I recently attended the MANTS show in Baltimore. This year, MANTS welcomed 10,460 attendees and had 900 exhibitors. It was a big and well-attended show despite receiving an average of around 9 inches of snow between January 5-6. I stayed at a hotel on Pratt Street about half a mile away from the Convention Center and, interestingly, there were bioremediation gardens along the sidewalk planted with Nandina 'Gulf Stream'. Bioremediation gardens normally require plants that are effective at filtering stormwater, help with erosion control, require low maintenance, are drought-tolerant, and are hardy enough to resist cold weather. It was good to see nandinas in this part of the country, not only enjoying high popularity in the exhibits but also along the street, covered with snow, and still looking perky. Too bad I had brain freeze on my way to the Convention Center, so it didn’t occur to me to snap a picture for the record.
See below an image taken from Google Earth of the bioremediation garden on Pratt Street in Baltimore.
Last year, we had a couple of good-sized customers dropping nandinas from their product list because, even though they admit that the demand for nandinas is there, they can’t grow the crop with a decent profit margin. If this is your case, it might be time to revise the growing protocol for this crop. This is what we did at our container division in 2023 and are now enjoying increased profit margins. We were able to reduce production costs and at the same time raise the price of all our nandina varieties. We make sure we have nandinas throughout the spring and fall because it is an order starter item, especially for our landscape customers. If you would like to learn more about our nandina protocols, you can click here for more information.
Pratt Street in the summer taken from Google Earth.
