Thursday 4 July 2013

Laguna Team Sponsors P. Allen Smith Garden2Blog Event

The Laguna team travelled to Arkansas May 7th-May 8thto visit the home of P. Allen Smith and to present at the third annual Garden2Blog event. The event hosted at Allen’s Garden Home Retreat at Moss Mountain Farm brings together 30 of the most influential garden bloggers from around the country for two days of hands-on product demonstrations from some of the leading gardening and lifestyle brands. The bloggers at this year’s event have a combined reach of well over one hundred thousand followers. They write for some of the most influential gardening web based media outlets such as HGTV, HGTVGardens and About.com, as well as traditional media such as Southern Living, Coastal Living, Family Circle and numerous television programs.  



The event itself is an opportunity for Allen’s key partners to present their newest products to the group. The format of the event is traditionally a 45 minute product presentation, which gives the bloggers an opportunity to test drive new equipment or learn about new product innovations.At this years event the Laguna team demonstrated how easily a pond could be installed and landscaped. 



Not content with following the traditional presentation format, the Laguna team’s time with the bloggers was broken down into three separate presentations over the two days.
Damian Hall kicked of the presentation by introducing the bloggers to the team and the Laguna brand. Dan Berg then took over and explained the design and construction process. The bloggers enthusiastically joined the Laguna team to finish laying stone around the pond and preparing the edges for landscaping.
Part two of the presentation was led by Chris Thier. Chris took the bloggers through the ins and outs of filtration and led the bloggers through the installation process of our Max Flo pumps that powered the waterfall stream and the Pressure Flo filter and Skimmer box.
The third and final presentation was kicked off by Allen turning on the waterfall! This event was quickly overshadowed by Mike Zmina’s water gardening and landscaping presentation where he explained the important role that water plants play in the ecosystem of ponds. The highlight of his presentation was when he turned the bloggers loose and coached them through the process of the planting baskets and floating plant bags that would be installed in the pond. 



This year’s event was a tremendous success. Before the team even left we began receiving information requests from bloggers and editors from HGTVGardens and HomeDepot.com. In the post event survey produced by the PAS group the Laguna “Pond Building” presentation was voted the best partner presentation of the event.