For Growmentum, it was an especially meaningful week.
We were grateful to sponsor Greenhouse Grower’s Future of Floriculture breakfast and participate in a thoughtful conversation with Michael Van Wingerden, Jeffrey Neese, Matt Fortmeyer, and moderator Brian Sparks. We were equally honored to see Growmentum’s rollout at Metrolina Greenhouses featured during the Horticultural Research Institute (HRI) Leadership Academy presentation, aptly titled “Elevating People, Not Replacing Them.”
To be both a sponsor and a topic of conversation was an extraordinary reminder of how far this work has come. More importantly, it affirmed something we have believed from the beginning: the technology driving floriculture forward will be most successful when it remains firmly focused on people.
Michael Van Wingerden spoke candidly about one of the industry’s greatest challenges: attracting the next generation of talent.
The truth is that many leadership roles in horticulture have not always been easy to sell. Consider the traditional expectations placed on a head grower: long days, 80-hour weeks, nights and weekends, and the persistent feeling that stepping away, even for an afternoon, could put the operation at risk.
That is not an attractive proposition for someone deciding where to build a career.
But what if we could tell a prospective head grower exactly how many hours the role typically requires in the greenhouse or nursery each week? What if that person could see where every team was working, understand what needed to be accomplished, and trust that expectations would remain clear even when they were not physically present?
What if, in the middle of spring, that grower could attend a son’s or grandson’s baseball game, confident that the team knew exactly what needed to be completed by the end of the day?
That is not merely an operational improvement. It is a fundamentally better quality of life.
Technology cannot eliminate the realities of a living, seasonal business. It can, however, replace uncertainty with visibility, distribute knowledge more effectively, and reduce an organization’s dependence on one person carrying the entire operation in their head.
This is how technology can help make floriculture a more sustainable and attractive career. Not by diminishing the importance of experienced leaders, but by making it possible for them to lead without sacrificing every other part of their lives.
Retiring the Language That Keeps Us Stuck
Brian Sparks and the Future of Floriculture panelists also challenged the industry to retire two familiar phrases:
“We tried that, and it didn’t work.”
And:
“We’ve always done it this way.”
Past experience should inform what we do next, but it should not define the limits of what is possible.
The conditions surrounding an earlier attempt may have changed. The technology may be better. The available information may be more complete. The organization may now have the people, resources, or readiness required to succeed.
With new knowledge, better technology, and an open mind, what can be reimagined today that seemed impossible yesterday?
Change is not only inevitable. A willingness to invest in thoughtful change is a sign of operational excellence. Evidence that an organization is committed to learning, improving, and evolving.
Growers are facing labor constraints, rising costs, tighter margins, shifting customer expectations, and increasing operational complexity. The answer cannot simply be to ask people to work harder inside systems that no longer serve them well. We must be willing to examine the work itself and reimagine how it can be done better.
From Better Visibility to Measurable Results
The value of that visibility was reinforced during the HRI Leadership Academy presentation.
Fred Higginbotham of Millcreek Gardens shared a powerful example from Growmentum’s work at Metrolina Greenhouses: the operation was able to predict its labor budget within 1% of planned hours while saving approximately 85,000 labor hours, the equivalent of roughly 40 full-time employees.
Predicting labor so closely is not simply a financial achievement. It gives leaders greater confidence in their plans. It allows teams to identify discrepancies earlier, deploy people more effectively, and distinguish between a realistic operational challenge and a preventable breakdown in execution.
The result is not just a better labor budget. It is a more predictable organization.
That predictability matters to everyone. Executives gain greater confidence in forecasts. Managers spend less time reacting to surprises. Supervisors have clearer direction. Employees better understand what is expected of them and how their work contributes to the larger operation.
Technology Should Make People More Powerful
At Growmentum, we believe technology should provide people with greater clarity, not greater anxiety.
The purpose of labor intelligence is not to reduce individuals to numbers on a dashboard. It is to help leaders and employees understand what is happening across an operation so they can make stronger decisions together.
When expectations are clear, employees understand what success looks like. When leaders can see where time is being spent, they can identify obstacles, improve planning, and allocate resources more effectively. When estimated labor requirements can be compared with actual performance, teams can learn from the work rather than relying on assumptions.
The goal is not surveillance. It is visibility.
The goal is not to replace the knowledge of experienced employees. It is to capture, share, and strengthen that knowledge across the organization.
The goal is not simply greater productivity. It is to create an environment where people have the information, tools, and support they need to succeed, and the ability to build a meaningful life beyond the greenhouse.
That is what “elevating people, not replacing them” means to us.
Change Requires Empathy
As the industry becomes more accepting of change and continuous improvement, we must also deepen our compassion for the people who resist it.
Resistance does not necessarily mean someone does not care, disagrees with the goal, or is unwilling to improve. Change can disrupt the routines, confidence, and hard-earned expertise that make people feel secure in their work. There is something deeply human, and neurological, about finding safety in the familiar.
For someone who has spent years mastering a process, a new system may initially feel less like an opportunity and more like a challenge to their competence or value. If leaders dismiss that response, they risk losing the very people whose experience is essential to making the change successful.
People-first innovation therefore requires more than selecting and implementing technology. It requires listening carefully, communicating clearly, creating psychological safety, and inviting employees to help shape what comes next.
Leaders must be able to answer not only, “What will this technology do?” but also:
The most effective change does not happen to people. It happens with them.
Building the Future With an Open Mind
We left Cultivate grateful, not only for the conversations, recognition, and new relationships, but also for the direction in which the industry is moving.
The questions are changing.
The conversation is moving beyond whether floriculture should embrace technology and toward how we can implement it responsibly, thoughtfully, and effectively. Growers are recognizing that continuous improvement is not an admission that the old way was wrong. It is evidence that an organization remains curious enough to discover a better way.
Yesterday’s limitations do not have to become tomorrow’s assumptions.
With new knowledge, new technology, and an open mind, we can reconsider what is possible across our operations. But we must do so with equal measures of ambition and empathy. Challenging the processes that hold organizations back while supporting the people being asked to move them forward.
We are deeply grateful to Greenhouse Grower, the Horticultural Research Institute, the panelists and leaders who shared their perspectives, and everyone who engaged with Growmentum throughout Cultivate’26.
It is an honor to help shape the conversation about technology’s role in the future of floriculture. It is an even greater privilege to demonstrate that the industry can pursue innovation, operational excellence, and measurable progress while keeping people at the center of it all.
Because the future of floriculture will not be built by technology alone.
It will be built by people who are willing to imagine what could be possible, and by leaders who give them the clarity, trust, and tools to make it real.