardens in all
shapes and sizes, grown with environmentally conscious techniques, are
another manifestation of the green movement. Earth-friendly gardeners should
look for products with earth-friendly ingredients, such as the
certified-organic deer repellent Deer Stopper (www.messinawildlife.com) or
LazyMan liquid soil amendment (www.lazymangardener.com), which naturally
improves the health of soil to promote happier plants and greener lawns. To
help conserve water, consumers are turning to the next generation of water
hold technology, Zeba™ (www.zeba.com).  The biodegradable cornstarch based
granules hold up to 400 times their weight in water and release 95% back to
the plants when they need it the most. Sprinkling a little Zeba on lawns,
beds and containers can cut watering  by as much as 50%. Disease-resistant
plants like the Knock® Out family of shrub roses are also making eco-chic
gardening easier than ever before. New this season is AARS Winner Rainbow
Knock Out®, which is even more floriferous than its famous predecessors and
requires no harsh chemical spraying. Burpee has an entire line of 100%
organic seeds for the ultimate in organic growing. (www.burpee.com) 

Small Space Gardens Are In. Colossal Landscapes Are Out. As lot sizes shrink
and people downsize their homes, consumers are gardening more in less space,
on patios and decks, on rooftops and, of course, in containers. Vertical
gardening is in, growing either up or down from balconies or on patios.
According to Raymond Evison, the leading breeder of clematis in the world,
dwarf-sized annuals, perennials and shrubs are now specifically bred for
small spaces.  ‘Baby Wing’ begonias, Sunblaze® roses, ‘Bambino’
bougainvillea and Patio Clematis™ are all proportionate to the size of small
gardens. Petite vegetables like Burpee’s ‘Patio Princess’ tomatoes allow
gardeners with the smallest plots to have homegrown favorites in containers
or mini-beds.

Larger than Life Accents Are In. Peek-a-Boo Accessories Are Out. Garden
trendsetters agree the larger-than-life look will dominant the garden this
season. Because of the movement towards simplification, designers are
creating the same amount of impact with larger plants and garden accessories
rather than integrating several smaller-scaled elements into the design.
“Gardeners are thinking big this season, growing super-sized plants like
agaves, conifers and cannas,” says Doug Jimmerson, editor of Better Homes &
Gardens special edition publications.  “From extra-large perennials to
gigantic-sized pots, this season, bigger is better.” 

Foilage in Focus Is In.  Flowers Only Are Out.  For that boom without bloom
look, chic gardeners are using colorful foliage plants to add wow-color in
their landscapes and spice up containers.  A wide range of new color options
and sizes make gardening with foliage more versatile than ever before. This
season look for lots of elephant ears, ornamental grasses and iresine.
Simply Beautiful™ (www.simplybeautiful.com) will introduce ‘Live Wire’
Isolepis cernua, with funky exploding leaf blades and ‘Rose’ Iresine, with
its iridescent ruby pink leaves and stems that seem to glow in the sunlight.
Perfect for sun or shade.

Multi-tasking Gardens Are In. Time Consuming Gardens Are Out.  “The need to
multi-task is so great homeowners now want multi-tasking plants,” says Ethne
Clarke, garden editor at Traditional Home magazine.  “Integrating ornamental
and edible plants will be huge this season. People don’t want just to work
in their gardens.  They also want their gardens to work for them.”  The new
“Red Romaine Lettuce” from The Cook’s Garden (www.cooksgarden.com) is as
tasty to eat as it is to look at and can be planted as a border in a
perennial bed or along a kitchen path.  New from Simply Beautiful™ is
Maracas ‘Brazilian Fireworks,’ a heat loving tropical shade plant with funky
purple and red flowers. It works great in the garden or as a houseplant.

Fancy Plants Are In.  Basic Plants Are Out.  Grace Romero, plant expert with
Heronswood Nursery (www.heronswood.com), says that upmarket plants of the
rare and exotic type are exploding.  “The new trend towards luxury plants,”
she says, “seems to be following in the vein of collecting rare wine or fast
cars.”  Plant collectors are using rare and exotic plants to create their
own paradise unlike the gardener next door.  This season keep an eye out for
collectors plants like Deinanthe bifida ‘Pink Kii’, available via catalog or
online at www.heronswood.com.  

Designer Veggies are In. Store Bought Veggies Are Out.  “Today’s home
gardeners aren’t looking for traditional-looking tomatoes,” says Southern
Living editor Charlie Thigpen.  Instead folks want new specialty vegetables
that either look unusual or offer a distinct flavor.  Keep an eye out for
specialty varieties from W. Atlee Burpee like the ‘Napa Tomato,’ the
sweetest grape tomato for home gardens and the new ‘Porterhouse Tomato,’
which sets the new standard for “huge” tomatoes. The mild flavored ‘White
Satin’ carrot from The Cook’s Garden will surprise even the most finicky
eater. “Living a healthier lifestyle and growing your own vegetables is the
new status symbol of luxury,” says George C. Ball, Jr., president of W.
Atlee Burpee & Co.

