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Protea is a dazzling native South African flower that has adapted to California’s benign growing climate – thus, perfect for the American-grown cut flower industry.

Today’s guests are two of the most influential US growers of Protea.

Mel Resendiz, an expert grower of Protea and other South African and Australian ornamental plants.

Owner of Resendiz Brothers Protea Growers, based in Fallbrook, California (in northern San Diego County), Mel Resendiz has been growing protea for 35 years. He’s joined by colleague Diana Roy, an equally passionate protea fan who handles marketing and promotion for Resendiz Proteas. 

You’ll hear us refer to this lovely flower a few ways. It’s spelled P-R-O-T-E-A, but pronounced:

Pro-tee-ay-AH . . . Pro-tee-Ah . . . or . . . pro-Tay_AH 

Whichever way you pronounce it, Protea is a luscious native South African flower, said to have been named after the Greek God Proteus, who was able to change into many different forms.

The Proteaceae family of plants is comprised of more than 1,400 species. Ranging from 2 to 12 inches in size, Proteas typically blooms in fall, winter and spring, although the folks at Resendiz are able to harvest and ship the flower year-round to customers in the U.S., Canada & Japan, due to their growing practices and attention to detail. 

Diana Roy, a board member of the California Cut Flower Commission and active protea promoter. She was captured here at an industry event in a gerbera greenhouse.

A Resendiz bouquet in which Protea is paired with Pincushion flower (Leucospermum).

Why are these South African plants now considered a valuable California flower crop? It’s because coastal California is one of five Mediterranean regions of the globe, similar to South Africa, Australia/New Zealand, Chile and Greece. Full sun, well-drained soil, good air circulation, mild winters and acid soil ensure that proteas thrive as if they were in their native environment.  

Established in 1999 and today one of California’s largest supplier of South African and Australian floral products and plants, Resendiz produces more than 200 varieties of these unique native plants.  Known for their exceptional value and long vase life, the protea and other blooms like Pincushions, Banksia, Kangaroo Paws and  Leucadendron, create dramatic impact when incorporated in arrangements and bouquets. Many varieties are hybrids – grown only by Resendiz Brothers.

A wedding bouquet pairing protea with roses!~

Rich in color, texture and form, the protea is both dramatic and exotic. The spectrum ranges from warm to cool colored blooms — Rich reds, deep pinks, and fresh greens. Together, these blooms make stunning arrangements – and they are long-lasting – a huge bonus for the florist and DIY designer alike.

If  you want an American-grown flower that will dazzle in the bouquet or the vase, look no further than the Protea.

Thank you  for joining me in this episode of the SLOW FLOWERS Podcast with Debra Prinzing. Because of your support as a listener, there have been nearly 4,000 downloads since July – and I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net. 

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Floral designer, educator, author-blogger and visionary, Alicia Schwede

If you’re at all active in the online universe, and if you’re a florist or simply passionate about good design, you probably already know about today’s talented guest, Alicia Schwede, creator of the popular FLIRTY FLEURS blog.  Alicia has more than a decade of floral design to her credit, beginning with her first wedding clients in the Bay Area, and later, her Denver-based studio Bella Fiori.  

In the past year, Alicia migrated from Colorado back to Northern California’s wine country, where she created the florals for many happy bridal parties this past wedding season. And now, due to life’s unexpected turns, she is here in the Pacific Northwest. 

The life of a studio designer is a lot like the life of a writer. You are pretty mobile, and you can take your talents with you when you relocate. That’s exactly what happened this fall, when Alicia followed her husband Chad for a work-related move. We met in person when she surprised me by showing up in a workshop I taught last month.  

Since then, we’ve had several great discussions about floral design and the state of the business. I’m excited to share our most recent conversation with you in today’s podcast. Learn more about Alicia, about her career as a floral designer, and what inspired her to launch FlirtyFleurs.com, an online community for floral designers to gain ideas and inspiration from each other.  

In this podcast, we also discuss her beautiful book, Bella Bouquets, which is a compendium of more than 100 wedding bouquets, arranged by color theme, which is quite the perfect way to organize flowers. 

