I was lured to Alaska by peonies.

You probably didn’t think it was possible to use the words Peonies and Alaska in the same sentence, but guess what? There are acres and acres of peony fields, flourishing in June and July as far north as Fairbanks (Latitude 64). A little further south, peonies bloom in Homer until August and even early September. The cool thing about this chilly state is that an intrepid group of farmers is making a cut flower industry possible. These flower lovers have seized the opportunity and created a market for their lovely crops at the exact same time when a huge percentage of weddings takes place in the Lower 48.

It’s a sweet spot you rarely see these days. After learning about Alaska’s emerging peony scene in 2011, I set my sights on a first-person trip. In late July, I spent one week there, logging more than 1,500 miles on Alaska’s highways and byways (and a few dirt roads to nowhere!), visiting 15 peony farms and meeting with dozens of wonderful people behind the blooms. I came home totally enthralled with the can-do mindset of flower farmers everywhere, especially in Alaska where no one expects you to grow anything except those oversize cabbages that win blue ribbons at the state fair.

Here’s why it’s so exciting:

Peonies are one of the top bridal flowers in the country, according to The Knot and other industry sources. Yet here in the lower 48 states, peonies peak in late May and early June. If you are a bride yearning to hold a bodacious bouquet of peonies on your special day in July, August or September. . . you are simply out of luck. The next chance for peonies comes in the fall, around October, when they bloom on Australia and New Zealand flower farms – and have to be shipped to you at outrageous expense and a serious carbon foot print.

So when the folks in Alaska, inspired by the research of Pat Holloway, a professor in the department of high altitude agriculture at U of A/Fairbanks and the Georgeson Botanic Garden, discovered they could grow peonies and harvest them in July and August, well, they literally created a brand-new seasonal flower crop. The marketplace has responded with a voracious appetite for the pale pink, coral, cream, wine and hot pink blooms. Brides and their floral designers are jumping for joy – and Alaska has its first agricultural export crop. Not fish. Not oil. But PEONIES!

This micro-flower story has taken place in less than a decade, gradually at first, as a few folks planted a few hundred peonies on an acre or two. Then, armed with Pat’s research and information gleaned from her workshops on growing and harvesting, more growers joined the movement. Like many perennials, peonies take at least three years to become productive, so it has only been in the last year or two that significant quantities of blooms have been cut and shipped out of state.

The numbers are exploding, though – and an informal statewide survey suggests that about 100,000 stems were shipped this summer. There are about 150 members of the young Alaska Peony Growers Association, with about one-third of them actively growing and marketing their flowers. The rest are just getting started, ordering peony roots by the thousands and patiently tending to the plants until they explode in beauty (and quantity) over the next several seasons.

If you are wondering “what’s so special?” about these flowers, I can only tell you that there’s some kind of fairy dust in the soil, air, sunlight and altitude of Alaska that adds up to robust, healthy and vivid flowers. Some have stems like you’ve never seen before – 30-inches long or more. The foliage is healthy and true green; the petal colors are intense when you want them to be and subtly quiet when that’s preferred (in other words, better than the catalog photos!). These plants are extraordinarily responsive to the 22-hours-of-sunshine in the land of the midnight sun – and the sunlight seems to be that secret ingredient for the flowers’ success.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are many ways that these luscious blooms make their way from North Pole, Palmer, Soldotna or Homer to the designers and florists in New York City or Los Angeles (and many places in between). Yes, there is a carbon footprint to shipping peonies on an airplane from Anchorage to the rest of the United States.

But as Pat Holloway pointed out to me:  “For years, I had been saying, Isn’t there something we can stick in a box and ship to someone on all those (empty) planes?” You see, when combined, the international airports in Anchorage and Fairbanks are ranked as the third-largest air cargo transport stop on the globe. The combination of superior cut flowers — available nowhere else on the planet for nearly 10 weeks — and the necessary transportation infrastructure to deliver those flowers to the world adds up to floral magic of a different sort.

