RETAILER
EVENT
Hosted by Proven Winners® ColorChoice® Flowering Shrubs,
in beautiful Grand Haven, Michigan
August 9, 2023
Your garden center is invited to join us at Spring Meadow Nursery, the home of Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs, for a day of information and inspiration and a look behind the white container.
You will experience up close the trialing process behind every Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrub, meet our R&D team and see what they are working on, and learn about our marketing initiatives and how you can use them to grow sales. This fun, interactive event will end with a tour and dinner in our main trial and display garden, spectacularly situated on the Grand River.
About the Event
Facility Tours
Innovation is at the core of everything we do, from the new shrub varieties we develop and introduce, to our state-of-the-art greenhouses and nursery robotics. Learn how we are using our breeding network to bring to market new varieties that resist disease, are non-invasive, bloom longer, grow with more landscape-friendly habits, and outperform what’s already on the market. Get a look at what’s new for 2024, learning about them directly from the people who know them best.
Informative Sessions
Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs offers a host of resources to make your job easier and your garden center more profitable. Our teams will share how to use our digital asset manager to find free content any time, how to work with your supplier to create a Proven Winners ColorChoice destination, plus, what we are marketing, where we’re marketing, and how you can use that to bring more traffic to your store.
Networking and Socializing
The day won’t be all work and no play! Once we wind up the meeting in the late afternoon, we’ll head over to our 20 acre trial and display garden for drinks and dinner. Join a tour led by our R&D team to see the plants you’ve just learned about in context, explore on your own, or just sit on the patio and enjoy the breezes from Michigan’s longest river. It’s a spectacular setting made even better when you’re surrounded by your peers and friends.
“Attending the first ever Proven Winner Gold-Key Retailer Meeting at Spring Meadow was such a treat! The event was top notch and the facilities are First Class. Getting the exclusive behind-the-scenes tour and learning about how much effort goes into the PW brand varieties was not only information I needed, but it gives me an edge on the competition. Thank you, Spring Meadow and Proven Winners for the opportunity. “
–Jeff Bennett, Bennett Nurseries, Huntsville, AL
Transportation & Accommodation
Grand Haven, Michigan, is located about 2.5-3 hours from both Detroit and Chicago airports.
Nearby Hotels
Holiday Inn, Grand Haven/Spring Lake
940 W Savidge St
Spring Lake, MI 49456
(616) 846-1000
12427 Felch St
Holland, MI 49424
(616) 399-8500
About Spring Meadow Nursery
All Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs get their start at Spring Meadow Nursery in Grand Haven, Michigan. Here, we select, develop, evaluate, and introduce every shrub that makes it into the line. Spring Meadow Nursery was founded in 1981 by Dale and Liz Deppe, who still run it today, along with their son, Jeremy. Spring Meadow supplies tiny starter plants of all of the Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrub varieties to growers across North America, a supply chain that ensures that when you buy our shrubs, they will have been regionally, or even locally, grown.
“Thank you for nominating Jess Hafner for the PW Gold Star retailer event at Spring Meadow. He would have enjoyed it. Going in his place, I found the information very beneficial. I developed a mini presentation to show Jess and the people who sell the PW products what’s behind the scenes and what goes into developing the products we sell. We know the nursery stock is top quality coming from Overdevest Nurseries but having one more layer of information about the origins of the PW shrub and tree varieties makes us even more informed and confident about the quality of the product we’re selling to our customers. For me it helped remove what was left of a long-standing chip on my shoulder about PW branding. It was nice to reinforce that PW is a solid and unique brand worthy of being carried under the brand of quality the Hafners worked so hard to develop.
An additional personal benefit is seeing the level of automation and robotics involved in Spring Meadow’s production processes. My daughter is about to graduate from RIT with a degree in electro-mechanical engineering with a focus on robotics. It was nice to be able to document a horticultural application to show the diversity of what she could end up doing. Under all that tech training, she’s also a plant geek…”
--Marie Peterson, Chuck Hafner’s Garden Center, North Syracuse, NY
About Grand Haven
Grand Haven is home to several beaches, including Grand Haven State Park Beach, which is a popular spot for swimming, sunbathing, and fishing. The South pier is also located here and offers stunning views of the lake, especially at sunset.
Grand Haven is home to two lighthouses, the Grand Haven South Pierhead Lighthouse and the Grand Haven North Pierhead Lighthouse. The South Pierhead Lighthouse is the taller of the two, and offers guided tours. The North Pierhead Lighthouse is a smaller lighthouse, but is still a popular tourist destination.
The city’s downtown area is also a popular tourist destination. The area is home to a variety of shops, restaurants, and art galleries. The Farmers Market is also located here every Saturday from May to October.