I was struck by this passage from the foreword to Bella Bouquets:

” . . . I still stop dead in my tracks when I spy a perfect peony, a gorgeous garden rose or the sweetest sweet pea at the market,” Alicia writes.  “I find great pleasure in sharing my love and affection toward flowers. This book, and the blog Flirtyfleurs.com are just a few ways for me to share and connect with others while exploring the flower path ahead.”

To me, that flower path is right here, under our noses. It’s not on another continent, especially when locally-grown and seasonal botanicals are available to designers and flower lovers. A big believer in locally-grown blooms — and it’s no wonder, since she has many ties to California floral sources — Alicia shared four of her favorite American-grown arrangements for you to see here. “How funny is that?” she wrote in her email message accompanying these images. “Four bouquets representing three different states!” 

Anemones are grown by Stevens & Son in Arvada, CO (designed in CO)

Tulips bouquet – all tulips and daffodils from Pike Place Market;
Washington grown (designed in WA)

Bella Fiori Garden – from Alicia’s garden, all of it!

Bella Fiori Dahlias – mostly from Alicia’s garden, Dahlias are CA grown (designed while in CA)

If you're interested in learning more about Alicia and Flirtyfleurs, be sure to subscribe to her free 
newsletter. You'll also find details and registration information on Alicia's "Bridal Bouquet Workshop," 
which I'm hosting at my event space in Seattle's Pioneer Square on Feb. 1, 2014. 

Thank you  for joining me in this episode of the SLOW FLOWERS Podcast with Debra Prinzing. Because of your support as a listener, there have been more than 3,500 downloads since July – and I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Thank you, Alicia, for such inspiration! Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net. 

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Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Think about seeing a vivid purple-tinged field of lavender. Now imagine yourself walking through it, brushing your fingertips on the scented flowers dancing tall on their wand-like stems. Don’t you wish you could be transported to that place right now?

Fresh cut bunches of lavender from Labyrinth Hill Lavender (photo courtesy Susan Harrington)

There is something so evocative about Lavandula, the plant that is the basis for all of Susan Harrington’s growing, writing and teaching activities. The owner with her husband Jack Harrington of Labyrinth Hill Lavender, Susan is today’s guest on the Slow Flowers Podcast.

Susan connects people with lavender, whether at the farmers’ market, in workshops and through her web-based educational programs.

We met up recently after I attended one of Susan’s inspiring (and intoxicatingly fragrant) workshops at a local garden center. Susan and I discussed her decade-long adventure growing lavender on her “backyard farm” and how that led to a vibrant cottage industry selling fresh-cut lavender and dried lavender buds, first at the farmers’ market and later via mail order. Susan has expanded Labyrinth Hill Lavender into online training for others who want to get into the lavender-growing business and now, a regional conference for lavender farming.

Here is her famous lavender labyrinth, planted with 150 Lavandula x intermedia ‘Fred Boutin’ plants. The labyrinth measures 40-feet in diameter and produces about 700 fresh-cut bundles of lavender per season. 

The lavender labyrinth at peak of season. Photo, courtesy Susan Harrington

Susan mentioned her YouTube video in which she demonstrates her Lavender Bud De-Nuding Process. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but clearly a huge success as a method for anyone harvesting lavender buds for aromatherapy or crafting:

More details discussed in our conversation:

Information about Susan’s online lavender growing course, and her FREE mini-course on growing lavender

Information about the October 2014 Northwest Regional Lavender Conference, which Susan and Jack are producing with the Oregon Lavender Association. 

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Pilar Zuniga is a Berkeley-based, eco-Green floral designer and outspoken advocate for locally-grown, sustainable flowers and design practices.

Meet Pilar Zuniga, owner of Gorgeous and Green, a Berkeley-based boutique and eco-floral design studio. She’s my guest in this week’s Slow Flowers Podcast with Debra Prinzing.

