~July 29, 2025

Zach and I returned home from AmericanHort’s Cultivate conference last month filled with fresh ideas, familiar connections, and a spark of creativity that only comes from gathering with others who love plants and people as much as we do!

This year, one of our biggest takeaways was inspiration through community. Whether it was a quick catch-up between education sessions, a deep-dive conversation over lunch, or gathering with friends over a delicious dinner we found so much value in simply being around others who are committed to growing this industry together. We especially loved connecting with our Landscape Illinois friends and our friend and neighbor down the road, Sarah at Sunshine Garden Center! Sometimes it takes meeting up at a conference a few states away to really get some time to hang out! Conversations like those are where ideas begin to bloom.

We also had the privilege of sharing time with our colleague Katie Elzer-Peters from The Garden of Words. Katie and her amazing team have been working with us to revamp our website, email marketing and creative process, and through that we’ve found great friendship with Katie and Co. Needless to say, I was excited to see a slate of sessions she was leading about mind-mapping, personal motivation, and creative energy alongside Amanda Thomsen from Aster Gardens in Lemont and Ben Futa from Botany & Co. in South Bend. Amanda and Ben both have unique plant shops and event spaces, but they’re also pros at cultivating community where they’re planted. Ben offered a powerful framework for his driving philosophy of business with his “4 C’s”: Community, Convening, Curation, and Celebration – a set of abundance multipliers that can guide how we build our businesses and show up in our work. Some nuggets of gold from his session:

• Community – We may not be able to compete with the cost or convenience of Amazon or big box stores, but we can compete with our very real community that we can intentionally build. Community-building should be an essential output of our business operations.
• Convening – Inviting folks to gather intentionally makes a difference! It’s important to get together with real people in your life, whether it’s sharing a meal, starting a book club, or going on a walk in the woods together. 
• Curation – How can we meet the real life needs of our community in a way that solves problems and brings joy? How can we curate experiences and services that are genuinely helpful for our customers and community? 
• Celebration – Arguably the most important of Ben’s “4 C’s”, taking the time to celebrate each other, our team, and our community is key!

Amanda and Katie led a hands-on workshop exploring Mind Mapping, a process to get us out of our heads and get ideas on to paper. I loved the opportunity to create something with my hands rather than just sitting and absorbing information. These sessions reminded us that purpose and play are not opposites, they’re partners. They sparked ideas for how we can bring more intentional creativity into both our operations and our outreach.

Each year we look forward to Garden Media Group’s Garden Trends, and this year was no exception! Katie Dubow and her team put together an engaging presentation outlining the trends they’ve analyzed through social media, consumer data, and purchasing habits to lay out some key green industry trends for the year ahead. Two Garden Trends that stuck out to us this year were Purpose-Driven Gardening and Precision Gardening. Purpose-driven gardening refers to living philanthropically and investing back in our communities, creating meaningful programs and opportunities to connect folks to the power of plants. Precision Gardening is a concept that cuts the guesswork for customers – how can we be strategic and purposeful in what we are recommending so that the right tree gets planted in the right place? These trends align with our mission at Spring Grove Nursery. We see them come to life in our Legacy Tree program and Curate the Canopy projects, where every tree is chosen with care and intention, designed to serve both people and place for generations to come.

One especially meaningful highlight was attending a Horticultural Therapy intensive workshop, where I had the chance to learn more about this growing field. We heard from Horticultural Therapist and Social Worker Mattie Cryer at Craig Neurorehabilitation Hospital in Denver, CO. Hearing how she uses plants and garden spaces to support healing and recovery is a reminder of the deeper purpose behind what we do – growing trees that nurture both landscapes and lives. I’m excited to be starting a Horticultural Therapy certificate at the College of Dupage this Fall to continue my studies in this field and expand on ways that we can integrate these practices into our community. 

As always, Cultivate left us feeling recharged and ready to bring new energy back to the nursery. A huge thank you to my parents who stayed back home with Fern and Benji so we could take a weekend to focus! We can’t wait to keep the conversations and ideas going and see where they grow next!

~ Maggie Thomas Harper