The Slow Flowers Podcast is the award-winning show known as the “Voice of the Slow Flowers Movement.” Launched in 2013 as the original flower podcast, we’ve devoted more than 10 years to covering the business of flower farming, floral design, and the Slow Flowers sustainability ethos. Listen to a new episode each Wednesday, available for free download here at slowflowerspodcast.com or on iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.
September 15th, 2013
FADING HUES
This lovely autumn palette of fading flowers, foliage and seed heads reflects the season’s beauty.
Ingredients:
7 stems smoke tree (Cotinus coggygria ‘Grace’), harvested from Lizzy Jackson’s garden
7 stems pittosporum (Pittosporum sp.), harvested from the Lila B. lot garden
5 stems Dahlia ‘Hy Suntan’, grown by Jello Mold Farm
5 stems gold and pale pink garden roses, harvested from the Lila B. lot garden
3 stems terracotta-orange lilies (Lilium ‘Olina Tango’™), grown by Peterkort Roses
5 stems pale peach stock (Matthiola incana), grown by Repetto’s Nursery
7 stems perennial flax (Linum perenne), grown by Charles Little & Co.
7 stems brown millet (Setaria viridis ‘Caramel’), grown by Charles Little & Co.
Miscellaneous seed heads, harvested from the Lila B. lot garden, including purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Euphorbia sp., and rose hips
2 clusters yellow pear tomatoes, harvested from Marritje Green’s garden
Vase:
7-inch tall x 10-inch diameter antique-finish urn with 6½-inch opening
The luscious selection of California, Washington and Oregon-grown floral elements – on display
Eco-technique
A fresh drink of water: There’s a proliferation of advice for keeping a bouquet of floral ingredients fresh and lasting for many days. But one of the most important things you can do is give stems clean water. That’s not so easy with an arrangement like this one, where all the stems are knit together in a tangle of chicken wire.
My friend Lorene Edwards Forkner shared this easy water-changing trick: Place the entire arrangement in the kitchen sink. Gently lift the foliage at one edge of the vase so the faucet’s spray nozzle is directed inside. Turn on the water and let it flow for a minute or two. The existing water will begin to overflow and go down the drain, displaced by fresh water that now occupies the vase (dry off the bottom and outside of the container when finished). Do this every day or two for the life of the arrangement.
Posted in American Grown, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Landscape Design, Plants, Slow Flowers: 52 Weeks, Writing | 2 Comments »
September 11th, 2013
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SLOW FLOWERS Podcast: Local Color Flowers (Episode 106)
Today’s interview will introduce you to Ellen Frost, a Baltimore-based floral designer who is committed to using only 100% locally-grown flowers in her work. I am so impressed with her business philosophy and her contagious enthusiasm for using flowers from farmers she knows and supports.
Vote for your favorite SLOW FLOWERS florist: Ellen Frost’s Local Color Flowers of Baltimore, Maryland
Our Mission
Creative florist Ellen Frost, founder of Local Color Flowers in downtown Baltimore.
Local Color Flowers is a Baltimore-based floral design business. We create personalized arrangements and bouquets from fresh, seasonal, and sustainable flowers cultivated by local specialty growers. We are committed to responsible use of resources, supporting the local economy and promoting neighboring farms. We provide our clients an environmentally and socially conscious alternative when purchasing flowers.
Our Vision
Local Color Flowers seeks to create and support a sustainable community; where people choose local products and services; where flower farms and farm families are thriving; where there is a diverse, strong local economy; and where people are connected to the living world around them.
Our Passion
We love flowers. We love our clients, growers, and partners. We are social entrepeneurs motivated by our relationships and the connections we create. We want our clients to know where their flowers were grown. We want our growers to know how our clients appreciate their products. We want all of our partners to know how we’re green. We want to share our joy and values through our flowers.
IMPORTANT LINKS:
Local Color Flowers’ web site
Home page for Local Color Flowers’ web site. Note the compelling “promise” shared with customers who visit Locoflo.com
Martha Stewart’s 2013 American Made Campaign.
Vote here for LoCoFlo on Martha Stewart American Made contest.
Ellen at work, designing one of 100 weddings and events on her calendar this year.
Posted in American Grown, Blog Posts, Creativity, floral design, General, Plants, Podcast Episodes, SLOW FLOWERS Podcast, Writing | 3 Comments »
September 10th, 2013
Maybe we’re onto something here!
Here’s the vase I received in the mail, which Kathleen Williford found online.
