Dear constant reader

October conjures up images of cozy flannels, fall weather and pumpkin spiced everything. Football season and playoff baseball make it debatably the best time of year for sports fans. But for many people, when the calendar flips to October, it means one thing: spooky season is upon us.

We’ve got a few at the GIE Media world headquarters. Liz Ziots, our digital events producer, brings Halloween joy to the office by crafting spooky cubicle decorations for the whole team. Patrick A. Coleman, editor of our wonderful sister publication Greenhouse Management, will certainly have at least one slasher movie marathon this month. Me, I love a haunted hayride and a hot chocolate as much as the next American, but I tap out at the gross-out gore of real-deal horror films. However, I do love reading the works of genre master Stephen King.

One reason that I’ve always liked scary books more than scary movies is that I’ve always felt that the most terrifying moments are the ones you don’t see. As a medium, books weave an image with words but leave the grisly details up to your imagination. The fear of the unknown is strong, and it can affect businesses as well as novel protagonists.

With that ominous segue, I will note that this month we’re publishing the results of our State of the Industry survey. Although it’s not as scary as a King novel, it appears that growers are not as optimistic about 2025 as they were going into 2024. While sales projections for 2025 are lower than they were for 2024, it’s important to keep in perspective that these numbers are all still higher than we were before the pandemic. So we’re talking more “less good” than “actually bad.” Check out the results yourself starting on pg. 20.

This is the tightrope that growers have to walk. No one knows what’s coming, but your customers will still expect you to have plants ready for them.

What’s your take on the state of the nursery industry? Got any recommendations for a good book to read this fall? Send me an email or drop me a note and let’s talk.

For your October reading pleasure, here are my top 5 Stephen King stories:

• The Stand (his most epic good vs. evil tale, the paperback probably weighs 10 lbs.)
• 11/22/63 (for history buffs/conspiracy theorists)
• The Institute (especially for Stranger Things fans)
• Night Shift (this is a short stories collection, so I’m definitely cheating by including it here)
• The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (for baseball fans)

And we’ll end with a terrible joke. What’s Stephen King’s favorite type of plant? Perennials, because Sometimes They Come Back.