Two Prominent Plant Experts Join GIYP.com

Woodbine, MD – June 2004 -- Author, photographer and tropicals authority Kirsten Llamas and aquatics expert Richard Schuck have joined the Green Industry Yellow Pages (www.giyp.com) team of leading plant aficionados, perennials expert Dr. Allan Armitage and Dr. Michael Dirr, the nation’s leading authority in trees and shrubs.

GIYP, the green industry’s first and last resource on everything lawn and garden, has created the Virtual Plant Tag, a database providing a broad range of information on plants including origin, sun/water requirements, growth range, color, season and foliage. This group will be developing and expanding the information in the database.

“We want to help buyers, B2B or B2C, be more informed and confident about their buying decisions,” says GIYP founder and CEO Steve Cissel. “Experts like Llamas and Shuck help us meet and exceed our vision of being the leading find it be found resource for the green industry.”

When combined with the search capability of www.giyp.com, Virtual Plant Tags connects buyers with sellers, enabling users to locate garden centers or growers who sell that specific plant in their area.

“Customers simply point and click their way to find the plants that they want and then click on the link for suppliers who sell them,” explains Cissel. “This brings an educated customer, ready to buy, to the virtual doorstep. Sellers can even have the VPT seamlessly worked into their own website and provide a value added service to their loyalty program.

Only GIYP.com offers a resource that allows users to search for a specific plant locally while at the same time tapping into the knowledge of experts such as Llamas and Shuck.

Llamas agrees. “The web is ideal for green industry professionals to communicate among themselves and with customers,” says Llamas of her association with GIYP. com. “And it’s of great importance for growers to have a reliable and trustworthy site backed by people who have done their homework.”

Adds Shuck, “The Virtual Plant Tag search utility offers information on a broad spectrum of plant material quickly, making the customer’s buying decision easier.”

Llamas, whose 2003 Tropical Flowering Plants documented more than 1400 tropical and subtropical flowering trees, shrubs, vines and herbaceous plants and won a Garden Writer’s Association Garden Globe Award, holds a masters degree in tropical botany, and has provided numerous plant identification updates to the The Kampong, the prestigious National Botanical Garden located on Biscayne Bay, Florida.

Shuck has spent over 50 of his 65 years in the field of aquatic plants, and founded the Maryland Aquatic Nurseries in Jarrettsville, Maryland in 1986. Along with the Charleston Aquatic Nursery in Charleston, SC, and the Indian River Lily Co. in Vero Beach, Florida, both founded by Shuck and his twin sons, these nurseries are noted for growing the most varied selection of aquatic plants in America.

GIYP.com was founded in 1999 as a directory utility for the green industry to bridge the gap between the message and the target audience by influencing undecided buyers and driving decisive buyers to suppliers. It currently provides information on over 150,000 businesses and over 25,000 plants. Visit www.giyp.com or e-mail at inquire@giyp.com. Phone: 888-999-5133 or call the Garden Media Group at (610) 388-9330 for more information.