Pilar started Gorgeous and Green nearly six years ago after she discovered how hard it was to plan her own sustainably-minded wedding. Since then, her venture has expanded from a floral studio designing for weddings and special events to a charming storefront on College Avenue in Berkeley.

One of Gorgeous and Green’s bridal bouquets in a sultry green and dark purple color scheme.

There, you can find a full-service floral and gift shop that carries uncommon goods, curated by Pilar, including vintage jewelry, locally-made goods, recycled-paper stationary,  organic bath and beauty products — and of course, local and sustainably-grown flowers. Gorgeous and Green recently won the Best of Berkeley 2013 award in the florist category.

For anyone interested in learning how a brick-and-mortar retail flower shop can make it in today’s era of mass merchandising and big boxes, you’ll want to join my conversation with Pilar.

She is blazing a new trail and is the TRUE definition of a LOCAL FLORIST….a hometown, Main Street flower shop that goes the full distance to source from local flower farms in her own backyard. 

Succulents grace the wedding table for a Gorgeous and Green client.

Here’s her answer to the “Why Sustainable”? question:

A Native American proverb suggests that all that we do today must be done with the next 7 generations in mind.

The mainstream floral and gift industries have many byproducts like pesticide pollution, dependence on plastics, underpaid labor, hazardous working conditions and excessive CO2 Emissions. Additionally, events are the producers of more waste and CO2 emissions. The average wedding emits 12-14 tons of CO2, more than a person emits in a full year.  

We can minimize these negative effects by amending our practices to become sustainable ones.  For Gorgeous and Green, sustainability means using methods that we can afford to duplicate without negatively affecting the environment and people around us. With a lot of creativity and research, we have been able to develop floral practices and offer gift products that allow us to do just that.

Gorgeous and Green wants to be mindful of not just how we leave our world for the next generation, but how we touch those people and places that were involved in the beauty we created today. 

Take a look at our Services section or visit our On-Line Boutique page to see just what we have come up with so far. We’re always creating new ways to save the earth and stay gorgeous.

Another yummy seasonal floral arrangement, using California-Grown flowers from farmers Pilar knows and supports.

In the second half of our interview, Pilar and I scratched the surface on a MAJOR topic that’s going on right now in the floral world. It regards the concern she and I — and so many others — have about that green florists’ foam, the crumbly, brick-shaped chunk that you often find stuck inside a vase delivered from a floral wire-service. It is a conventional product that has been around since the Postwar 1950s, developed, so it seems, to make arrangements look fuller using fewer stems of flowers and foliage.

The simple economics have (sadly) led many florists down the rabbit hole of same-old, same-old, unimaginative designs based around the foam. I believe it’s a crutch that limits creativity and certainly hurts the people and environment who encounter it. 

Every single week I hear from florists and designers who tell me they are weaning themselves off the product, which is made by a small group of manufacturers in the US and abroad. Those designers are eager to find alternative ways to stabilize stems, such as some that Pilar and I discussed. I will devote a future episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast to more extensive information on this topic. 

The bounty of local farms makes its way into Gorgeous and Green’s designs.

Pilar was one of the first to speak out and warn florists about the risks of using chemically-based foam. As I mentioned in our interview, every time I did a web search about this topic, her blog posts popped up, as early as 2009. Here are some links you’ll want to read: 

(March 4, 2009) Floral Foam: Not so Green 

(September 5, 2009) Biodegradable Floral Foam, Where Are You?

(February 18, 2011) Let’s Change Floral Foam

(August 16, 2011) MSDS Floral Foam

If you’re looking for “green” alternatives to floral foam, check out my blog post about Eco-Friendly Design tips, excerpted from Slow Flowers.

Thank you  for joining me in this episode of the SLOW FLOWERS Podcast with Debra Prinzing. Because of your support as a listener, we’ve had more than 3,000 downloads since July – and I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net. 

All photographs courtesy of Gorgeous and Green. Thanks Pilar!