The growers typically harvest to order, fulfilling online requests, phone calls from anxious DIY brides, faxes from desperate floral designers — all who have joined the peony gold rush. Alaska has what they need. The flowers are harvested in the cool mornings or late in the day, stored in buckets of water and placed inside coolers large or small. The packaging is thoughtfully done. Stems of peonies “in bud” are swathed in soft quilt batting and arranged carefully in long boxes where there’s space for an ice pack or two. Then off they go, sent overnight so the recipient can enjoy his or her flowers as quickly as 24 hours after they were cut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peonies are pretty remarkable flowers. They can be “dry-stored” after having been cut when in bud (some growers call this the marshmallow stage; others, the cotton ball stage).

Pat’s research has evaluated the relationship between time stored at this stage and the vase life of the blooms once they’re placed in water. You can read some of her research here. One study found that “under optimum conditions, ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ peonies lasted up to 15 days in a vase, 8-9 days from bud break to full bloom, and an additional 5-6 days in full bloom. Chilling is the most important attribute to long vase life.”

Yes, there is an acknowledged carbon footprint associated with shipping Alaska’s peonies to other states. But the energy and expense to do so is significantly lower than the alternative (such as importing from New Zealand or Holland). And to me, here’s the bottom line: It’s exciting to support a new, viable domestic flower industry that’s meeting demand, filling a need, and bringing beauty to the rest of us.

When I was visiting Fairbanks, Pat hosted a barbecue for me to meet several peony farmers in the Fairbanks area. A few local officials came, as well, intrigued to learn about the economic development story under their noses. Later, Pat shared an email one of them had sent to his constituents:

“Two things make Alaska uniquely situated to become the single seasonal source for peonies. First, nowhere else but Alaska can farmers grow crops of peonies that bloom through the summer, especially for late summer weddings. Traditionally, there have been no peonies available for sale between July and September. Second, Anchorage provides critical shipping as the world’s largest handler of international air cargo. These two aspects give Alaska 100% exclusive access to this worldwide market. . . .

“This is just the beginning for growers in Alaska. There is a demand for tens of thousands of stems worldwide and we are in (an) excellent position to develop this outstanding and diversifying product.”

How Can You Find Alaska Peonies?

The Alaska Peony Growers Association has a one-stop web site in which you can connect with dozens of growers. Of course, the season is pretty much over, but it’s worth contacting the peony farms to get on their mailing list and ask about pre-ordering peonies for the 2013 season. These farmers are so happy to help you – so excited to know that their flowers are bringing floral beauty to the rest of the country. I encourage designers to make those important contacts now so that next year, when wedding season rolls around, you’ll have access to superior American-grown peonies during the busiest wedding months.

 

Creating a magazine story involves a lot of moving parts.

Last year, I worked with a huge team of talented people to produce a feature story for Country Gardens magazine called “Art by Hand,” which appears in the current Summer 2012 issue. Editor James Baggett had the original vision for this story — and he asked me to produce and write a group of short profiles that together tell the story of craftspeople and artists whose work is inspired by the garden, wildlife and nature.

Our starting point was Dirt Couture, the online garden emporium started in 2010 by Cindy McNatt. Many of you know Cindy for her daily updates called Dirt du Jour, which is a fun, g0-to site for all the latest gossip about plants, books, people and trends in the gardening world.

Cindy suggested several of the artists whose work is featured on Dirt Couture, and since photographer Laurie Black and I are now both located in the Pacific Northwest, we decided to focus on three folks in Oregon and Washington. We photographed their portraits and work last July.

Last September we headed to Southern California for a visit to Cindy’s gorgeous garden and the world headquarters of Dirt Couture (aka, her kitchen table!). Pulling together all these separate pieces and making them into an 8-page feature for Country Gardens was way more work than just visiting a beautiful garden and spending 24 hours photographing it. But I love teaming up with Laurie and her husband Mark King, and things always seem to have a good flow when we’re on location together.

