Booth R103 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center was home to St. Lynn’s Press for a few days in July while our crew attended Cultivate ’15: An AmericanHort Experience. Cultivate is the largest all-industry horticulture exposition and convention in North America. It was also my first tradeshow with St. Lynn’s Press, and I had a great time!

We arrived in Columbus on a Saturday afternoon, and set up our booth in a few hours. Many different flower-growing retailers had extra flowers for the show, and we took advantage of all of the free flowers to beautify our booth. They really made a difference! And we were able to bring a few (or 20) back with us to Pittsburgh.

We spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday working at our booth, exploring the GIGANTIC tradeshow floor, attending speaker sessions, eating at delicious downtown Columbus restaurants and best of all, visiting with our authors and friends, old and new.

I don’t get much time face to face with any of our authors because they are all over the country (and Canada), and only a handful are local to Pittsburgh. But Cultivate gave me the chance to meet Kerry Mendez, Kylee Baumle, Maria Zampini, Jan Johnsen, and future SLP author Kate Copsey! We’re lucky to have so many wonderful authors.

My favorite memory from Cultivate? It’s hard to pick one! On Monday evening, SLP and Jan Johnsen met for a really wonderful dinner at Marcella’s Ristorante. I enjoyed getting to know Jan more and spending down-time with the whole SLP gang. She is just as lovely in person as she is thru e-mail and Facebook Messenger, where we spend most of our time chatting. Jan spoke at Cultivate the next day; I wasn’t able to attend, but her talk was a hit! She had over 70 people at her session, and both Cathy and Holly noted the whole audience loved what she had to say. Many attendees stopped by our booth after her session to buy a copy of her book, Heaven is a Garden, and have it signed by the author.

 

 

Attending tradeshows is an important part of working with St. Lynn’s Press and my first tradeshow was such a fun and worthwhile experience. Looking forward to our next one!

 

 

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