Exhibit space for the OFA Short Course in Columbus, OH, July 13-16, is sold out and a waiting list has been established. The association said in a May 10 news release that the seven-acre trade show will have about 585 companies occupying more than 1,500 exhibit spaces.

In March, the U.S. Congress implemented the sequester. mandatory across-the-board budget cuts upon most federal agencies, including the Customs & Border Protection Agency, because Congress was not able to get a budget passed.

The Association of Floral Importers of Florida began to worry about Mother’s Day (May 12), the biggest floral sales holiday of the year.

Irv Betrock of Betrock Information Systems in Hollywood, FL, will be inducted into the Florida Nursery, Growers & Landscape Association Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in the nursery and landscape industry at the association’s annual meeting June 15 in Weston, FL. Awardees were announced in an April 17 FNGLA news release. The Hall of Fame award is one of the highest awards the association can bestow.

“Lights, camera, action!” the Mark Viettes Daylily is ready for her close-up. The director watches from the back of the studio as the cameras roll. Joep Paternostre, sans beret, hears the cameras click as they take photos of Madame Daylily, who is not a Hollywood star, but a gorgeous yellow lily.

“We are thrilled with the turnout for the show thus far,” said Bob Callahan, show manager for the International Floriculture Expo, on May 20. “With four weeks to go before show time, the number of exhibits has already surpassed last year’s level,” he added, noting more than 200 exhibitors have signed up already and attendance is expected to reach 1,750.

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” That credo is attributed to Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, who transformed a desolate area on the city’s South Side into the White City for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, then made the nation’s first citywide plan for growth for Chicago in 1909.