The Whispering Crane Institute

2008 CENTS Show in Columbus, Ohio (6)

CENTS LogoWell just like that it’s over

3 days.

3 days of classes, lectures, educational sessions, walking the trade show floor collecting catalogs, discovering new plants, new materials, catching up with old friends, and maybe making a new one or two.

3 days later a couple of bags of catalogs, fresh ideas and new perspective . . . we are now ready to hit the new season.

It’s time to make some money. It’s time for the phone to start ringing. If nothing else the CENTS show is great because we all come out of there re-charged, re-energized, and re-focused . . . ready to kick some ass(literally and figuratively).

Today’s Sessions

All 4 sessions were great today, a possible 1st for me. the longer I thought about it, the more it seemed a reality-all 4 sessions were worth my time.

  • Back-to-back sessions on the Hamamelidacae family, this includes Witch Hazels, Fothergilla, and Sweetgums. Great stuff from those talks, great questions, and solid info from audience members.
  • Gordon Hayward on specialized stone placement.
  • Bruce Zaretsky with some good examples concerning the subtleties of low-voltage landscape lighting.

I want to post some more on the Hamamelidacae family, especially on Witch Hazels and Fothergills-2 species which we use very poorly, if we even use them. These plants should be in more landscapes.

I also want to post more about the trade show and share a few images from the floor, and we”ll get to that this week also.

After that I will be looking to jobs I am starting and notes on the 2008 ANLA Management Clinic in Louisville.

Rick Anderson
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One response to “2008 CENTS Show in Columbus, Ohio (6)”

  1. Ann Avatar
    Ann

    OOps, I know this is very late, but just a comment that I love these “trade show” things, too (though they’re a bit different in the church biz!). Most of all, I want to note that I LOVE my 2 witch hazels, slightly different (planted by my predecessor), on either side of my back walk, and pruned into small trees. They bloom early — any day now, in Tennessee, and are always beacons of hope for spring to come (just like the snowdrops and hellebore). I wonder if I can/should prune those fading witch hazel back down low, maybe even to the ground, to make a shrub and rejuvenate them? Perhaps I’ll trim down low on the trunk and make some sort of smaller thing

    On any old “woody” you can rejuvenate by pruning back the oldest 3rd close to the ground-that’s an old standby for long time pruners. Then after 3 years you have brought back that old woody without any of that ridiculous shearing of the plant.

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