Wow what a year 2019 has been for the NNBA. The first time in NNBA history the Annual Meeting in February was cancelled for the “Snow of the Century”. Thank you to the board for helping in the last minute emergency meetings to help keep our members safe.
The spring started off strong and early and with the coop having great sales in 2019. NNBA added 3 new members since the first of the year. Welcome Olmsted’s Nursery, Blooming Junction and Laurel Bay Nursery. We now have 93 members in the NNBA. Thank you to the NNBA Vendors we had 111 active vendors in 2019.
Blooming Junction 
Laurel Bay Nursery 
Olmsted’s Nursery
The 2019 NNBA Summer Tour headed over to Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. We visited 10 garden centers and a local food proprietor. We visited 7 locations that had never been on an NNBA tour before. There was so much to see with great display ideas, signage, layout and behind the scenes of the garden centers’ operations. We had 45 attendees on the tour and half had never been on an NNBA Summer Bus tour. New friends were made, everyone ate well and thank you to our bus monitor Carla Daniels from Espoma for great networking, information and trivia on the bus.
NNBA had a booth and hospitality area for its’ members and vendors at the Farwest Show. Thank you to the NNBA vendors that filled our booth with their product. It was a great show and 50 NNBA member stores attended.
The 2019 NNBA Fall meeting was at the Sheraton Portland Airport in Oregon. The show had record attendance and we filled every meeting space at the hotel. We had a new layout for the vendor booths using two ballrooms and the hallways giving members a chance to take a break and a nice stroll to each area. This year’s theme was “Western” and the vendors went all out with their booths and we had some great cowboys & cowgirls. The “Best Western Hard Goods Booth” was won by Kellogg Garden Products, the “Best Western Green Goods Booth” was won by Little Prince of Oregon Nursery and the “Funniest Booth” was won by T&L Nursery!
The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Jack Bigej of Al’s Garden & Home. Jack is one of NNBA’s founding members and has given back so much to NNBA and to the garden industry. Congratulations Jack and thank you!
NNBA members voted on their Best Hard Goods Sales Rep and Best Hard Goods Vendor and the award was given to Steve Groger and Jensen Distribution. Many thanks to Steve for his devotion to the garden industry.
Best Green Goods Sales Rep was given to Carolyn Kellogg of T&L Nursery. Monrovia & Blooming Nursery both received Best Green Goods Vendor.
The NNBA office moved in 2019 to suite 103 at the Evergreen building in Welches, Oregon. Allison and Meg work daily out of this office and they were busy processing 30,924 transactions in 2019. The new mailing address is PO Box 288, Welches, OR 97067.
John and Carrie made a big moved in 2019 and are now living and building a house near Bellingham, Washington. They will be working out of their new Net Zero, Passive Solar House starting in spring of 2020.
