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Last summer I visited Alaska and toured about 12 cut peony farms from Fairbanks to Homer – in one week! It was a wonderful trip, made all the more special because of the many cool, welcoming flower farmers I met along the way. They hosted me for meals, spent quality time walking and talking with me along the rows of robust and beautiful plants, lent me a bed for the night, and generally adopted me into their Alaska Peony Tribe! If you want to learn more about the Peony Growers of Alaska and how to order cut flowers from some of them directly, visit the Alaska Peony Growers’ web site.

It was a thoroughly freeing time for me as a journalist because I was my own client. No editor gave me the assignment. No publication had their dibs on how the story would be reported. I used my Alaska Airlines’ frequent flier miles to book my flight into Anchorage and then rented a car with another set of airline miles.

I made reservations to tour Denali National Park on the first day – mainly because Dr. Pat Holloway, my trip advisor, insisted that I couldn’t just drive past the majestic national park while seeking peony farms! After that first day, I spent the following seven preoccupied with peonies, their cultivation, harvest, post-harvest care and ultimate journey to the hands of satisfied customers. It was pretty sweet – and I can’t wait to get back. I wrote a fun post about the week in Alaska here.

Other than selling a *tiny* story about Alaska peonies to Sunset magazine, I am happy to announce that my first big editorial placement appears in the current issue of Alaska Airlines magazine. How fitting! You can read the feature here [PDF].

This week’s podcast features interviews with the owners of two farms I visited during my tour. First, you’ll hear my conversation with Rita Jo Shoultz of Alaska Perfect Peony in Fritz Creek on the Kenai Peninsula, one of the first growers to jump in feet first to plant peony roots. You will hear the sounds of nature around us, as we sat in her garden near the pond to talk. For some crazy reason, Nicco, her cat, was fascinated with the audio recorder’s microphone. You’ll hear a few bumps in the audio, thanks to the curious cat!

Here are some photos from Alaska Perfect Peonies:

 

 

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Welcome to Episode 101 of the new SLOW FLOWERS Podcast. The audio featured here is from the July 19, 2013 panel discussion at the California Association of Flower Growers & Shippers (NORCAL) conference, moderated by Kasey Cronquist, CEO/Ambassador of the California Cut Flower Commission. Panelists included Kathy Brenzel, garden editor at Sunset Magazine; Christina Stembel, founder of Farmgirl Flowers, and me. The audience Q&A that followed our presentation was difficult to hear due to the limited number of microphones in the room, so here is the edited transcript of those questions and our panel’s answers. 

Q&A following Field-to-Vase Panel discussion:

Kasey Cronquist : I hope you all have a sense of how special this group is in context of this industry. This is certainly a trend, or as Debra says, “a cultural shift,” that we’re excited about. It’s a special time because you’re not necessarily going to hear a program like this or have the chance to hear from speakers like this subject in our industry or at other floral trade conventions. I get to sit back and enjoy listening to people talk about locally-grown. 

I think you have a sense here that there’s a renaissance in our midst in terms of bringing flower farmers back and of course this is a good thing for California. Where people say “California’s Flowers are America’s Flowers,” it’s because we want to back up that local claim for those florists when the season is over and they can’t source from those local farmers, California’s growing flowers all year long providing another source of American grown. I could spend each day energized by the things I’ve heard here. I want to open it up to questions: 

Q: Regarding the “Farm-to-Consumer” idea or for that matter, “Farm-to-Florist.” How should our wholesalers in the room feel about this particular approach? Because I can certainly see where you’re going. We are flower growers who are strictly wholesale and we want to keep it that way. I have 185 customers and I don’t want 2,000 so how does that work for the wholesaler? 

A (Debra): I totally agree that we’ve got to work on the wholesale level of this message. Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think wholesalers should be afraid of this concept at all. They’re the ones who are on the front lines, talking to florists. And even if you don’t care about American grown, you should care about making money and branding your flowers as American grown or California grown in order to answer the question that the florists are going to be asking anyway. If they’re not asking it now, they’re very soon going to be asking it because consumers are asking them. I think from a farmer point of view if you can provide content, photography, messaging or signage that the wholesalers can use it’s going to do the work for them. I know there’s a fear that somehow the florists are going to cut around the wholesaler and come to you direct, but like you just said, you don’t want to deal with all those florists. So if you can partner with the wholesaler and make everybody succeed, I think it could be a win-win. 

