Over the weekend, my colleagues from Greenhouse Management and Garden Center magazines left our modest offices here on the near west side of the city for San Francisco and points south. They’re out west covering the California Spring Trials, an annual preview of the latest and greatest varieties that we’ll see on the market next spring.

For sun-starved Clevelanders, it’s a jolt of much needed sunshine and bright colors. To get your own fix, and get a jump on what’s coming down the pike, check out the team’s video coverage here and read their first eport from the road here.

To get more great photos like the one above, follow them on Facebook here and here.

We’re soliciting funny and weird stories that our readers have from their time out in the field – things like odd customer requests, strange happenings and anything else you’d tell your buddies over a beer with a grin on your face.

Send your best material to me at cbowen@gie.net and you could be published. Or at least have your story retold by the editors. And that’s almost as good as gold.

We’ve done it again! Starting right now, the newest version of our iPad and iPhone app is available in the App Store.

In 2011, we were the first magazine to bring you all our great content right to your phone and tablet, and with our January issue, we’re taking it a step further.

The new app has more interactive features, photos and sounds than before, and is custom-built by our team of in-house designers. It’s a true native app, which means you get all our content right on your tablet or phone. Think of it like upgrading from a reliable Ford F-250 to a shiny new King Ranch Super Duty.

Download it now for your iPad or iPhone.

If your customers can’t find you, how are they going to hire you?

A couple of weeks ago, Chris Heiler put on a great webinar on how landscape contractors can improve their returns on local search. It’s a great overview of practical tips and a must-see for any company that wants to explore and improve their internet marketing efforts.

To read more about how local search works, read Chris’ article here.

The time has come to pause these posts to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas start my annual Christmas movie marathon (Elf, A Christmas Story, the various and sundry Lampoon’s if you were wondering).

One point of business, our main site will be down intermittently through the New Year for maintenance and upgrades. It’s coming back better than ever in January.

So with that, may you all have a safe and joyous holiday, and a prosperous New Year.

See you in 2013.

For your reading pleasure, here’s our latest collection of interesting stuff from the web. Have a great weekend!

• The richest metro areas in the United States.
• Top social media trends of 2013.
• Great training opportunity on tap in Colorado from L&L columnist Jim Huston.
• The latest edition of MOWmentum is live! Get it for iOS and Android tablets today.
• Learn how to best use local search.
• 5 invasive plants you can eat. (via Bates Nursery)
• Pantone releases its official color of 2013.
• Above: Bill and Ed discuss the foundation of a plan for profit.

I sat down with Dr. Charlie Hall last month to talk about his research into the drought, consumer attitudes and the general future of the green industry. You can read our full conversation in the forthcoming December issue of L&L, but here’s a sneak peek:

L&L: What projects are you working on? What’s got your interest right now?
Hall: It’s almost easier to answer what am I not doing. There’s consumer research and there’s research I do with colleagues on benchmarking the industry and in terms of production practices.

I’m also doing some research on the carbon footprint of shade trees right now. We call ourselves the green industry, but in many respects we’re not quite sure how green we are. Of course, the use of water for outdoor landscaping is a hot topic. So we’ve got to know what our footprint is, both in terms of carbon footprint and our water footprint for the future to be able to justify to legislators, and to city and municipal leaders, why we need to continue watering landscapes versus putting a moratorium on outdoor watering.

And I’m doing a whole lot of consumer research on people’s attitudes toward local, organic, sustainable plants. A lot of research has been done on food products but not necessarily on ornamental. So we’re looking at their attitudes on does it make a difference if a plant’s produced locally or whether it’s produced in an energy saving manner or a water saving manner. Or whether or not the plants are water conserving in the landscape. Does that mean anything to folks right now?

L&L: Can you share any initial findings or can you kind of give me an idea what people are thinking?
Hall: I’d say in general people are more responsive and more willing to pay a premium for products right now that are energy conserving rather than water conserving. But that’s also dependent on which region of the country they are. So if they’re in Michigan, they don’t think too much about whether a plant’s water conserving or not. But in Texas they do. Cause, you know in 2011 we lost a heck of a lot of plant materials down here in the state.

And a lot of folks decided, well, I think I’m gonna go back in the hardscape versus plants in my landscape. So we’re trying to measure those attitudes. They’re not looking at water conservation, either in growing the plants or water conservation in the landscape, as heavily as what we might have thought. Except in the regions of the country where that’s been hit by drought.

Hall and his team have spent years compiling research that outlines the economic benefits of plants and the tangible benefits the green industry has on people’s lives.

Apart from great cocktail party conversation, these data should be in your marketing materials and proposals. You can access his reports here.

We’ve just released a new app designed to help landscape contractors and lawn care operators better benchmark their companies against their competition.

The Benchmarking Your Business Report and the companion app, both sponsored exclusively by Exmark, draw on extensive data Lawn & Landscape collected throughout the year from its national readership. Taken together, the report and app give contractors powerful tools to guide their business and plan for 2013.

The web app, an extension of the 2012 Benchmarking Your Business Report published in November, allows contractors to quickly see where they stack up against their regional and national colleagues when it comes to purchasing, rates of pay, revenue and overall scale of business.

You can access the app via any web-enabled device – your laptop, tablet or phone – at bit.ly/benchmarkapp.

This is why we’ve been hard to reach for the past few days – above is the L&L editors’ schedule for the upcoming GIE+EXPO and GIC in Louisville.

Granted, I may go a little overboard with the color-coding, but we’ve got a big team down there and this is the best way I’ve found to keep track of everyone.

See you down there!

As part of a project we’ll release later this year, we’re soliciting funny and weird stories that our readers have from their time out in the field.

Things like odd customer requests, strange happenings and anything else you’d tell your buddies over a beer with a grin on your face.

We got this one today from Tom Eden, field manager at New Jersery Irrigation Co. in Princeton. He found this inscribed on the wall of a jobsite Porta-John:

Even if it’s your best work of the day, please close the lid.

Made me laugh right out loud.

Send your best material to me at cbowen@gie.net and you could be published. Or at least have your story retold by the editors. And that’s almost as good as gold.