So you can read the story here — or, better yet, pick up a copy at the newsstand. Laurie’s photos are amazing (and PS, she also photographed the cover of the same Summer issue to illustrate my feature about The Herbfarm Restaurant’s Basil Banquet. That’s another fun story!).

Here are my favorite out-takes from “location.”

Bob Denman of Red Pig Garden Tools in Boring, Oregon, is one of the country’s last blacksmiths making hand-forged gardening tools and implements. You can learn more about his work here:

Artist Blenda Tyvoll uses mixed media to cover her canvases with soulful trees, inspired by the Oregon farm where she and her family grow Christmas trees! Check out more of her work here.

Potter and artist Marybeth Sommers of the Seattle area has adapted the traditional Raku method to create bird houses and bird feeders. They are charming! We photographed Marybeth and her work at the Dunn Garden in Seattle. Thanks to the folks there for making that happen! Marybeth’s studio is called Ring of Fire Pottery.

Finally, we spent a day with Cindy McNatt, creator of Dirt Couture. Visit the site here and learn more about all of these artists, plus nearly 100 more artisans and crafters. You won’t be disappointed!

The end! Now we’re busy planning all the stories to be created this summer for 2013 issues~

Promoting the Slow Flower movement means one may have to travel. I realize that’s a huge contradiction, but that’s life – a series of choices, right? I rationalize my airplane journeys by trying to cram as many events into one destination as possible. Not exactly logical, but it makes me feel more efficient and keeps me away from home for a shorter period of time.

Earlier this month, I headed to San Francisco for Mother’s Day weekend. It started when Flora Grubb and Susie Nadler, two of the superstars of The 50 Mile Bouquet, invited me to be part of the Mother’s Day events at Flora Grubb Gardens. It was the perfect excuse to combine a visit to meet my own mom (and dad) in San Francisco. And then Baylor Chapman of Lila B. Flowers, another superstar of our book, invited me to be part of her activities as part of the SF Made Week. We filled those 48 hours to the brim with flowers, friends and family. A special thanks to Sophia Markoulakis, food and garden writer, for featuring The 50 Mile Bouquet and the Mother’s Day book-signings in her article for the San Francisco Chronicle, ‘Slow-flower’ movement’s power sprouts with new book.

Here are some of the photos from the trip:

 

 

 

Ingredients:

Vintage green fluted vase (flea market find)

Aromatic lilacs from Oregon Coastal Flowers (Tillamook, Oregon)

Very fragrant white sweet peas, velvety lamb’s ears and acid-green nicotiana – all from Janet Foss at J. Foss Garden Flowers.

The setting: my garden. I perched the arrangement on my wonderful weathered garden chair.

 

 

Eco-conscious flower farmer and floral designer Kelly Sullivan of Seattle’s Botanique Flowers arrived with this gorgeous bouquet at a lunch I hosted last week. I had to share it!

Here’s what she included in the diminutive urn:

From her own garden: purple-blue grape hyacinths (Muscari); pale pink and purple flowers from a groundcover called Pulmonaria; geranium foliage; and variegated foliage/scented pale-pink flowers from a shrub called Daphne odora.

From the garden center: It was too early to harvest these from her own backyard, so Kelly bought potted anemone plants and clipped several of their romantic black-centered flowers in indigo and dark pink to add to the bouquet.

Everything is stablized with a small piece of chicken wire inside the vase, which allowed the designer to get the full, cascading effect she wanted. I was smitten!

So, when we had a talk and book-signing at Ravenna Gardens on Sunday, I brought along her vase to add to the book display. It’s simply sublime!

THANK YOU, Kelly!!!

