EDISON — NJ PLANTS, one of the region’s largest green industry conference and trade shows, convenes in the township this month to focus on a thriving landscape and horticultural industry in which New Jersey plays a leading role, producer Kevin McLaughlin said.
The exposition on Jan. 24 and 25 at the New Jersey Convention Center will bring together a wide-ranging business sector, said McLaughlin, a partner in MAC Events. Participants include landscape construction and maintenance professionals, nursery and greenhouse growers, retail garden centers, public works crews, golf course groundskeepers and arborists, he said.
“Growing, selling and maintaining plants is big business in the New Jersey-New York region,” McLaughlin said. “It represents one of the strongest markets for the green trades. About 25 percent of show exhibitors are from the greater New York City area, including Staten Island and Long Island. The remainders are New Jersey-based.”
In the Garden State alone, horticultural businesses contribute to an industry that has annual revenues measured in billions of dollars, McLaughlin said. A single segment of the industry, nursery growers, generated $348 million in annual wholesale sales, according to a 2009 horticultural census. The document prepared by an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture ranks New Jersey fourth in the nation in cut flowers, fifth in perennial production, sixth in nursery stock, 10th in ornamental foliage plants, and eighth in horticultural crops overall.
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