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“Enter a rare world of beauty and intricacy,” promises the press release for “Seeing Flowers,”  a remarkable new book featuring the highly detailed, almost transparent flower photographs of Robert Llewellyn. Using a unique photo process that includes stitching together large macro photographs, the visual artist reveals floral details that few of us have ever noticed: The amazing architecture of stamens and pistils; the subtle shadings on a petal; the secret recesses of nectar tubes.

I learned much more about the secret life of flowers in today’s podcast interview with Teri Dunn Chace, the writer with whom Robert Llewellyn collaborated. A longtime horticultural writer and formerly on the staff of Horticulture magazine, Teri blends literary and scientific sources for her essays about 343 popular flowers.

These are blooms beloved by gardeners and floral designers alike and together Robert and Teri portray flowers as you have never before seen them. They gave me a deeper appreciation of how and why flowers have become so embedded in human culture.

In preparing for my podcast interview with Teri, I went back and spent some time with Robert’s earlier book, Seeing Trees, with writer Nancy Ross Hugo. When that book was released in 2011, I was blown away by the detailed process he goes through to capture the essence of leaves, seeds, pods and other tree parts. Each subject is photographed up to 50 times at various distances and the final work is a composite of the sharpest areas of each individual image. The resulting photographs are of stunning hyper-real clarity, as if Robert has found a way to circumvent the limitations of the human eye through his lens. When Seeing Trees was released, publisher Timber Books created a video of the process.

Please enjoy this conversation with author Teri Chace, and add Seeing Flowers to your library reference shelf. Our conversation is a whirlwind tour of flowers, literature and garden writing. You’ll enjoy the ride.

Jaunty blooms of chicory, or Cichorium intybus, open for only a few hours a day. Then the color of the ray flowers rapidly drains away, fading to white. Its dried, ground roots can be used as a coffee substitute. 

During my interview with Teri, we read aloud three literary pieces from Seeing Flowers. Here they are for you to read again, interspersed with a few of Robert’s images:

“The rose is a rose,

And always was a rose.

But now the theory goes

That the apple’s a rose

And the pear is, and so’s

The plum, I suppose.

The dear only knows

What will next prove a rose.

You, of course, are a rose —

But were always a rose.”

Robert Frost, “The Rose Family,” 1928 

The cup in the center of a daffodil is called a corona. Some are short, like a shallow bowl, while others are longer, more like a trumpet. Some have frilly edges, and some are rimmed with a contrasting color.

“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?

Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can

never learn how to paint.”

Pablo Picasso, Arts de Frances, 1946 

Look past the blue petals of viper’s bugloss, Echium vulgare, and you’ll see that the flowers also feature red stamen filaments and blue pollen. These help them to stand out in form as well as color to pollinators – and to us.

“Ice cream on green cones

white hydrangeas in full bloom

cool the summer day”

Haiku by CDSinex, 2011 

Teri Dunn Chace, author of “Seeing Flowers” 

Robert Llewellyn, photographer of “Seeing Flowers”

ENTER TO WIN: Timber Press is celebrating the publication of Seeing Flowers with an online promotion offering a one-of-a-kind prize. You can enter to win a fine gallery quality print of a photograph from this book. Take a peek at the gorgeous print and the contest details here.  NOTE: the Contest Entry Deadline is this Friday, November 15th.

Thanks for joining me in this episode of the SLOW FLOWERS Podcast with Debra Prinzing. Because of your support as a listener, we’ve had more than 2,650 downloads since July – and I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net. 

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Jennie Love and Erin Benzakein are the dynamic east-west floral duo behind The Seasonal Bouquet Project. This lovely poster was hand-illustrated by Shannon Collins 

Courtesy of The Seasonal Bouquet Project, a photo from one of Jennie and Erin’s workshops in October. Erin Benzakein is seen 3rd from left, back row; Jennie Love is seen 6th from left, back row. 

For the past few years, I’ve been interviewing and writing about a category of designer who I dub the “farmer-florist.”

These include a rare group of individuals in the flower world who are equally talented in the science of growing flowers and the art of designing them. 

