Expectations are powerful. If you can exceed your customers’ expectations, they will think of you fondly and will buy from you again and again. Their success becomes your success.

Of all ornamentals, customers have high-performance expectations for roses. We know your customers have high expectations because we’ve asked them. In a survey of gardening customers, public garden professionals, and industry members, we found they all had surprisingly similar responses to what they expect and value from garden roses. Everyone highly valued (1) disease and pest resistance (i.e. plant health) without the use of chemical sprays, (2) a pleasing appearance with minimal care, and (3) attractive bloom coverage throughout the season.

So, how do you find roses that surpass those high expectations? For reliable, unbiased, scientifically-based rose performance information you can trust The American Rose Trials for Sustainability (A.R.T.S.).

A.R.T.S. is an independent, non-profit, two-year scientific, multi-site, regional plant trial, evaluating the newest roses coming to market under low-input conditions. Low-input conditions mean that plants are grown in a “no spray” environment that includes no applications of fungicides, insecticides, or miticides, and nutrition is managed through the modest addition of compost to trial beds prior to planting (i.e. no fertilizers). A.R.T.S. has designed its trialing program around your customers’ high expectations and offers reliable information on the garden performance of the newest roses available today. Most importantly, the A.R.T.S. trial sites are located at multiple locations within the unique climate regions of the United States, most likely including a garden with very similar growing conditions to those faced by you and your customers.

Each year, through the Local Artist award program, A.R.T.S. makes recommendations based on the regional performance data collected by its evaluation teams over the past two years. For a rose to win an A.R.T.S. Local Artist award in a particular region, it has to score as well or better than the mean average performance of the two high-performance control cultivars (Double Knock Out and Sunrise Sunset) that are planted at every site for comparison. This year a dozen roses delivered that high level of performance and some even won in multiple regions. Pink Freedom (‘WEKpumpahor’) won in five different climate regions (see the Köppen Climate Region map on page 12) and was therefore designated as an A.R.T.S. Master Rose (the only A.R.T.S. Master Rose for 2022). The Master Rose award is given to any rose that wins in four or more climate regions in recognition of its broad adaptability.

At Last (‘HORcogjill’)

Spring Meadow Nursery, DFB regional winner. This healthy, compact floribunda bears clusters of sweetly fragrant double apricot blooms throughout the growing season.

Brick House (‘MEItraligh’)

Star Roses and Plants, CFA, CFB, and CSA regional winner. Clusters of dark-red blooms cover this healthy, mounded shrub rose and contrasts well against the glossy, thick foliage.

Candy Cane Cocktail (‘MEIriansois’)

Star Roses and Plants, CFB regional winner. Double white blooms are dramatically splashed with pink and carmine at the petal edges. Blooms are borne in small clusters on a healthy upright shrub rose.

Easy on the Eyes (‘WEKswechefy’)

Weeks Roses, CFA, and DFB regional winner. Abundant clusters of creamy-white, semi-double blooms open revealing their rich purple centers. This healthy shrub rose has a pleasant fragrance.

Golden Dragon

Altman Plants, DFB, and H regional winner. Bright yellow, high-centered blooms stand out against the dark green foliage of this healthy floribunda.

Head Over Heels (‘BAIeels’)

Bailey Nurseries, CFA, DFB, and H regional winner. Very double light lavender to pink blooms cover this compact healthy shrub rose throughout the season. The blooms have a sweet fragrance.

Pink Freedom (‘WEKpumpahor’)

Weeks Roses, CFA, CSA, DFA, DFB, and H regional winner and A.R.T.S. Master Rose winner. Captivatingly fragrant, double, pink blooms that open flat to reveal yellow stamens rise atop this healthy, vigorous shrub rose.

Pinkerbelle (‘MEIvanae’)

Star Roses and Plants, CFA, CFB, DFB regional winner. Flushes of delightfully fragrant, double, multitoned pink to soft lavender flowers are produced throughout the season on this healthy hybrid tea.

Sweet Spirit (‘MEIthatie’)

Star Roses and Plants, CFA regional winner Sweetly fragrant, deep-pink, hybrid tea shaped blooms rise above this healthy grandiflora’s dark green foliage.

The Champion Sunblush (‘MEItitka’)

Greenleaf Nursery Company, CFA, DFA, and DFB regional winner. This wildly colorful, healthy shrub rose bears loads of single yellow blooms that transition to pink as they age. The mixture of newly opened yellow and older pink blooms is stunning.