Masses of Any Color Are In. Colorless Masses Are Out.  Mass plantings of
evergreen shrubs are being replaced with hydrangeas, landscape roses and
other flowering shrubs offering loads of color and interest every season.
Knock Out® shrub roses, for example, have become a landscape work horse,
showing nonstop color from spring through fall with no maintenance. “But we
are going way beyond the obvious,” says Steve Hutton, president of The
Conard-Pyle Co. ”We are seeing plants, such as the new Drift® series of
shrub roses, planted in containers and then placed in a sea of Drift in the
landscape.  A mass of vertical and horizontal color is created, which is
very interesting.”  The new Easy Wave Beachcomber creates a stunning display
of blue, coral and shell pink masses.  Plant in baskets and borders, or use
for a full carpet of color, like an Oriental rug.

24-Hour Gardens Are In. Day Only Gardens Are Out.  With outdoor living
booming, we are spending more time than ever before in our backyards.  Even
when the sun goes down, the party stays put -- outside.  “Outdoor spaces are
now aesthetically pleasing and comfortable for both day and night,” says
Joseph Cilio, president of Alfresco Home. Distinctive All-Weather Wicker and
Deep Seating furnishings, like those from AlfrescoHome.com, can transform
your backyard into a stylish outdoor space perfect for entertaining friends
or just relaxing with a good book.  From outdoor floor lamps to plants that
glow in the moonlight, outdoor rooms provide 24 hours of comfort and
enjoyment.

Resources
Alfresco Home www.alfrescohome.com
Ball Horticultural Company www.ballhort.com 
Campania International www.campaniainternational.com
Conard-Pyle Co. www.starroses.com or www.starplants.com
Cook’s Garden www.cooksgarden.com 
Deer Stopper www.messinawildlife.com
Garden Media Group www.gardenmediagroup.com 
Heronswood Nursery www.heronswood.com 
Hines Horticulture www.hineshort.com 
LazyMan www.lazymangardener.com 
Raymond Evison Clematis Collection www.evisonclematis.com
Simply Beautiful® www.simplybeautifulgardens.com
W. Atlee Burpee www.burpee.com
Wave Petunias www.wave-rave.com
Zeba: www.zeba.com 

Suzi McCoy
Garden Media Group/IMPACT Marketing & PR, Inc.
610-388-9330 - Office
610-220-8400 - Cell
610-388-9331 - Fax
GardenMediaGroup.com
Visit our new blog -- gardenplot.blogspot.com 
1620 Baltimore Pike
P.O. Box 758
Chadds Ford, PA  19317
"We make you popular with your customers!"

-----Original Message-----
From: gardenwriters-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[g*@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Susan McCoy
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 11:16 AM
To: 'Garden Writers -- GWL -- The Garden Writers Forum'
Subject: Re: [GWL] Forbes article on organic gardening