Jennie Love, farmer-florist, and owner of Love ‘N Fresh Flowers, of Philadelphia

You’ll meet two of those talented people on today’s podcast, Jennie Love of Love ‘N Fresh Flowers in the Philadelphia area and Erin Benzakein of floret flowers in Washington’s Skagit Valley. 

Both Erin and Jennie have been in the business of creating stunning floral art with locally grown materials for several years now. Their west coast/east coast friendship prompted these flower friends to create THE SEASONAL BOUQUET PROJECT in early 2013. Their first post featured yummy, early spring flowers, posted on March 5th.

The Seasonal Bouquet Project emerged from a winter brainstorming session about “how to feed our souls’ fires during the hectic months of the growing season and how to further demonstrate the beauty of locally grown flowers to a wider audience.  And, to be completely candid, it’s a bit of a competitive double dog dare between two people who like to have some fun,” according to their website. 

Erin Benzakein, with her husband Chris and children Elora and Jasper. I took this photo last summer at floret flowers, their farm in Washington’s Skagit Valley.

All the materials used in the bouquets were grown within a 25 mile radius of the respective designer, the vast majority coming straight from their own flower fields.  

As they wrote on their website: “Since  we’re on opposite coasts growing in very different climates, this project is a showcase for what’s available through the seasons across the country.” People all across the country and around the globe, for that matter, followed along on the gorgeous journey. Erin and Jennie also invited readers to post photos of their own bouquets, as long as the ingredients were within that 25-mile radius. 

As you will hear in this interview with Jennie and Erin, which took place on October 25th via Skype, the friends cooked up a 2-day workshop to celebrate the “end” of their season. They planned “The Seasonal Bouquet Project LIVE” and scheduled the event to take place on Jennie’s flower farm in Philadelphia. Listen along to hear what happened next – and gain inspiration and insights into the life of a farmer-florist.

Photos to enjoy from Jennie Love and her farm:

Jennie farms on agricultural land that dates back to William Penn. Photo by Maria Mack Photography ©2012 http://mariamackphotography.com

A beautiful summer bouquet, grown & designed by Jennie Love Maria Mack Photography ©2012 http://mariamackphotography.com

Zinnias in July, designed by Jennie Love.

Photos to enjoy from Erin Benzakein and her farm:

Garden roses at floret flowers, August 2012. I took this shot during our photo shoot for Country Gardens magazine. 

Erin’s bouquet, designed for Country Gardens magazine.

Thanks for joining me in this episode of SLOW FLOWERS. Because of your support as a listener, we’ve had more than 2,200 downloads since July – and I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net. 

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My visit to Ft. Worth this month gave me a wonderful chance to reconnect with flower farmer Cynthia Alexander.

Cynthia Alexander, flower farmer and owner of Quarry Flower Farm.

You could call Cynthia Alexander, a “chapter two” flower farmer. A passionate gardener, Cynthia has spent the past several years reinventing herself from a real estate attorney into someone whose relationship with land is exemplified in a completely different way! 

Over the past few years, Cynthia and her husband Bob have been transitioning from the city to the land. Quarry Flower Farm, their 120-acre farm, is located in Celina, Texas, about 40 minutes outside of the Dallas-Ft. Worth urban center. 

Earlier this month, I traveled to the Ft. Worth Garden Club to lecture about the “Slow Flowers” movement and to lead a workshop for members of the Garden Club’s floral design group. This was my second visit to the Dallas Ft-Worth area to talk about LOCAL flowers and in both cases, my “credibility” was enhanced thanks to Cynthia.

She is a native Texan whose goal is spreading beauty through organic agriculture and the practice of good land stewardship.  Her repertoire of ingredients is impressive!

At Quarry Flower Farm, Cynthia grows native Texas shrubs and trees, as well as perennials, annuals, grasses, bulbs, vines and herbs. Her fascination with botanical elements means she has an incredibly diverse list of ingredients for floral fans, everyone from hot floral designers to farm-to-table caterers.

The botanical bounty that came from Cynthia’s harvest was mind-boggling!

