March 2010 seems to be THE month for our continuinged. Seems like every green industry organization is having a seminar or training session of some kind. It was hard to pick and choose, but here’s what we settled on:
- Weathermatic Water Management Services seminar–Edward attended this valuable class, aimed at teaching contractors how to calculate home and business owner’s current water usage versus what they actually need to apply. This is good news, because there is real money to be saved when you figure out how to most efficiently water your turf.
- Power Limited Technician continuing education–According to state law, we need to have current licensure in order to legally do our irrigation controller and outdoor lighting hook-ups; Edward put in 8 (long) hours of training, getting all the updates on electrical standards.
- Unique Lighting Design & Engineering seminar–Outdoor lighting is a quickly-evolving part of landscaping; Ed, John, and Jordan went to get the latest. They really liked how this seminar showed how to highlight the typical home and make it shine during nighttime hours. That, and they got free pizza.
- Perennial Picks for 2010 seminar–Dana, Bonnie, and Becky attended this seminar…one of the speakers might have hit the nail on the head with his presentation, “Reconsidering the Tried and True.” Many of the new plants that were highlighted in other speakers’ talks are in testing…we prefer not to have our landscape customers to be the guinea pigs, so we’ll watch these new plants for you and report, but maybe it’s time to go a little old-school with plant selection. There were a couple new varieties that we will start incorporating into designs however…Andrew Hosta, a cool green, blue, and white variegated hosta, and Carex elata ‘Aurea’, a finely-textured charteuse grass. This little pop-of-color plant can handle dry shade, something a lot of homeowners have.
And that’s it for March…whew!
