Conference Sessions

PLEASE NOTE: Some sessions may qualify for Pesticide Applicator Re-Certification credits or International Society of Arboriculture’s (ISA) Continuing Education Units.  Click HERE to see which sessions are eligible.

Wednesday, November 18, 2026

FRONTIER ROOM

Sponsored by:

7:55 AM
Developing & Using a Point of View for your Business
Katie Elzer-Peters

Using AI tools to generate images and words seems like an easy way to develop the massive amounts of content you need for your business. The problem with AI generated content is that it is weirdly flat, generally uninspiring, and increasingly – THE SAME. AI generated images look kinda weird. AI generated copy (words) — especially those bulleted lists where every bullet is a different emoji — ALSO look the same.

So how are your customers (whether consumers or business owners) supposed to recognize you? Connect with you? Think of you first?

Your business has to have a point of view that carries through your marketing, your one-on-one interactions, and your digital and paper collateral. That point of view is what guides the feeling you want your customers to have when they interact with your business, no matter the point of contact.

The old way of doing business was to be very flat, very “professional,”, smooth, and unremarkable.

With the pace and volume of inputs every single person processes every single day, you can’t afford to be unmemorable. You also don’t have to install a trapeze and hang from the ceiling welcoming visitors.

During this keynote we’ll explore the points of view of several different businesses, from Deb’s Greenhouse to Qualitree, and everything in between. We’ll get out our colored pencils and big rolls of paper and workshop our points of view. And we’ll all leave with new ideas and a map to follow while we tie our deepest beliefs and values to the experiences we provide our customers. Because it’s November, we’ll have time to work on this with our teams when we get home!

9:05 AM
Mites on Greenhouse Crops: Their Biology, Damage, and Management
Dr. Ken Fry

This session will review the different species of mites that impact greenhouse vegetable and ornamental crops. How to identify each species, the kinds of damage caused, and the different methods of how to monitor for them will be covered. It will conclude with an overview of management practices including chemical, biological and cultural control methods.

10:15 AM
Effects of Climate Change on Plants and Insects
Dr. Ken Fry

The session will examine the impacts and effects of climate change on the distribution of selected prairie insects and plants. Some species appear to be expanding their range, especially invasive species, while others are being squeezed in what has been described as a climate “vise”. The implications for pest management and plant health will be discussed.

11:25 AM
The Cool, Calm $5MM Landscape: How to Boost Net Profit
Danny Kerr

Weather swings. Delayed projects. Seasonal slowdowns. In landscaping, cash flow is always volatile.

But in a turbulent 2026, more landscapers are asking:

• Should I update payment terms to help shield the company against lumpy cash flow?
• Is it time to start spending more on marketing?
• How do I know when to pull the trigger on lay-offs, or get back on the tools?

And with the year coming to a close, the decisions you make this month will determine whether you enter 2027 with confidence or are scrambling to make payroll at the end of July. (Because cash timing slips, but payroll doesn’t.) You know that NOW is the time to start making changes. You just aren’t sure what those changes should be…and it’s paralyzing if you try to figure it out on your own.

At the Green Industry Show & Conference, you can go behind the scenes with Danny Kerr as he shares how to gain cash flow confidence and eliminate those feelings of panic when you check your bank balance. You’ll see real examples of landscapers drifting into the red — and exactly what they did to turn things around.

You’ll learn:

✓ The least painful way to track your budgets, cash flow and overhead—without wasting hours with mind-numbing numbers.

✓ How to take the guesswork out of your financial decision-making. You’ll finally know when to strategically hire key positions, expand your fleet, draw your profits, and more

✓ The three financial controls your company NEEDS to have in place to control profit and cash flow. This will set you apart from the companies that flounder and fail.

✓ PLUS: Get free access to Breakthrough Academy’s popular Budget Tool used by 600+ rapid-growth contractors. If you want to stop playing “financial roulette,” this will give you clarity on your numbers at any time.

TRAILBLAZER 1 ROOM

9:05 AM
Managing & Marketing Events to Reach Max Capacity
Katie Elzer-Peters

Have you jumped on the rising trend to host workshops and classes at your garden centre but find that they’re not having the impact you’d hoped for? New customers, repeat visits, additional spend while at the garden centre? Do you wish you were selling more spots at your events? Did you think all of this would be easier to manage?

In this session you’ll learn how to set up garden centre events and classes to run like clockwork, attract the right customers, and remain profitable. You’ll leave with a worksheet for a more streamlined event management process, a taste of hands-on activities that are profitable and garden-adjacent, and you’ll have a plan to get more out of your marketing channels to fill event seats AND cash register drawers.