Here is the extensive list of flowers, foliage, herbs, branches and ornamental grasses she provided for the Ft. Worth workshop: 

Amaranthus ‘Red Hopi’

Artemisia 

Aster

Beautyberry

Black Bamboo

Bois D’Arc apples

Broomcorn

Cardoon

Celosia 

Chinaberry foliage, yellow berry

Cotinus

Cotton Bolls

Crepe Myrtle

Dianthus

Elm Winged branches

Garden Roses

Geranium scented

Gomphrena ‘Fireworks’

Hibiscus ‘Jamaican Red’

Juniper silver berry

Lambs ears

Lantana 

Liatris

Love In A Puff vine, pod

Magnolia

Marigold

Myrtle branches

Peppers

Perilla green

Persimmon branches

Pittosporum 

Poke

Privet 

Purple Hyacinth Bean pods

Pyracantha orange berry

Rattanvine

Rosehips

Rush

Sage

Salvia Leucantha

Sansieveria 

Sedum 

Sunflower Maximillian

Tritonia

Vinca 

Yellow wildflower

Zinnia 

 

Cynthia’s design talents were evident when we met in 2012 at a field-to-vase workshop I taught at the Dallas Arboretum.

Cynthia first came to my rescue in February 2012 when I taught an eco-floral design course at the Dallas Arboretum. I had contacted her through the ASCFG directory, asking for help. Cynthia showed up with a bevy of flowering bulb varieties and spring branches – much to the delight of the Dallas floral design students. After all, it was FEBRUARY, for goodness sake’s. She saved the day!

The same thing happened when I encouraged the Ft. Worth Garden Club to source LOCAL Texas leaves, branches and flowers from a real flower farmer. Cynthia is a gem. And you’ll find her personal story fascinating.

I mean really….how many people leave a successful, 30-year career as an attorney in order to dig in the dirt and grow cut flowers? For that reason alone, I adore this gifted woman. Enjoy our conversation and listen for all of Cynthia’s advice about her second career – as a cut flower farmer. 

The farmhouse at Quarry Flower Farm.

Cynthia hosts garden club tours, bridal parties and U-pick guests by appointment during the spring growing season. Check her web site for details.

Other Resources mentioned in our interview:

The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower’s Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008), by Lynn Byczynski 

Cynthia mentioned that her inspiration began by spending time with Pamela and Frank Arnosky, owners of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers. The Arnoskys have also written an important resource, as well, Local Color: Growing Specialty Cut Flowers.

Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers is a membership association of flower farmers in every state. The ASCFG has many wonderful resources for beginning and established flower farmers. 

Thanks for joining me in this episode of SLOW FLOWERS. Because of your support as a listener, we’ve reached nearly 2,000 downloads since July – and I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net.

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Meet Lane DeVries, CEO of The Sun Valley Group, America’s largest cut flower farm, and Chairman of the California Cut Flower Commission.

American Flower Farming Update with Lane DeVries, Chairman of the California Cut Flower Commission (Episode 112)

Today’s interview is with Lane DeVries, a fourth generation flower farmer who grew up in his family’s business in Holland until he came to the US in 1983, at the age of 23.

I’ve gotten to know Lane in the past few years while partnering with him on projects for the California Cut Flower Commission, the advocacy agency that promotes that state’s 225 flower farms. His farm, The Sun Valley Group, based in Arcata and Oxnard, is the state’s largest (in fact, it’s the country’s largest).

Lane and I recently met in Portland, at the Field-to-Vase Dinner, a very special gathering of flower farmers, florists, flower retailers and wholesalers and the media, held on October 8th.

I co-hosted the event with the CCFC and our goal was to convene floral industry leaders to discuss new initiatives in the American Grown Flower Movement.

The underlying message: partnering with your would-be competitors is a good idea when it comes to changing how consumers connect with domestic flowers.

Lane takes time to meet flower consumers as often as possible. He recently made an appearance at New Seasons Market in Portland, Oregon.

