Vol. 7, Issue 1 | March 2015

News from Italy

By Martina Schullian

We finished the third national AICG congress that has been held in Stesa – Lago Maggiore Piemonte, on 14-15 January 2015. The congress was very successful with more than 300 participants. We had two busy and interesting days in a beautiful location just on the lake “Lago Maggiore”.

The congress was occasion also to talk about the AICG’s activity program for 2015. Like we did for other congresses we scheduled a section dedicated to the international relationships with IGCA in particular, and we invited Sue Allen. Sue, together with Martina Schullian, spoke about the first experience related to the experimental inspection activity for the Italian garden centre. We also invited Oliver Mathys, who is an expert on garden centre quality and is part of the Belgium Garden Centre Association.

During the congress we gave the opportunity to our sponsors (more than 40 companies) to present their innovation (products and services) in an exhibition area dedicated to them, and this organization seems to be a very interesting and fruitful way to meet the needs of our sector.

We decided to do our overseas garden centre’s study tour in Belgium and we are enthusiastic and look forward to meet our colleagues and share with them the Belgium culture.

In Italy we are approaching to spring time, which is another very important sale period for garden centres. After the excellent economic result obtained during Christmas (turnover increased from 10 to 20%) we are very optimistic also for the spring time.