A (Christina): Pictures. Pictures of the farmers with content about where (the flowers) come from. People want to see a human face, so give them information about “this is the farmer who grew this.” It’s something that the wholesalers can then give to their customers. At Farmgirl Flowers, we use a wholesaler as well for some of our product and they don’t want to be photographed because they don’t want 2,000 people coming to them either. But it’s about educating the florist. And I really do see this movement shifting quickly and I think that the florists will be asking you soon, just based on the volume of questions we get. We’ve had to hire staff people just to answer the email and the phone calls that we get from florists. It’s not directly our bread and butter but we feel like it’s our mission to educate as well. 

Kasey Cronquist: I want to add to that. We’ve felt that pressure on the requests for content. For wholesalers, as much as for the flowers, it’s a content marketing-supply opportunity for them. They have the relationships with the farms and they can package that relationship up and provide it to the florists who are wanting that content to share, either on Facebook or Pinterest so (the florist) has access to the farmer, not directly, but through the wholesaler’s relationship with the farmer. 

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Welcome to the Show Notes for SLOW FLOWERS with Debra Prinzing, my new podcast about American flowers, the farmers who grow them and the designers who create beauty with them. Make a conscious choice and join the conversation – and the creative community. When we know where our flowers come from and who grew them, we place a much higher value on those blooms.

PART ONE of this podcast features Kierstin De West, CEO and founder of Ci (Conscientious innovation), a market research, information and consulting firm known for its early embrace of the sustainable marketplace. Read more about the mission of Ci and its origins here. 

I first met Kierstin in 2010 in an accidental encounter that can only be called serendipitous. Yes, we were seated at adjacent tables in Anthony’s Restaurant at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. We struck up a conversation and the beginnings of a friendship in about one hour . . . before we both had to race to our respective flights. Later, I invited Kierstin to talk about her research into consumer attitudes regarding sustainability as the keynote speaker for the Garden Writers Association annual symposium in 2011. 

As a subscriber to Ci’s newsletters and reports, I was fascinated to read the newest installment of the firm’s ongoing research called The Shift Report. Ci shared highlights of the omnibus study of 5,000 consumers in North America and what jumped out at me was the idea of LOCAL values surpassing other topics that you might consider ranking higher on consumers’ sustainability checklist….such as Organic or Global Warming.

Listen as Kierstin and I discuss this fascinating research and hear how her insights can influence your decisions as a consumer, floral designer, seller of flowers or grower of flowers. Here are some of the highlighted slides from her report:

” Sixty-five percent of

North Americans feel that

buying local and supporting

locally based business

is an important sustainability issue,

surpassing the importance

of both global warming

and buying organic .”

 

LEARN MORE. If you’d like to receive a free copy of the CONSUMERS AND LOCAL featured insights from Ci’s 2012 Shift Report, follow this link and fill out the request form. 

PART TWO of this podcast features a conversation with veteran organic flower farmer Joan Thorndike, owner of Le Mera Gardens in Talent, Oregon, which is near Ashland. We talked about what LOCAL means to Joan’s floral customers while taking a walk from Joan and Dan’s home to the vibrant farmer’s market in downtown Ashland. I stayed with the Thorndike family last month while I was there to produce a story for Country Gardens magazine.

Turns out, the FARM-to-FORK dinner we were photographing for a future story featured a super-long dining table in the midst of a biodynamic winery. . . and guess what showed up on the tables?! Beautiful, seasonal flowers grown by Joan, of course! You can read more about that event here and keep an eye out for the full story with Laurie Black’s photography in a 2014 issue of the magazine.

Many of you were introduced to Joan in the “Grower’s Wisdom” section of The 50 Mile Bouquet. We introduced readers to Joan and three other seasoned flower farmers. In that short section, Joan’s articulate, insightful perspective resonated with me. She is a grower-ecologist. Joan operates on a world view that is highly inclusive and optimistic. My favorite quote from our original interview goes this way:

“When I sell my flowers, I believe I am appealing to my customer’s deeply visceral desire to observe the cadence of Nature.” 

I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation as we touched on some important considerations facing American flower farmers.