The BPOA 2014 AGM and conference, held last month, was a great success. Here's a round-up of events and downloadable versions of the presentations.
The BPOA's annual awards were also presented at the dinner. The awards were presented by The Sun gardening correspondent Steve Bradley. This year's recipients included
Colin Edwards of Woodlark Nurseries, who picked-up the Kentia Silver Palm for the pot plant grower of the year
Peter & Adam Eastwood, who were awarded the Alan Hendy Award for the bedding plant grower of the year, and
John Sutton, well-known journalist, who was presented with the Trumpet Blower award for promoting horticulture's educational opportunities and industry interests for over 50 years.
Over the two days of BPOA 2014 there were over 14 presentations on marketing, business development, nursery management and pest and disease issues. Feedback from BPOA members shows how the quality and content of this years' presentations were regarded as extremely good. You can see the complete programme listing for the BPOA 2014 here.
Nina Winter, the NFU's chief legal advisor, kicked-off the presentations with a talk on 'Concepts in contract law & the code of good trading practice'.
Download Nina's presentation here
Adrian Jevans, Director of Consultancy at Zentano, gave a presentation on 'Driving Performance: The importance of continued business development and why understanding your people is so important.'
Download Adrian's presentation here
Sarah Calcutt from ‘Partners in produce’ challenged BPOA 2014 with a presentation on 'Effective communication... Who is listening? What are you saying? Can they hear you?'
Download Sarah's presentation here
Dr Will Healy from Ball Horticulture gave a presentation on 'Global Production Trends/productivity on nurseries'.
Download Will's presentation here
David Talbot from ADAS updated BPOA 2014 on 'Improving the efficiency of spray application for protected ornamental crops: a study of current spraying methods and novel technologies - a review of HDC project PO 008'.
Download David's presentation here
Dr Tim O’Neill from ADAS and Dr Roma Gwynn from Biorationale presented a double-act on biopesticides – updating BPOA 2014 on the latest biofungicides and bioinsecticides coming into the marketplace.
Download Tim's presentation here
Download Roma's presentation here