The Grand Champion Red Rose (‘MEImacota’)

Greenleaf Nursery Company, CFA, DFA, and DFB regional winner. Healthy, glossy, dark green foliage provides perfect backdrop for the double, round red blooms of this robust shrub rose.

True Love

Altman Plants, DFB regional winner. Bright red, very double, round blooms cover this dense, low growing, healthy floribunda.

© Visual Generation | Adobe Stock

As a small-business owner, you’re expected to do it all: get and retain clients, hire and manage employees, keep up with the latest trends, and more. It’s no wonder that you can feel burned out, which in turn can affect the health of your company. That’s why you must make time to rejuvenate yourself and your organization.

Here are five tips that’ll help breathe new life into the daily grind.

1) Get out and meet people

Mort Harris, a retired entrepreneur with more than 40 years of experience in the field of industrial distribution and manufacturing, is a volunteer mentor at SCORE, the nation’s largest network of free business mentors.

Harris — who was actively involved in the Industrial Distributors Association for many years — recommends joining associations related to your line of work as a way to spark new ideas for your company. “You learn more from other people than what you’d ever learn on your own.”

Also, meeting one-on-one with a trusted advisor on a regular basis for coffee, lunch or drinks may be just the pick-me-up you need. “Everyone should have a mentor throughout life,” Harris says. “Think what you can learn just by talking to somebody else.”

And that somebody else doesn’t necessarily have to be in the same industry as you. Nancy Libersky, a district director for the U.S. Small Business Administration, says she’s a strong proponent of networking. “A lot of times when small-businesses owners feel like they’re in a rut, they might just need to get out and chat with other entrepreneurs, even if they’re not in the same industry,” she says. “Everybody experiences those ruts. When small-business owners are communicating with each other they can adapt a best practice to suit their organization.”

2) Change the scenery

Harris received this sage advice from his mentor more than 30 years ago: “You cannot dream about the future while you’re working.” Harris’s mentor encouraged him to make use of his condo in Florida on a more regular basis for the sake of his well-being, and for the sake of his business. “Your employees are dependent on you as the owner to dream and have vision,” he says.

However, you don’t need a warm, sunny climate to get away. Take a weekend road trip to a nearby locale to decompress, or stroll to a neighborhood coffee shop for your favorite brew and to relax your mind. “I’d take my coffee outside and close my eyes and I’d sit there with a pad of paper and literally almost start dreaming,” Harris says. “And I’d write. I would never have done that if I’d have been at work.”

3) Educate yourself

Read books that will help you with your profession. Harris has countless books in his home library that have inspired him to succeed. “I used to tell my salespeople, ‘If I walk into your home, I expect to find five books on your profession; if I can’t, then you don’t have a profession, you have a job.'" Harris suggests finding the top five business books related to your occupation.

Don’t have time to sit down and read a book? Then listen to it while driving to and from work. It sure beats being stressed out by mind-numbing traffic. Another smart — and efficient — way to use your time is to read articles and blogs about trends and new advances in your industry. Learning new things about the world in which you work can be inspiring.

Ready to commit a little more time? Take a class. Go to a round table. Attend a workshop. Sign up for a learning event. SCORE offers dozens of free webinars that cover everything from juggling the stresses of a busy life to becoming a social media expert.

4) Train your employees

Training your employees can help rejuvenate your business. Harris mentors a small-business owner who was having personnel issues with one of his employees, who was a supervisor at the company. “He told me that this supervisor didn’t know how to work with his employees.’” Harris then listened to the supervisor’s side of things and suggested he enroll in online educational modules to help him with his job. This supervisor understood the benefits of the training: Eventually he could have left the company for another job but he would have had the same problem elsewhere.

“When you find that you have employees who need additional training, then you need to help them,” Harris says. “You are making them more valuable to you — and to themselves. And then you have a happier employee.”

Libersky recommends that small-business owners meet weekly with their team to stay on top of what’s going on. Engaging with them will also benefit the company — as a group, they can all share ideas about a new initiative, for example. “It’s important to get everyone involved in your business and get their perspective,” she says. “That rejuvenates me.”

5) Review your business plan

You created your business plan when you started your business. Ask yourself: When was the last time you looked at it, reviewed it, and changed it? Harris suggests that you do this annually. The plan’s narrative, or story, might not need updating. But the numbers, or projections, do.