It all started just before Labor Day weekend on August 30th, when my friend Kathleen Williford, special events manager for the Monterey Bay Greenhouse Growers event, texted to tell me she had fractured the bottom of her fibula. “My ankle will not stop me,” she texted. But still, for a very active person, Kathleen felt sidelined. And I could tell she was discouraged.
“We should come up with a joint project,” I texted back. “How about a $10 challenge to find the perfect vintage vase online?”
“OK, you are on!,” she typed. “So we find the vase online, flowers local, $10 max.”
September 5th:
“A beautiful vase arrived today,” Kathleen texted. “I LOVE it!” I had sent her a vintage olive-green glass pedestal vase, just like one I own (and LOVE). Kathleen admitted to not really having much experience arranging in pedestal vases, however, she also admitted to being a sucker for colored glass anything.
September 6th:
“Just arrived! So lovely!,” I texted when the vase Kathleen ordered for me arrived. The slender porcelain vessel was embellished with a gold filigree design. And it had this imprint on the base: “Made in occupied Japan,” which I think means it was manufactured during the American occupation of Japan after World War II, from 1947 to 1952.
Yesterday we both posted our respective vases on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, letting people know about the #friendlyflowers challenge. One of my friends saw the photo of the vase Kathleen sent me and she commented: “It’s so gypsy euro retro-ish!” — love that description.
Today, September 10th, Kathleen and I posted our designs. Here is mine:
A truly local bouquet using all foliage from my garden and my neighbor’s garden. In a very special #friendlyflowers vase
Ingredients include all the goodies I was able to glean while gardening this week:
- Burgundy Japanese maple foliage, deeply cut. This is a weeping form tree, so you can see how nicely those fringed leaves drape
- Goldenrod (Solidago rugosa ‘Fireworks’), from my neighbor Colleen. Actually, it’s a flower, not foliage. But I tried to get the greenest stems still in bud
- False Hinoki cypress – one spray from a container plant (Chamaecyparis obtusa, unknown cultivar)
- Euphorbia myrsinites (Donkey tail euphorbia)
- Lime-green leaves from the oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia), also in Colleen’s garden
Here’s the vase I sent Kathleen:
Green glass vase with beautiful square pedestal. Flowers: TO COME!~
See her finished bouquet at Kathleen’s Facebook page, Twitter (@kathinated) or Instagram (caflwrpower)
Here’s the bouquet from Kathleen, using flowers from her parents’ garden:
Kathleen used persimmons, sedum, grasses, assorted salvia, butterfly bush blossoms, and lions beard. Stunning~
If you like this idea, we encourage you to start your own #friendlyflowers challenge. The rules are easy:
1. $10 maximum vase budget
2. Send a vase to your friend and have him/her do the same for you
3. Fill it with #americangrown #slowflowers – all local
4. Post and share to inspire other friendly flower lovers!
Posted in American Grown, Blog Posts, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Plants, Playfulness, Writing | No Comments »
September 8th, 2013
SEEDPODS AND PETALS
Humulus lupulus, common hops, a dangly little element that adds character to any arrangement.
Ingredients:
20 stems perennial flax (Linum perenne), grown by Charles Little & Co.
5 short lengths common hop (Humulus lupulus), grown by Northern Pacific Farm
10 stems lemon-lime zinnias (Zinnia elegans ‘Queen Lime’), grown by Everyday Flowers
12 stems masterwort (Astrantia major), grown by Ojeda Farms
Vase:
4½-inch tall x 4½-inch wide x 8-inch long rectangular vintage McCoy vase
The hops plays nicely with the zinnia, astrantia and perennial flax.
Grow This
Instant gratification: I had been waiting all summer to use hop vines and their dangling green cones in an arrangement. These stems came from Oregon. Floral designers love the dreamy, 18-foot-long hop garlands, often using them to decorate wedding arbors. Common hop is also used by home brewers. With fast-growing, twining stems, hand-sized lobed leaves and bract-like flowers, the female form of Humulus lupulus is also a “quick” screen for a fence, wall or trellis. It does, however, need to be cut back once a year (usually in late fall, after the first frost), in order to produce a new flush of vines the following season.
Posted in American Grown, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Plants, Slow Flowers: 52 Weeks, Writing | No Comments »
September 7th, 2013
Coral pinks, rosy oranges, a touch of faded terracotta and some dark burgundy foliage.
The overall scheme of the flowers I played with this week is hard to name. I’ve come up with the following:
Terracotta Pink
Coral Pink
Peachy Apricot
Pinkish Orange
Faded Terracotta
I’m up for suggestions on how to describe these yummy colors!
