The IPPS is a select group of plant propagators now organized internationally. An group of approximately 70 propagators met in Cleveland, Ohio, USA in November 1951 to form our Society which has now grown to more than 2400 individual members affiliated in one of eight regional organizations.

The motto of our Society is To Seek and To Share. Members are expected to seek and share information with one another by attending meetings, tours and placing articles in IPPS publications. This has been the strength of IPPS as it enters its 6th decade.

Its organisational structure is that of regions, based on plant interests or groupings of similar climatic zones, rather than on political or state boundaries. There are regions in Great Britain and Ireland, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, North America, Japan and South Africa.

The New Zealand Region of the International Plant Propagators' Society held its first meeting in 1971. It comprised a group of like-minded nurserymen, propagators, researchers and plants men who espoused the "seek and share" philosophy. New Zealand was a Chapter-At-Large until 1982 when it became a Region in its own right with representation and voting rights on the International Board. Since then the Society has gone from strength to strength and has a membership in excess of 200.

Each region is self-governing with a President, two or more Vice-Presidents, Secretary/Treasurer, Editor, Historian, committee members with direct responsibilities and an International Director who represents the ragion on the International Board.

IPPS has a strong recruitment policy of expansion with objectives to recruit members from other areas of the world and to create new regions where they do not yet exist. It offers members access to a wealth of experience and knowledge – hence the motto to ‘Seek and Share’.

There are regional prizes and awards, lecture and nursery tours, practical workshops and an annual conference. There is a strong social element to IPPS and this helps foster long term relationships between members, to the benefit of all.