“If I were to get in a car and drive to New York without a map or GPS system, do you think that’s wise? Or do you think I’d get there faster, easier, better if I had one? The answer is obvious,” Harris says. “A business plan is the GPS system. There will be detours. But it helps guide a business where you want it to go.”

Great resources to stay engaged

As a small-business owner, be curious and stay engaged. “Broaden your horizons and absorb what’s going on outside the perimeters of your organization,” Libersky says. The U.S. Small Business Administration (www.sba.gov) provides resources and tools to manage a business, and SCORE (www.score.org) pairs entrepreneurs with volunteers who’ve succeeded in the corporate world.

Harris recommends attending the CEO forum through SCORE. Small-business owners meet on a monthly basis to discuss a topic of their choice and bring in an expert from that field. “There’s no end to the learning cycle.”

Photos by S.D. Frank

The southern red mite (Oligonychus ilicis) is a cool-season mite and is one of the earliest to appear in nursery production. Active during spring and fall, the southern red mite is commonly found on broadleaf evergreens such as azalea, camellia, holly, and rhododendron. It also feeds on mountain laurel, rose, and viburnum.

Adults are .3-.5 mm long, oval, purplish, or reddish, with eight legs. The red eggs overwinter on the undersides of leaves. There are several generations each year.

Steven Frank, professor and extension specialist at North Carolina State University, says to scout plants that had mites or mite damage the previous year as they are likely to have them again because the mites have overwintered as eggs.

If the last year or so has taught us anything, it’s being able to adapt out of sheer necessity. We’ve become our own IT problem solver, upped our talking-head game to make video conferences productive and found ways to get work done in sometimes less than ideal circumstances. Maybe you haven’t given much thought to being nimble as a personal skill set. Employers, however, are noticing and identifying these skills and ways to incorporate flexibility into company culture. Let’s discuss building flexibility from the employee perspective.

1. Focus on your core values

Fundamental values don’t shift with the changing tide. They keep you grounded during periods of change. Using your core values and your organization’s culture as anchor points will help you gauge decisions when you receive unexpected requests — especially the unusual ones. We’ve all been there.

2. Be open-minded

You’ll likely find it easier to understand and manage a situation if you look at it from a different perspective. Let’s say you’re launching a new product. What do potential customers think, need, want? Does it meet those expectations? How about your channel, installers, competitors, etc.

As part of a team, what’s your contribution? How do you react when something needs to get done? The open-minded answer is step up, be there for your team and part of the solution.

3. Proactively develop your skill set

Yep, here it is. The ultimate COVID-19 flexibility test — ya learn somethin’ new every day. Nothing builds flexibility like necessity but the key here is initiative.

Working from home has meant we’re the first and last option to make things happen, whether it’s fixing your internet connection or keeping up to date with new industry trends. It takes proactive initiative.

4. Be grateful

Staying positive is hard when you know a large and urgent project is on the horizon. But focusing on the positives helps you to stay resilient and focused. Gratitude is a huge esteem builder. Be grateful for the work, for the insights and help from remote colleagues and the trust your organization has placed in you to get the work done.

focusing on the positives helps you to stay resilient and focused.

5. Manage ambiguity

The process of discovery is not predictable. It’s stressful to not know the answer. The tendency is to push hard through the uncertainty to some kind, any kind, of answer. But that’s risky. In fact, predicting an outcome at the onset of a project can hinder analysis and the creative process, and skew results. On behalf of yourself and the team, understand that ambiguity is akin to patience as you process and problem-solve toward the best and most effective solutions. Be aware of it, acknowledge it, manage it, reassure people and maintain (or restore) calm. Then, use the uneasiness it produces to explore new ideas and options that emerge as a result of experiencing that uncertainty.

6. Plan ahead

Even if you can’t predict the future, you can still plan for the unexpected. Anticipating the next new development, the next step, the next opportunity prepares you for what’s ahead. Measuring and preparing for risks are important skills. If you are pitching a product or service to a potential client, anticipating the questions she might ask, and preparing your responses and those of the team ahead of time will get you a long way toward winning the business.

7. Have a strong support network

Here’s the “no-duh” element. Of course, you need a great network to succeed. No one goes it alone. But the remote teams we’ve all become accustomed to have different dynamics than in-office teams. Managing them is different, too.

Strengthen relationships with co-workers by building trust, delivering your best on time, leading when opportunities arise, providing honest feedback and staying tuned-in to your colleagues to help and support them when needed.