 

Read about the 10-year journey of a garden memoir – from the seed of an idea to its release by a top New York publisher

Many garden writers whose work I greatly admire have privately shared their disappointment that our genre isn’t seriously viewed as a literary subject when compared to, say, sports or food. Every twelve months we witness the publication of an anthology titled something like “The Best American Sports Writing, 2011” or “The Best Food Writing, 2010.” There are books of “bests” for Science and Travel writing. Yes, even Nature and Environment writing has been compiled by publishers, but those topics aren’t the same as the subject of the garden. Sadly, garden writing rarely receives credit for its importance as an art form.

And yet, there is wonderful work in our circles. And one of the very best pieces of literary garden writing I’ve ever read was just published this week and released by the venerable imprint Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It’s a memoir called “Into the Garden with Charles,” by the late Clyde Phillip “Skip” Wachsberger, an award-winning artist twice honored by Garden Writers Association.

Skip’s book is beautiful both for its language and for the 14 full-color watercolor illustrations interspersed through its 224 pages. FSG’s press material describes this work as a “sweet and inspiring story about art, love, and gardening set against the backdrop of New York City and the author’s noteworthy garden outside a three-hundred-year-old house in the tiny village of Orient, Long Island.”

For those of us who knew and admired Skip, his book can be viewed as one man’s life work. It’s a highly personal and yet universal story of love, friendship, and the way the garden can nurture a lonely soul.

When I spoke by telephone with Jonathan Galassi, FSG’s president and publisher, and asked what prompted him to acquire Skip’s memoir, he said: “I thought it was a very genuine and beautiful piece of work; very touching and real and unlike anything else I’d read.”

As I listened to those words, tears welled up in my eyes. I thought: How pleased Skip would have been to hear them. We lost Skip last November, when cancer took his life. That his writings, paintings and garden survive is to be cherished by those who loved him and by anyone who reads this memoir.

For fellow garden writers, Skip’s creative story is an inspiring one, much of it documented in the pages of his memoir. His manuscript took a decade to be cultivated – from an original garden book idea to its release by one of the publishing world’s very best imprints.

Skip and I had many conversations over the years about how he reshaped his writing — from descriptions of plants and place into an intimate narrative of his own life. To better describe the story of this special book, I turned to the people closely involved with “Into the Garden With Charles.” In addition to interviewing Mr. Galassi, I spoke by phone with Charles Dean, Skip’s surviving husband, and Karen Braziller, his friend, neighbor and longtime writing coach/editor. They graciously shared details of Skip’s writing journey with me.

GARDENING, WRITING AND PAINTING

 

In theatre, someone who sings, dances and acts is called a “triple threat,” so I guess you could say that as a creative individual, especially in garden writing circles, Skip had his own remarkable set of triple talents — gardening, writing and painting.

His gifts converge in and enliven the pages of “Into the Garden with Charles.” From the opening lines when he wonders if all that makes him happy is just a dream – his beloved but antiquated home and garden, his always-cheerful dog Rover, and his charming, Southern-born partner Charles – Skip draws the reader into his magical world in which the impossible is always possible, if you only believe.

“Into the Garden with Charles” tells of a wonderful life filled with a love for opera, art, plants and friends. That Skip yearned for a companion with whom to share all of it is a familiar narrative. And just when it seems like he’ll never find the love of his life, living as he does in a remote Long Island village populated with couples and having just passed his half-century birthday, Skip meets Charles.

“Every garden tells a story. Ours tells a love story,” he wrote. And you will fall in love with both Skip and Charles, as well as Rover, their loyal Havanese, and all of their plant-obsessed garden adventures. Gardeners will especially relate to the ends to which these two men go to develop an otherworldly backyard where every tree, vine or flower has its own back-story!

For those who love to read lush (but not flowery) language, you will find the narrative delightful. And like a child’s storybook from days gone by, this one is adorned with beautiful watercolor illustrations, painted by the author. Allow yourself to be drawn into Skip’s dream world. You will be touched by his wisdom, kind spirit and optimism — all of it a gift from him to the reader!

