Essen: The German Juggernaut

John Friel

This Space recently spent a week rattling around Germany during IPM Essen, the world’s largest horticultural trade show, with colleague Al Mueller. If you follow Chris Beytes’ electronic updates, as many clearly do, you already know this. At the even more recent New England Grows show, I was greeted daily with “Hey, we saw you online! How was Germany?”

Well, Germany and my first IPM Essen were wonderful, thanks. Here, in no particular order, are some impressions thereof.

IPM’s scale is nigh-overwhelming. It goes on and on, aisle after aisle, hall after hall. The numbers: 56,500 visitors. More than 1,600 exhibitors from 49 countries. 105,000 square meters—almost 26 acres—of exhibit space. You could merge MANTS, Cultivate and FarWest and not match the size.

The quality is even more impressive. As Chris observed, you really had to hunt to find a wilted leaf or spotted flower. One or two booths stood out because they were, well, ordinary. The plants were nothing special, the presentation unimaginative. Those exhibits would look right at home at a U.S. trade show. At Essen, they were remarkable due to their utter unremarkability.

Despite what you’ve heard, not everybody is multilingual. In areas frequented by tourists and business travelers, we always found someone who understood English. Elsewhere, not. Patience, good humor and a little pantomime usually prevailed. Al’s smartphone translation app helped, but didn’t always work due to signal drops.

Europeans can be refreshingly pragmatic. Take toilets. We say “bathroom” or “restroom,” but why? We don’t take showers or naps there. In Germany, the sign simply says “Toiletten.”

Related topic: Do Europeans have extra bladders? There’s an appalling paucity of lavatories in the huge Messe Essen complex and their location is a closely guarded secret. A sign leads you through a door, but then the trail goes cold: no more bathroom signs and no sign of a bathroom. Once, I climbed three staircases, purely on instinct, to find the elusive loo. The Stadium Pal company should book a booth.

Europeans, inexplicably, love carbonated “sparkling” water, a.k.a. soda sans flavor. You take a sip and wonder if your taste buds died. Our Mulheim hotel offered sparkling water or still water in bottles labeled “Water with gas” and “Water without gas.” Yum. Fortunately, the beers make up for it.

Europe likes a little fizz in its marketing, too. Strategically camouflaged nudes of both genders were depicted, billboard-size. She hawked hydrangeas, he peddled flowerpots.

Essen showcased trends we’ve begun to emulate here. Multi-purpose plants, fresh marketing for fresh edibles, cute planters for urbanites and kids, painted or dyed succulents. But some bizarre offerings I hope never to see again. Would a life-sized ceramic gorilla enhance your garden? Would you buy a fur tree as a holiday centerpiece? That’s not a typo: picture a tabletop Tannenbaum draped with faux snow and thick white, Yeti-like hair. Creepy.

A universal lesson of Old World sojourns is that American history is very young. Our cherished colonial relics are still wet behind the eaves compared to the ancient timber-framed inns of Mulheim and Essen. Like England’s “black & whites,” there’s nary a plumb wall or square corner in them. They sag, bulge and creak. But they’ve sheltered humans for more than five centuries and I’d not bet against their surviving another five.

I hope to return, armed with a rudimentary grasp of the language. Though cluttered with inputs from a gallimaufry of other tongues, English is at heart Germanic. Ergo, many German words look and/or sound like their English doppelgangers. By the time we left, I was starting to catch on. See you there. Guten tag! GP

John Friel is marketing manager for Emerald Coast Growers and a freelance writer.