Thought you all would find this of interest. On The Cover/Top Stories:
Organic Miracle Needed
Emily Lambert 09.04.06
God forbid--the people who make your lawn green are going green.
A pregnant woman stoops to pick vegetables from her garden in a TV
commercial for Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.'s Organic Choice
Garden Soil. "Lately we started growing vegetables organically," she says,
as her mate spreads dirt on the ground. A child frolics
alongside a white picket fence. The ad ends by saying the all-natural
product will make flowers and vegetables grow "twice as
big," just what you'd expect from one of the company's less natural
offerings for the garden. The unspoken message: Unlike the
regular stuff, this dirt is chemical free, so expectant moms and their kids
can muck around in it without a care.
It's a precautionary diversification for Scotts. Organic Choice is the first
national brand trumpeted as "organic" by the mainstream
gardening giant. It is part of a quiet move by the company to be less
dependent on synthetically created chemicals, which include
the main components in Scotts' distinctive blue Miracle-Gro plant food.
Scotts plans to gradually introduce more gardening soil, fertilizer and bug
killer made with natural ingredients, including animal
manure and Sri Lankan coconut husks. The key additives in Organic Choice
soil: chicken manure and yucca plant extract, a
wetting agent. Scotts paid $20 million last year for Rod McLellan Co., the
parent company of Whitney Farms, a regional organic
gardening brand. It also intends to reduce phosphorus in its Turf Builder
lawn fertilizer products by 50% by the end of 2008 and
introduce a natural lawn fertilizer line next year under the Scotts brand.
The goal, under Chief Executive James Hagedorn, is for
half of Scotts' fertilizer and pesticides to be naturally derived within as
few as three years. "No one has had a commercial success
in natural lawn and garden products, but I think it's a place where we can
lead and innovate," says Hagedorn, 50.
It's a tricky maneuver. Scotts can't market natural products in a way that
will spook gardeners who buy the chemical-soaked stuff
that helps them grow football-size tulips and tomatoes. Scotts' earnings
were flat at $101 million on $2.4 billion in revenue for the
year ended Sept. 30. Almost all of that came from dirt, fertilizer, bug
spray and weed killers sold under brand names Scotts,
Miracle-Gro, Ortho--brands it owns--and Roundup, marketed through an
agreement with Monsanto. Organic Choice, introduced
nationally last year, will bring in less than $20 million this year.
The balancing act is a concern for many executives at Scotts. Some of its
customers assume that its products are already
chemical free, it learned through focus groups. Perhaps gardeners haven't
bothered to scrutinize the label on their tub of
Roundup: Many apparently don't want to know what goes into these products
even when the ingredients are natural. Scotts execs
were surprised that consumers were turned off when told Organic Choice soil
contained pasteurized chicken waste, which Scotts
gets from a Perdue factory in Seaford, Del. The packaging now reads "derived
from: pelletized poultry litter and manure."
Horace Hagedorn, the father of James, and a partner (bought out long ago)
started Miracle-Gro in 1951. It was a clever mix of
chemistry and salesmanship. They hired a scientist to come up with a
formulation of chemicals that delivered nitrogen, potassium
and phosphorus in highly water-soluble form, so that an impatient gardener
could give plants an instant shot to the leaves, so to
speak. A onetime adman at NBC Radio, Horace pitched Miracle-Gro for its
steroidlike effect on gardens. Why, Miracle-Gro could
produce gigantic strawberries in just 90 days. A typical publicity stunt had
the company offering $100,000 to the gardener who
could grow a world-record-size tomato using Miracle-Gro.
In 1995 Horace merged his privately held firm into the publicly traded
Scotts. Scotts had much higher revenue but a much lower
profit margin, and the Hagedorn family wound up with 42% (now 31%) of the
stock. Horace, who died last year, installed his son in
the corner office.
Is the urea in animal waste different from the urea that comes from a
retort? No, as proven in a famous experiment by the German
scientist Friedrich Wöhler that redefined the field of organic chemistry.
That was in 1828. News of the result hasn't yet reached
Forbes.com - Magazine Article Page 1 of 2
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/066_print.html 8/22/2006
everyone in the organic farming crowd, but why disabuse them? If they want
natural urea rather than the synthetic kind, let them
have it. Salesmanship.
When it comes to herbicides, there is a more substantive difference between
chemical and organic farming. The active ingredient
in Scotts Turf Builder with Plus 2 Weed Control is 2,4-d, which is made from
dichlorophenol and acetic acid. It can kill dandelions,
but it's nasty stuff, capable of causing nervous system, kidney and liver
damage in humans. It would also be a bad idea to ingest
acephate, used in Ortho Orthene Fire Ant Killer. That could cause nausea,
dizziness and confusion.
Hagedorn insists that Scotts' products are safe when used as directed.
Still, he admits the public's suspicion of chemicals means
that Scotts, which surrounds its company greenhouse in Marysville, Ohio with
a razor-wire fence because of its controversial
biotech research, must "reduce the target" on its back. It must also compete
with such rivals as Spectrum Brands, a $2.4 billion
consumer products vendor that sells a line of garden products called Garden
Safe. Its granular plant foods contain poultry litter.
Woodstream Corp.'s Concern brand is one of two dozen companies offering an
alternative to Turf Builder in a lawn fertilizer weedcontrol
product that is derived from corn (but kills weeds like crabgrass only as
they germinate).
The new products don't make Scotts bulletproof. The Perdue chickens that
produce the magic ingredient for Organic Choice soil
don't eat organic feed. The dirt, like other Miracle-Gro soil, includes peat
from a "precious wildlife habitat," says Craig Bennett, a
senior corporate campaigner for Friends of the Earth. Even Hagedorn says
products with animal waste aren't necessarily better
for the environment than chemical-laced alternatives.
Scotts' biggest natural product is Earthgro, a line of composted mulch and
topsoil that brought in $75 million last year, 15% of the
company's dirt sales. In 2004 Scotts pulled the plug on Nature's Care, a
small line of organic products it tested, because of
lackluster consumer response. Still, Hagedorn says he is committed to the
natural push at Scotts, which also sells Smith &
Hawken patio furniture, even if it takes years to make money. "I think
there's a big market for people who say, 'I am concerned
about chemicals around my home,'" says Hagedorn. "We want to own that space,
if it's ownable, and not be painted into a box of
being a chemical company."
Forbes.com - Magazine Article Page 2 of 2
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/066_print.html 8/22/2006

Suzi McCoy
Garden Media Group/IMPACT Marketing & PR, Inc.
610-388-9330 - Office
610-220-8400 - Cell
610-388-9331 - Fax
GardenMediaGroup.com
Visit our new blog -- gardenplot.blogspot.com 
1620 Baltimore Pike
P.O. Box 758
Chadds Ford, PA  19317
"We make you popular with your customers!"

-----Original Message-----

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For GWL website and Wiki, go to
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Send photos for GWL to gwlphotos@hort.net to be posted
at: http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos

Post gardening questions/threads to
&quot;Gardenwriters on Gardening&quot; &lt;gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org&gt;

For GWL website and Wiki, go to
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