READ MORE…

My friend Bill called me yesterday to tell me that Seattle Met magazine included me in their “Perfect Party” feature for April.

“WHAT????” I asked. Clearly, this happened without my knowledge – but it’s quite exciting. And amusing! I’ve never before been illustrated! I wonder who put them up to this?

Here’s the story:

March 20th is just around the corner – thankfully! And blooms are everywhere – under our noses, poking through the soil, erupting from branches, and filling our vases. Hurrah!

Here are some of the hints of spring that have come my way:

1. A DIY designer gets inspired by her own garden’s bounty. Earlier this week, an email with this charming photo appeared in my in-box from Kay Christie, who attended one of my demonstrations at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show last month. Thanks so much for sharing, Kay! And for the kind words. Keep designing!

I wanted to show you an arrangement I just made with cuttings from my garden. I really loved your demo at the flower and garden show. It gave me the idea for this. I also used chicken wire inside to hold the stems. Thanks do much for the inspirational talk.

2. A talented gardener clips goodies from her backyard for a special arrangement. Like Kay, Woodinville, Wash., gardener Peggy Shelley harvests beautiful floral ingredients from her landscape. I visited Peggy and her husband Al Shelley (also a gifted gardener) earlier this month to interview them for an upcoming Better Homes & Gardens article about their garden (the feature will appear in the August 2012 edition). There was a gorgeous bouquet on the kitchen counter and of course, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It included pink-flowering Japanese pieris, bi-colored pink-and-green euphorbia stems, golden thread branch cypress sprigs and lemon-yellow privet foliage. Peggy told me something quite inspiring – and I’m going to remind myself of her passion every time I head into my own garden:

The biggest satisfaction of my garden comes from making a bouquet and giving it to a friend.

3. Local flowers arrive just in time for a Chicago designer. Last Sunday, I was in Chicago to speak at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show (thanks, Bill Aldrich, for inviting me!). I called Lynn Fosbender, who owns Pollen, a sweet, ec0-conscious floral studio, and asked if she could bring a bouquet to my talk and also pass out her business cards. I wanted to showcase Lynn as a home-town resource for Chicago area floral customers, and let them know about her intentional design philosophy of using local flowers whenever possible. “I’d love to come,” she said. “But March 11th is still pretty early. I probably won’t be able to find local flowers from my sources.”

Then, to my delight, Lynn showed up with a vase of the most stunning vibrant orange-and-green parrot tulips I’d ever seen! “Spring has been mild here – and one of my local growers called me on Friday to let me know his tulips were ready to harvest,” Lynn said. What a wonderful treat. I wrote a post about Lynn when I first met her in 2012. Here’s a link to that story. I was so impressed with her vision for her business:

For several years I thought I would like to own a full-service flower shop that was eco-friendly. I knew if anyone should do it, it should be me.

4. See what my own garden yielded this week. I’ve been making a local and seasonally-inspired floral arrangement every single week for the past 20 weeks (since the first week of November). It’s part of my plan to create a book or blog called 52-Weeks-of-Local-Flowers. It’s been fun, creative, and very educational to discover what I can source from local growers, local farmers’ markets, and of course, my own backyard.

Yellow and green are the theme of this week! I used two types of euphorbia (dipping the cut stems in boiling water helped “seal” the ends so the milky white sap didn’t drain into the vase); two types of daffodils that the prior owners of our home planted on the parking strip along the street; lots of bright-yellow-flowering forsythia; and some lovely variegated foliage from the scented geranium plant I’ve been babysitting in my garage under the shop lights. Everything came together nicely in a small green-glazed vase and a vintage flower frog held the stems in place.

Today, strangely, it’s snowing in Seattle. I soaked my sweet pea seeds in water last night and I plan to plant them in flats in the garage today. I had wanted to weed and prep the beds, but really? I think I’ll wait and see if it warms up a bit! Happy Almost-Spring!

