IPM Essen, the German plant fair that has picked up increasing interest amongst UK garden centre buyers in recent years, will launch a unique new concept in 2016 to show how horticultural businesses can benefit from modern lifestyle trends.

Called ‘Hortivation’, the new event will attempt to provide point-of-sale solutions that reflect the influence of today’s communications, fashions and lifestyles in general.

The concept will get its first airing at Messe Kalkar in June next year

Celebrity chefs, fashion designers and modern urban gardeners are today’s trend-setters. ‘Hortivation by IPM ESSEN’ will look beyond the boundaries of horticulture and promises to “rethink sales promotion”:

Oliver P. Kuhrt, CEO of Messe Essen GmbH, says the aim is to bring gardeners, traders and consumers closer together. “It will present how the green sector can learn from the trends such as communication, fashion, cuisine and lifestyle and can exploit the currents directly for itself,” he said. The focus will be on marketing and so will complement the core IPM ESSEN show at the beginning of the year

The partners of the new fair are the Rhineland State Horticultural Association", the Westphalia-Lippe State Horticultural Association and the Association of the German Flower Wholesale and Import Trade.

The show promises to provide garden centres, retail businesses, discount retailers, DIY stores, the retail food trade and production horticulture with fresh ideas and selling concepts extending across different ranges, to market green products closer to the consumers’ desires. It will embrace ideas like selling regionally cultivated herbs alongside barbecues, or spotted balcony plants that harmonise perfectly with the garden apron in a polka dot design or the vegetable bed on the roof of a high-rise building where salad is planted for a company's canteen.

The exhibitors will include producers of finished goods, like flowering pot plants, green plants, vegetables, nursery plants, bushes and shrubs, palm trees and cut flowers, the wholesale flower trade, plant breeders, manufacturers of horticultural technology and garden equipment such as outdoor furniture, grills, equipment and tools, as well as retail service providers and IT specialists.

Hortivation by IPM ESSEN will run from June 13 to 15, 2016 at Messe Kalkar, in the Lower Rhine region, simultaneously with Flower Trials®.

Further information: www.hortivation.de