10:15 AM
Relationship Marketing; Play the Long Game
Jaime Kedrowski

Optimize your long-term marketing goals to help foster lasting relationships with your customers and build continuous learning channels to help stay ahead of the market.

Sponsored by:

11:25 AM
Hand Watering and Irrigation Management Tips & Tools
Louis Damm

Consistent hand watering & irrigation is essential to producing high-quality plants, yet operations of every size face challenges with accuracy, uniformity, timing, and application methods. This session will explore practical hand watering & irrigation management strategies that help greenhouse and nursery growers improve crop consistency, improve crop quality (including reducing pest and diseases) while making better use of water and inputs including labor, fertilizer and pesticides. Attendees will learn how to identify common irrigation challenges, evaluate system performance, and apply best practices that support healthier young plants. 

TRAILBLAZER 2 ROOM

9:05 AM
How One Structured Meeting Eliminates Staff Excuses With Zero Conflict
Danny Kerr

When things go poorly, the reflex for most contractors is to roll up their sleeves. Manage and guide people more closely. This feels like strong leadership — especially in landscaping, where “leading from the front” is romanticized. Micromanagement tricks you into feeling like things are in control. But it stifles your people. It trains them not to think on their own. Your staff hesitate over decisions, relying on you for approval, direction, and correction at every step. So, the thing you did to improve performance and self-reliance…

Makes you the bottleneck for every basic decision. And your team’s ability to think and perform independently never improves.

At this year’s Green Industry Show & Conference, join Danny Kerr as he hands over Breakthrough Academy’s accountability secrets for higher performance, faster growth, and fatter net profits (based on over 10 years of working with 7- and 8-figure landscapers).

You’ll learn:

✓ How to inspire every member of your staff to take OWNERSHIP of the quality of their work … without pushing them to the point of quitting. (If you are afraid of losing employees in this hiring market, this is for you.)

✓ How highly effective leaders get their staff to understand what’s expected of them. Remove “that’s not my job” from your team’s vocabulary.

✓ A $10MM landscaper’s weekly management ritual to beat targets WHILE strengthening relationships with customers, trade partners, and staff.

✓ PLUS: Get free access to Breakthrough Academy’s Goal Setting & Review Tool. This helps you cross the chasm between thinking about a company goal and seeing your staff complete it.

10:15 AM
Conserving Rare Plants of the Prairies with Tissue Culture
Annie Ray & Devasis (Dev) Dasgupta

At Anandi Botanicals, they are working on an RDAR & S-CAP funded conservation project focusing on rare and rapidly declining indigenous plants like wild turnips, sweet grass and other species that are very important traditionally as well as for the prairie grassland ecosystem.

Integral to the project is the free training on ‘Plant Tissue Culture’, they are offering indigenous students as a capacity building exercise to build a pool of skills and talent that is well equipped to continue and drive this initiative further, once this current project concludes.

They have also started initiatives to introduce automation in their research and production workflows, and are producers of licensed varieties of Haskap and Sour Cherries.

11:25 AM
New Plant Introductions from Denver
Mike Bone

Denver Botanic Gardens is part of the Plant Select Program and host the trial and evaluation gardens at its Chatfield location. Plant Select is an introduction and recommendation program that has been bringing plants to the Horticulture industry since 1997. It’s innovative and and thoughtful model works to bring a new pallet of plants to the dry steppe regions of North America.

LOOKOUT ROOM

9:05 AM
Toward the Development of an Effective Biocontrol for Emerald Ash Borer Using Entomopathogenic Fungi from Minnesota
Colin Peters

The emerald ash borer – or EAB, Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), is a destructive forest pest which has killed tens of millions of ash trees across North America in the past two decades. Management for this insect has largely relied on the removal of ash trees or application of chemical insecticides to high-value landscape trees. Minnesota houses an estimated one billion ash trees, many of which reside in natural forest settings where conventional management strategies are less feasible to implement. Biological control leveraging local isolates of entomopathogenic fungi is one potential strategy for managing EAB populations in natural settings, and has shown promise in prior field trials in Quebec (Srei et al., 2020). EAB-associated entomopathogenic fungi were collected from larval galleries across infested regions in Minnesota, and included important genera such as Purpureocillium, Beauveria, Akanthomyces, Cordyceps, Clonostachys, and Lecanicillium (Held et al., 2021). This fungal collection is being screened for virulence against EAB in the context of potential field application methods – i.e., autodissemination devices and fungus injections. Promising fungi are being tested in small-scale field trials in partnership with state and private landowners. Results from laboratory screening and field trials will be discussed.