SUNSET GIVEAWAY

I’ve drawn names of all those who answered my question below and here are the five “winners” of a FREE copy of The New Sunset Western Garden Book, courtesy of Sunset. The question: What is your favorite ornamental landscaping plant (shrub, grass, perennial, etc.) to harvest for a cut bouquet? yielded these winners/answers:

Jen Y: peonies

Paula: bunnytails grass blossoms or pilotus joey

Carol: Peonies, nandina branches and berry clusters

Nicole: hellebores

Kim: dahlias

CONGRATULATIONS! You will soon be hearing from Dana Smith of Sunset Publishing, who needs your mailing address.

I recently had a chance to interview Kathleen Brenzel, garden editor for Sunset magazine – and editor of Sunset’s new, 2012 edition of The New Sunset Western Garden Book,  (Sunset Books, $34.95 for flexible binding, $44.95 for hardcover), a “bible” for western gardeners.

Whether you’re new to gardening or have logged many planting seasons with your hands in soil, it’s the single best go-to reference for garden-makers in our region. As chunky as the Yellow Pages, this essential guide to the West’s ornamental and edible landscape has been around for 80 years. I’ve owned every version since the early 1990s, including the most recent 2007 edition, which is dog-eared from much use.

When I got my hands on the just-released ninth edition last month, I thought: How different can this really be? I asked Kathy to walk us through the book’s 768 pages:

How did you go about updating this edition? Before we did anything else, we assembled a panel with landscape architects, horticulture educators from UC Berkeley and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, nursery people and new graduates who had used our last edition as a textbook. The recent grads told us that in order to make “The New Sunset Western Garden Book” relevant, it had to have a digital component. They said: “We go everywhere with our smartphones, so we want to be able to take a photo of a plant we see on the hiking trail and look it up instantly.”

How did you go digital? Now you can take the best of Sunset with you to the garden center, nursery and your yard. You can get the free mobile edition of this book’s Plant Finder on your smartphone. (Search for Sunset Plant Finder.) With it, you can access more than 2,000 plants — and search by plant name, ZIP Code, climate zone, sun and water requirements, and type. There’s a companion online Plant Finder that lets you browse by color, height, spread and special needs.

How else is the book interactive? The last section of “The New Sunset Western Garden Book” is a practical guide. We’ve added a camera icon on the bottom of the pages, pointing you to corresponding videos on our website. It’s nice to read directions on planting a tomato in a pot and then watch a video of one of our editors showing you exactly how to do that.

What are the other major updates? This is the first edition to feature plant photos exclusively, rather than illustrations. There are more than 2,000 plant photos. We also updated the entire plant encyclopedia. That was the biggest job in the whole book. Every plant was reappraised, and we added many new varieties now available in nurseries. We went to growers all over the west and compared our existing plant database with what they are now offering; we asked what they thought we should include and why.

How many new plants did you add? The new book has 9,000 plants, up from 8,000 in the last edition. We also had to check the botany of every plant because botanists are constantly reclassifying plants.

What can new gardeners gain from the book? The section “Gardening Start to Finish” is more instinctive for the beginner. We walk them through the whole growing process from A to Z. We also have practical sections on gardening for wildlife and native plants, growing herbs and water-wise plants.

What can more experienced gardeners gain from the new book? The plant encyclopedia is filled with tip boxes of additional information – like how to propagate a sweet potato vine or when to cut ornamental grasses for the vase.

You have more edibles, don’t you? We asked ourselves: “What do people want most from ‘The New Sunset Western Garden Book’ right now? You’d have to be totally checked out not to notice a huge wave of edible gardening, so we wanted to amp up our coverage. I’m really happy with the “what edibles to plant when” charts for warm-season and cool-season veggies.

What’s your favorite take-away from the book? There’s an underlying theme that acknowledges how we garden now – with an interest in natural gardening and sustainability. Our gardens are smaller, but they’re stylish and sustainable.

Note: A version of this Q&A appeared in the LA Times HOME blog on February 17th.