The 1998 Census of Horticulture Specialties tallied sales of $2.38 million from 29 Wyoming operations. Retail sales accounted for $1.64 million or 69 percent of the total while wholesale sales accounted for the remaining $737,000. For the 1998 Census of Horticulture Specialties, a horticultural operation was defined as any place that grew and sold $10,000 or more of horticultural specialty products during 1998. These products included floriculture, nursery, and other specialty crops such as sod, mushrooms, food crops produced under glass or other protection, transplants of commercial production, Christmas trees, and seeds.

In Wyoming, the annual bedding/garden plants category had sales totaling $1.10 million or 46 percent of the total horticultural sales. The turfgrass sod, sprigs or plugs category totaled $577,000 in sales or 24 percent of the total. The other categories with sales in Wyoming included hanging baskets, potted flowering plants, nursery plants, and foliage plants.

United States: Producers of horticultural sales accounted for $10.6 billion in sales in 1998, up from $4.79 billion in 1988, the last horticultural census year. Christmas trees were not included in the 1988 census. Foriculture (bedding and garden plants, potted flowering plants, foliage plants, cut flowers, and cut cultivated greens) accounted for 42 percent of the sales.

California topped the sales charts, capturing slightly over 21 percent of the U.S. total. Next among states in order were Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Nationally, horticultural product sales accounted for over 10 percent of the total U.S. crop sales and ranked fourth behind only corn for grain, soybeans, and fruits, nuts, and berries in terms of total value of sales.

For full details on horticultural and other agricultural statistics available from NASS, visit the NASS homepage at www.usda.gov/nass/.