10:15 AM
Plants from the Steppe
Mike Bone

Join Mike Bone on a journey through the 4 great steppe regions to look for plants that carry ornamental potential for horticulture. These regions of the world are filled with climate adapted plants that have the potential to help urban spaces continue to provide a green legacy.

11:25 AM
Multi-layered Benefits of Biodiverse Green Roofs in the Urban Landscape
Cynthia Pohl

Discover how inhospitable rooftops can be transformed into thriving ecosystems that support life and provide meaningful benefits to the urban landscape. Cynthia Pohl, principal of Living Lands Landscape and Design, will share the process of transforming a rooftop into a living system that reflects the ecoregion in which it is located. Her work includes two biodiverse green roofs in downtown Red Deer, which she has maintained and observed since 2012 and 2013. As a Green Roof Professional accredited by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, North America’s industry association for green roofs and green walls, Cynthia will explain how green roofs can mitigate the effects of extreme weather events, reduce rainwater management costs, improve building energy efficiency, reduce waste, support local biodiversity, and deliver long-term environmental and economic value.

Friday, November 14, 2025

FRONTIER ROOM

Sponsored by:

7:55 AM
KEYNOTE:  Fascinating New Trends in the Garden Industry and How Market Share is Changing
Brian Minter

Many landscape contractors are excellent at building projects but struggle with the financial side of running a business. Pricing jobs based on instinct, competitor rates, or simple markup formulas often leads to missed overhead recovery, shrinking margins, and profit that disappears despite staying busy.

This session provides a practical framework for understanding and building a budgeting system specifically for landscape and hardscape businesses. Attendees will learn how to structure their finances, understand where money is truly being spent, and create systems that ensure every project contributes to overhead and profit goals.

Drawing from real-world contractor experience, this session will break down the key financial components of a landscape business in practical, easy-to-understand terms.

Attendees will learn:

• How to structure a landscape business budget
• Understanding and calculating Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), including:
  • Labour
  • Equipment
  • Materials
  • Subcontractors
• Understanding overhead categories including:
  • Administrative labour
  • Equipment ownership costs
  • Office and operational expenses
• Why overhead recovery matters and how missed recovery impacts profitability
• How to apply overhead to every project using three common recovery methods:
  • Multiple Overhead Recovery
  • Single Overhead Recovery
  • Labour Rate Recovery
• The advantages and disadvantages of each recovery method and when each is most effective
• How to calculate and use Direct Labour Efficiency Ratio (DLER)
• How to calculate and use Management Labour Efficiency Ratio (MLER)
• How labour efficiency metrics can help establish salary caps and improve long-term financial sustainability.

11:25 AM
Horticultural Myths, Lies, and BS (Bad Science)
Linda Chalker-Scott

Arborists and other landscape professionals want the latest plant and soil science information to use in managing gardens and landscapes, but how to tell what’s science – and what’s pseudoscience? This seminar will provide some guidelines for evaluating articles, books, and electronic resources objectively, with a focus on managing landscape trees. The dangers of assuming “cause and effect” based on anecdotal observations will be discussed, and we’ll dissect some research articles to show that even scientists can get it wrong.

TRAILBLAZER 1 ROOM

9:05 AM

Mulch Matters – How a Properly Chosen Mulch Will Support Tree Growth and Reduce Fire Risk
Linda Chalker-Scott

If correctly chosen and applied, mulches reduce management costs by reducing weed invasions, improving water and air movement, moderating soil temperatures, improving soil structure and nutrition, and enhancing beneficial microbes and insects. These outcomes can also reduce risk of ignition from fire. A poorly chosen mulch will interfere with air and water movement into the soil, injure roots and soil organisms, and can promote weed growth and exacerbate fire damage. Learn how to evaluate the relative benefits and drawbacks of landscape mulches.

10:15 AM
Innovative New Container Combinations Adding Value and Extending Our Garden Seasons
Brian Minter

Today’s consumers have changed in many ways but still love colour, fragrance and beauty on their patios and decks. Discover the new and innovative container concepts that add value to their loves over a longer period of time.

