Southwest Horticulture Annual Day of Education
Summertime in the desert gets tough without a little shade, or in this case, SHADE, the Southwest Horticulture Annual Day of Education. Presented by the Arizona Nursery Association (ANA), this award-winning one-day educational seminar is designed for landscape architects, designers, arborists, small business owners, property managers, nursery employees and other green industry professionals.
This year’s conference features five tracks containing new and enlightening sessions on plant health, design, tree maintenance, irrigation and innovative landscape trends. An additional sixth session for nursery professional certification will take place the same day.
Presentations by PlantAmnesty’s Cass Turnbull
ANA is thrilled to have Seattle’s Cass Turnbull, the well-known founder of PlantAmnesty, presenting two talks at this year’s conference. The mission of PlantAmnesty, and her mission as well, is to “end the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs caused by mal-pruning.”
Using a combination of humor and controversy, PlantAmnesty has been credited with reducing the incidence of tree topping in Seattle by 90%. For her work, she and PlantAmnesty have won many awards including the National Arbor Day Foundation education award, three Gold Leaf Awards from the International Society of Arboriculture and Seattle’s Friend of the Trees Award. A new Shear Madness campaign is just now taking off in an attempt to discourage inappropriate shrub shearing.
Cass’ first session will be all about the 25-year old non-profit, including its story of how the organization became the popular, well-respected, 1,200 member organization. Her second session will deal specifically with customer education and how to successfully address customer requests for unsustainable pruning. Cass has a laundry list of ways to manage difficult customers and the public’s demand for doing ‘it’ the wrong way. She will also be sharing her extensive collection of amusing photos of pruning horrors.
Register for SHADE today
These two sessions are just a portion of the “must attend” agenda the SHADE Conference Committee has assembled this year. SHADE takes place on Friday, August 15 at the Renaissance Hotel in Glendale, AZ. For the full conference brochure, more details and to register, please visit http://www.azna.org.
From time to time, Water – Use It Wisely features guest bloggers who write about topics related to water and water conservation. The Arizona Nursery Association is a professional trade organization dedicated to the promotion and advancement of the nursery industry for its members and the public they serve in Arizona. Learn more at their website at http://azna.org .