Message from the President ]

Katie Miller

WSNLA President

Retail Ready Sales Manager

Skagit Horticulture/Skagit Gardens

I am excited to serve as your WSNLA President for 2023, I have been in the industry for 23 years and the last 15 have been spent at Skagit Gardens in sales.

To say I love horticulture is an understatement. It started out as a love for flowers that evolved into a passion for growing things. Alongside that passion for growing things, I learned that I really liked my role in sales and business. I have been privileged to work and learn alongside some incredible people, I have also been able to share what I know about the plants we offer with people who were interested in them, and I have made more than a few friends along the way. As I have grown into roles with more responsibility and decision making at Skagit Gardens, I get to share what I have learned with my sales team to help them grow, as I continue to learn and grow myself.

Several weeks ago, one of my Account Managers shared an anecdote about his time at a Fraternity during college “Sell Yourself, Sell ATO, Sell Greek.” I loved the phrase although it needed a little adaptation to suite my tastes:

Sell Yourself, Sell the Plants, Sell the Industry

It seemed to define where I am in my career perfectly given the following week was spent sharing what our industry has to offer to a couple hundred college students over 3 days. During that week we had 29 job listings on the WSNLA Career Center to share with them, true to our membership those job listing included a wide array of skillsets and interests. We also shared scholarship resources, let them know about student membership, and shared the professional certification options in ecoPRO and CPH. You’ll see later in this edition of B&B a snapshot of the survey results that we got from all the students who participated, I was most surprised by the number of students interested in membership! There is a shared passion and interest in plants even if they only stopped to take the survey because they wanted a free plant.

To me this is a signal of change, a new group that isn’t just interested in gardening, they are eager to share their passion for plants and the planet. One particular young man studying Chemical Engineering stopped and sincerely asked if what he studied had a place in horticulture? You better believe I told him “YES!”

As owners, operators, managers, and employees we fell in love with plants, but we run businesses with business challenges like logistics, production, labor, human resources, marketing and sales; after the career fair experience last month it is clear that a whole new generation is falling in love with plants and they are ready and willing to learn everything we can teach them about our businesses if we put ourselves out there and meet them halfway.

So, I am excited to serve as your WSNLA President for 2023, to share my passion, to share what others have taught me, and to learn more about how we can better connect ourselves as members, employers and students to represent, promote and educate our horticultural community.