11:25 AM
Branching Out Live: Same Dirt, Different Era
Breanna Beck & Alec McLennan

Have you ever been to a live taping of a podcast? We probably shouldn’t admit this but we, the podcast hosts of Branching Out, haven’t either. Join us for the live typing of the new green industry podcast that is listened to in over 14 countries around the world and see what happens when you mix decades of deep-rooted green industry wisdom with the fresh, disruptive energy of a newcomer. In this special live episode of Branching Out, we bypass the usual “youth” clichés to bridge the generational divide. Join us as we sit down with an industry legend and a brand-new professional to compare notes on changing technology, evolving work cultures, and the timeless passion that keeps the green industry growing. Whether you are a seasoned veteran or just planting your roots, this conversation will change how you look at the future of our trade.

Please note:  this session will be recorded as part of the Branching Out podcast.

TRAILBLAZER 2 ROOM

9:05 AM
New Customer Onboarding to Make More
Katie Elzer-Peters

You get a bunch of new contacts at trade shows. . . and don’t follow up. A new customer places one order. . .and then you never hear from them again. It takes hours and hours for your staff to onboard a new client and acclimate them to your system.

What if you could actually follow up, encourage repeat orders, and orient a new customer simply, easily, and effectively WITHOUT a fancy and expensive system?

You can! Katie Elzer-Peters, owner of the Garden of Words will show you how, give you templates to edit for use as your own, and provide suggestions on how to use the systems you already have in place to take new customers from zero to hero!.  

10:15 AM
Using AI From the Jobsite, Not the Office
Weston Zimmerman

You don’t need to be a techy to use AI — you just need to know how to use it, what’s worth your time, and what isn’t. In this session, Weston Zimmerman shows how contractors are using AI right now from the jobsite. But he also covers the other side: where AI falls flat, where it makes you look bad, and when you’re better off doing it yourself. Practical, no jargon, no fluff — just what works.

By the end of this session, you’ll know:

• What AI usage actually looks like for even non-techy contractors
• How to start using AI right now in your day-to-day operations
• The pitfalls to avoid so AI doesn’t cost you time, money, or credibility

11:25 AM
Systems That Stick: Creating Repeatable Processes in Your Landscape Company
Lindsay Best

When your company gets busy, things start to slip—missed details, constant questions, and jobs getting pieced together on the fly. If everything falls back on you—or your team is constantly asking questions and fixing things on the fly—it’s a systems problem.

This session breaks down how to build simple, repeatable processes so everyone knows what to do, jobs run smoother, and nothing gets missed. Less chaos, fewer bottlenecks, and a business that doesn’t rely on one person to hold it all together.

This is a working session where you will leave with a practical way to start with one area in your business, clean it up, and build a system that actually works day-to-day. Rinse and repeat to other areas of your business.

LOOKOUT ROOM

9:05 AM
Overview of Ornamental Plant Breeding
Jane Beggs-Joles

Every year brings a new crop of plant introductions to ornamental horticulture. Why so many? Are they really different? Are they really better? Do we truly need all of these options? We’ll take a look at how and why new plants are bred and introduced to the industry. The presentation will include a review of basic plant breeding terms, a look at what technology is and isn’t used for ornamental plant breeding, and a roadmap for evaluation and introduction of new flowering shrubs.

10:15 AM
Building Superheroes: Turfgrass Breeding, Genetics, and Varietal Advances
Jason Pick

From natural evolutionary traits to modern targeted genetic selection, the breeding of turfgrasses are highly specialized to meet todays usage demands. Modern breeding includes developing purpose-built cultivars, engineered for extreme environmental and physical stress, as well as changing climates.  The newest tetraploid (4n) cultivars, currently undergoing evaluation at the Alberta Turfgrass Research Foundation, are being tested for traffic tolerance, drought resilience, and rapid recovery in severe wear zones. We will examine the evolution of functional turf genetics, key breeding milestones, and current PTRC field trial data shaping the next generation of resilient turfgrass.

11:25 AM
How Organic Content Can Replace Your Marketing Budget
Mike Pletz

Many landscape and hardscape contractors struggle with the rising cost of advertising and inconsistent lead generation. This session will demonstrate how organic content creation — specifically through platforms like YouTube and social media — can become a long-term marketing engine that generates leads, builds trust, and creates additional revenue streams without relying on paid advertising.

Drawing from real-world experience growing a landscape industry media presence and YouTube channel, this presentation will break down practical strategies contractors can implement immediately using tools they already have, including smartphones and everyday jobsite activity.

Attendees will learn:

• How to turn daily projects into engaging content
• Why authenticity outperforms polished advertising in the trades
• How YouTube and social media can generate long-term inbound leads
• How organic marketing can reduce or eliminate advertising costs
• Simple systems for consistently creating content while running a business
• Common mistakes contractors make when trying to market online