Every winter, truck after truck loaded with trees — magnolias, junipers, maples, and oaks — join a procession snaking from a staging area behind the M&T Bank Stadium to the loading bays of the Baltimore Convention Center. The drivers are here for the Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show, one of the biggest annual gatherings of plant people this side of the Appalachian trail.

Founded 53 years ago by regional state nursery and landscape associations, the location of the show used to rotate between Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. But since 1981, only a year after the Baltimore Convention Center opened, MANTS has happened exclusively in Baltimore.

“Our folks love Baltimore,” said organizer Vanessa Finney. “It’s easy to get to, it’s economical, it’s easy to get around, and it’s walkable so we don’t have to worry about shuttles.”

Last but not least, MANTS succeeds because the region’s temperate climate sustains such good growers. “When companies come, they’re sending buyers, they’re not just sending tire-kickers,” she said. “They mean business.”

The pandemic has been a double-edged sword. While other industries suffered shutdowns, nurseries and garden centers remained open as essential businesses. In a blow to Baltimore, MANTS itself was forced to go virtual in 2021, but the show has burst back to life. As the 2023 exhibit opened Wednesday, with more than 900 exhibitors from the nursery and nursery-related trades, every stall was sold. Aisles were like a Manhattan sidewalk at rush hour — if, that is, Manhattanites were given to stopping every couple of feet to hug one another.

It feels like a family affair, explained Finney, because it is. Her father ran it before her. Many of the exhibitors and garden center buyers are family businesses. At the stall of Babikow, the White Marsh-based suppliers of bedding plants to Ace Hardware, Tim Babikow is the fifth generation of Babikows to run a business so venerable that the road the company sits on bears the family name. Six of the exhibitors, all but one from this region (Tankard Nurseries, Star Roses and Plants, Ingleside Nurseries, Lancaster Farms, BFG Supply and Monrovia) have been showing their plants, greenhouse and irrigation supplies at MANTS every one of the show’s 53 years.

Plants to watch for

Those of us not in the trade but eager to know what’s in the plant pipeline will have to wait until the stock selected at the show by buyers appears at garden centers. Of the new introductions headed our way, look out for ‘Pop Star’ hydrangea, promoted for repeat bloom and manageable size for containers.

Of the classics done with a twist, Raemelton Farm from Frederick was promoting organically grown landscape tree stock while the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, from Mineral, Virginia, displayed heirloom and organic garden seeds selected especially for the mid-Atlantic’s climate zones and cuisines.

The importance of MANTS to largely rural growers is obvious. Yet Finney is proud, too, of what the show brings to the City of Baltimore — an estimated 12,000 attendees and a more than $5 million bump to the local economy in less than a week. “We used to have an exhibitor reception,” she laughs, saying they gave it up because exhibitors preferred to take their clients out to dinner.

Out on the showroom floor, Foxborough Nursery staffer Mary Anna Barratt said that while they took Massachusetts buyers to Canton the night before, she’s thinking clients from New Hampshire might enjoy Hampden. “We get to introduce our clients to orange crushes and oyster shooters and all Baltimore has to offer,” she said.

Even after 43 years of hosting MANTS at the Baltimore Convention Center, Finney never ceases to be amazed by the impact of the sudden influx of plant people on Baltimore. “We go out to dinner, and anywhere we go, it’s filled with our folks.”

Emily Green is a freelance writer based in Baltimore. Her writing on urban gardening may be found at www.chanceofrain.com.