Dan Pearson of Dan’s Dahlias grew the two types of dahlias – one leans more toward the pink end of the spectrum; the other is more like that faded terracotta color I mentioned.
The antique pink-hued Celosia were grown by Diane Szukovathy and Dennis Westphall of Jello Mold Farm.
As I was leaving the Seattle Growers Wholesale Market the other day, Janet Foss of J. Foss Garden Flowers handed me the bunch of alstroemeria as a gift. These little beauties have flecks of dark maroon on a pale orange-pink throat. I love the way they tie together the more solid colored flowers.
There is a peaches-and-cream (with rapsberries added) mood to this trio of vases.
I came home wondering what to do with these evocatove botanical elements. I pulled down three ivory vases – one is vintage Haegar; two are vintage Hull (from my recent trip to Iowa). It felt right to use these vessels, each of which has an eggshell-like color and texture.
I walked around my garden and snipped dark maroon foliage from the Ninebark shrub, which as you can see really helped to define the spaces between the flowers. I also snipped Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ in pinkish bud and a few sprays of an inherited chrysanthemum, the flower heads toned dark terra cotta.
A few more shots, showing the designs for my medium and small vintage pedestal bowls:
This little saucer didn’t have a lot of room for stems. So I used a hydrangea flower as a fresh “frog” to organize the other short stems.
A fabulous, creamy white vintage compote-style bowl, used with a cage-shaped flower frog for this color-intensive bouquet.
Everything seems to come together as a lovely gathering of a beautiful hue. The color of the moment!
Posted in American Grown, Blog Posts, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Landscape Design, Plants, Writing | 2 Comments »
September 4th, 2013
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Meet a Young Flower Farmer (Episode 105)
Meet new flower farmer Janell Patterson of Flower Forest Farm in Auburn, Washington
Earlier this year I met Janell Patterson, a young cut flower grower who launched Flower Forest Farm, a micro-agriculture endeavor that’s part of Seattle Tilth’s farm incubator program called Seattle Tilth Farm Works.
There’s a forest and farm here, which perhaps inspire Janell’s charming business name: Flower Forest Farm
Located about 40 minutes southeast of Seattle in Auburn, where there are still patches of agricultural land that the developers have missed, Janell and several other new farmers at the are learning the art and science of growing through hands-on efforts. Tilth instructors provide extensive small farm business training and support. Here is some of the curriculum:
This program provides:
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A comprehensive educational program covering farming, business planning, operations and marketing
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On-site mentorship from experienced farmers
- Hands-on experience growing food on 1/4 acre plots
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Access to farmland, equipment, water and other necessary farming inputs
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Assistance in creating marketing channels for products
Peek through one of Janell’s pink dahlias catch a glimpse of the nasturtiums and Queen Anne’s Lace flourishing beyond.
Each participants’ time and sweat equity yields food or flowers that supply Tilth’s weekly Community Supported Agriculture subscriptions. Janell’s Flower Forest Farm is the only flower grower involved and it’s wonderful to see her beautiful ingredients supplying CSA customers and local farmers’ market shoppers. She manages a one-quarter acre parcel filled with beautiful rows of annuals and gorgeous dahlias.
A young mom, Janell brings an eclectic background to her endeavor. She has experience as a professional interior designer and she has been studying horticulture at South Seattle Communit College (which is where I gained my training in horticulture and landscape design). Janell also worked as an environmental volunteer managing a small rural tree nursery with the Peace Corps in Ghana, West Africa.
Fellow garden blogger Filiz Satir and I visited Seattle Tilth Farm Works in July and walked through the fields on a tour with Janell. You’ll hear Filiz’s voice (and a few of her own questions) on this recording as part of our conversation. See more of my photos below:
The forest looms beyond the Seattle Tilth Farm Works, creating a beautiful setting for growing flowers (and food)
Zinnias on display in straight rows, ready to be harvested.
Another pretty dahlia, one of hundreds that Janell planted this season.
Sweet peas were at their peak when I visited in July, trellised inside the hoop house at Seattle Tilth Farm Works.
Love the dark Opal basil that Janell grows for her mixed CSA and Farmers’ Market bouquets.
Click here to learn more about Tilth’s CSA program, including how to order Janell’s weekly bouquets.
Click here to learn more about Flower Forest Farm’s flowers, bunches, bouquets and custom services.
Posted in American Grown, floral design, Gardening, General, Plants, Podcast Episodes, SLOW FLOWERS Podcast | No Comments »
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