My podcast interview with Lane took place via Skype, a few days after that dinner. Please enjoy our conversation and meet a man who lives and breathes cut flowers. I love that Lane, in spite of all of his professional success, continues to eagerly seek out the next new thing. He sees old flowers in a new way and improves on customer favorites with new hybridizing methods.

He is a visionary and I credit Lane with his amazing leadership moving his own flower farming community into an important dialogue about American grown flowers.

The next time you see a blue-and-yellow license plate-style CA-Grown label on a bouquet of flowers at the supermarket, you’ll have people like Lane DeVries to thank.

Highlights of Lane’s long career in the U.S. cut flower industry are chronicled in Amy Stewart’s 2007 book, Flower Confidential: The Good, The Bad, and the Beautiful – and you can read an excerpt of that story here, courtesy of Amy and Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (c) 2007 and 2008. All Rights Reserved. 

(Photos (c) Linda Blue, courtesy of the California Cut Flower Commission)

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Featured on the cover of “Cooking with Flowers” is Miche’s “Flowerfetti” Calendula Orange Cake. Flower petals are the “original cake confetti,” she maintains. Roses, dianthus, bachelor buttons and marigold petals adorn this enticing confection.

Today we’re going to talk about eating flowers.

Yes, flowers as food.

Hollyhock Clafouti, a cross between a custard, a pancake, and a puffy omelet. Uses 1 cup hollyhock petals.

I once had a big-time New York editor say to me: Why should I care about how flowers are grown, anyway? After all, we don’t eat them!

As a response to that challenge, I wish I had been able to pull out “Cooking with Flowers,” the most eye-satisfying book I’ve ever seen. It was created by Miche Bacher, an herbalist, chef, and founder of the custom confectionary studio Mali B Sweets.

To WIN a free copy of “Cooking with Flowers,” courtesy of Quirk Books, listen to to my interview with Miche and make a comment below about the best edible flower tip you learned. I will draw a winner at random on Tuesday, October 22nd at 5 p.m. Pacific.

I learned about this beautiful cookbook from Mari Malcolm, an editor at Amazon who absolutely loves “Cooking with Flowers.” Mari showed me the book’s beautiful cover on her phone screen during a lunch we had together this past spring.

I keep ordering this delectable book and then giving it away as a gift to my flower lover-friends. And now, it is my great pleasure to spend this episode of Slow Flowers in a floral-focused conversation with Miche.

Miche Bacher, herbalist, chef, and founder of the custom confectionary studio Mali B Sweets.

In her introduction, Miche writes:

“Flowers add color, complexity, and what I like to call the magical ‘what’s in it’ factor to your food. They are full of nutrients and often offer health benefits, too. You don’t have to be a master gardener or a trained chef to cook with flowers – once you start looking, you’ll realize edible blossoms are all around you, and it really is a breeze to use them.”

She is definitely a chef whose work begins in the garden. Through “Cooking with Flowers,” I’ve gained new inspiration for another important reason to appreciate local flowers.

I know you will learn much from my conversation with Miche, as we discuss her favorite culinary ingredients, including the lowly dandelion.

Fresh and candied lilac flowers are the captivating ingredient in Miche’s “Coconut Lilac Tapioca,” a recipe in her book, “Cooking with Flowers” [photo: (c) Miana Jun, used with permission]  

4 tablespoons of dianthus petals, coarsely chopped, infuse this delicious cake that also includes 2/3-cup rose’ wine. Dianthus whipped cream and candied dianthus flowers are a perfect embellisment. [photo: (c) Miana Jun, used with permission] 

Popcorn Chive Blossom Cupcakes, a floral play on sweet and savory.

Here are some links we discussed in the interview:

Mali B’s Edible Flower Chocolate Collection:

Edible Flower chocolate collection from Mali B Sweets, $30 for the set.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center LINK to Herbs, Botanicals & Other Products: 

Click here for MORE about COOKING WITH FLOWERS, including exclusive recipes that Miche couldn’t fit into the book. You’ll also find bonus recipes for the medicinal and cosmetic use of flowers, salves, oils, and teas for healing; download recipe cards and read a Q&A with this talented woman.