As you dig into this issue of Landscape Management, there is probably one question that is on the top of your mind, or at least somewhere on your list: “Why the heck is there a banana driving a mower on the cover of LM?”
You’re not wrong for wondering, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t ask pretty much the same thing when we began discussing our plans for this month’s cover and how we’d tie it into our reporting on Equip Exposition 2025, which is Oct. 21-24 in Louisville, Ky. I mean, there were a lot of ridiculous concepts we could have pursued for this month’s cover, but a piece of fruit checking out the outdoor demo area at Equip Expo is way up there.
But as I hope you’ve already figured out, there was a definite method to our madness, and it went beyond us just wanting to have a little bit of fun with this month’s cover (which, I hope you’ll agree, was a goal achieved). Jesse Cole, the creator of the wildly popular Savannah Bananas baseball team, will be the keynote speaker at Equip Expo this year, and he credits an unwavering focus on chasing and creating fans instead of customers as the key to his endeavor’s success.
“We gravitate toward what we enjoy, what gives us energy and where we have fun. I’m obsessed with making sure that people are having fun and enjoying what they do,” he told the podcast “Rounding the Bases with Joel Goldberg.”
That mindset definitely resonated with all of us on the LM team. Injecting fun into everything we do is at the core of how we want to operate. We are laser-focused on providing our audience with the most authoritative news and information in the industry, of course, but we want to do that in as fun and inviting a way as we possibly can.
And I’d hope Cole would agree that putting a banana riding a mower on the cover of our biggest issue of the year is about as fun and inviting as you can get.
Since we were already heading down that rabbit hole, we decided to take a similar fun-first approach to a couple of other standout sections in this month’s issue. First, you’ll find that our annual Profitable Products section, which begins on page 49, is similarly banana-themed, featuring a bunch (see what I did there?) of LM’s top partners sharing the products and services that can help landscape pros get the job done better, faster and more profitably.
Then, in this month’s cover story, our annual Showstoppers feature on the top products you’ll see on the exhibit floor at Equip Expo, we lean into another fun theme emerging from this year’s Equip Expo — the family reunion.
More than a few folks have referred to Equip Expo as the green industry’s annual reunion, and that’s a tough characterization to argue with. In my limited visits to Louisville, one of the true highlights has been the friendships that I’ve gotten to renew and the industry colleagues I’ve had the pleasure of reconnecting with. It’s like the best of a big family reunion without having to deal with crazy Uncle Darrell.
So, you’ll see the idea of a reunion throughout not only our Showstoppers feature, but also the story on one of the can’t-miss highlights of LM’s educational sessions in Louisville, a fireside chat between our very own Seth Jones and Larry Ryan, the recently retired founder of Ryan Lawn and Tree. It makes an appearance in our look at Hardscape North America, which takes place at the same time as Equip Expo. And during the week of Equip Expo, you’ll see it in our staff’s extensive real-time reporting that you’ll be able to find on our website and through our various social media channels.
It may have started as a crazy idea — and may still be a crazy idea to some of you reading this — but we think the whole banana-riding-a-mower thing ended up hitting the mark in a fun, engaging way. We hope you find it equally a-peeling (sorry, not sorry), and I hope many of you will find time to stop by our booth on the exhibit floor at Equip Expo (No. 4019) while in Louisville.
