Expanded grower tours and education sessions, a golf tournament on a championship course, distinguished service awards, a floral fashion show and the world’s largest display of California flowers and greenery under one roof are highlights of the biennial Fun ‘N Sun Weekend sponsored by NORCAL, the California association of flower growers and shippers.

More than 200 veterans or national cemeteries will have the graves of military veterans decorated with roses on Memorial Day, May 27, through the Memorial Day Flowers Program.

Ramiro Peñaherrera, head of the Flowers for Kids program and a director of the new nonprofit foundation sponsoring the Memorial Day project, told The Produce News as of late April that about 170 floral retail operations had already signed up.

Nevado Roses in Ecuador opened a new I Love Roses luxury rose shop in the new airport near Quito, Ecuador, in a ceremony on April 15. The shop in the tax-free departures area of the International Departures Hall in the newly inaugurated Mariscal Antonio Jose de Sucre International Airport will carry a variety of rose products, the company stated in a news release.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved nearly $3.3 million to fund critical floral and nursery industry research projects in 2013 through the 2008 farm bill pest and disease program. This includes several projects of direct benefit to greenhouse and nursery growers, according to a news release from the Society of American Florists.

After months of intense negotiations, a bipartisan group of eight U.S. Senators announced a sweeping immigration bill April 18 that includes a guest worker visa program vital to the floral and agricultural industries. The 844-page bill is designed to secure the border, allow foreign workers into the country while requiring employers to verify their legal status, and put 11 million people here illegally on a path to citizenship.

Independent garden center owners and managers were told by retail specialists that unless they change they probably will go out of business. “The future of many independent retail garden centers is an economic improbability,” was the glum prediction of Sid Raisch at a two-day forum Jan. 30-31 in Nashville, TN, sponsored by OFA, an association of horticultural professionals.