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As we enter the 13^th year of publishing our Slow Flowers Floral Insights and Industry Forecast, new impressions continue to infuse our mindsets and enthuse us. The Year 2026 presents a consequential time in our industry. We have been impacted by economic challenges that affect consumer confidence and spending choices; we’ve been clobbered by supply chain and tariff constraints; and we’ve continued to see consolidation and closures among large-scale players in the marketplace. As we look at “what’s next,” I believe we have even more reasons to feel confidence that Seasonal, local, and sustainably-grown flowers are more than relevant and essential for the present day. During the coming year, when little is certain and the terrain is uneven, consumers are drawn to what they can control. The notion of “Taking Control” is a remedy, an antidote, to the pressures and distractions that abound. As I share the 2026 forecast, you may recognize some of the themes as an affirmation of what’s taking place in your floral enterprise – I would love to hear how this inspires you for the coming year.

I recorded my introduction to this episode on Monday morning, February 2^nd, just 36 hours after we wrapped up the second annual Slow Flowers WORLDWIDE Summit on January 30^th and 31^st. It was an unqualified success and the raves for our fabulous presenters and educational content are pouring in. We designed the Slow Flowers WORLDWIDE Summit to inspire and inform, include and instigate, and most of all to provide you with new Ideas for your floral enterprise! One hundred eighteen attendees joined us virtually – from 24 US states and the District of Columbia; from four Canadian provinces; and from Australia, the UK and Chile. What an enriching experience and an affirmation of the power of creativity and community.

In addition to 10 hours of floral education designed for growers, florists and farmer-florists, we presented five bonus sessions. Today’s episode is a replay of the session I shared to introduce the 2026 Slow Flowers Floral Insights & Industry Forecast. Working with my frequent collaborator Robin Avni, creative director of BLOOM Imprint, we identified three themes for 2026. We also reviewed this project’s 100 past insights and singled out one primary theme from each year — 2015 to 2025. There isn’t an expiration date to these insights. They don’t go away; but rather, they evolve, moving from being an alternative or fringe idea towards one that simply reflects a cultural shift toward the mainstream.

Thanks so much for joining me today as we journeyed through 12 years and 103 insights to inspire you. As we move forward, new topics of interest in the Slow Flowers Movement will continue to be leading edge, ones that early-adopters embrace and ones on which you’ll put your own spin. They also will reflect an evolution that may be subtler and less over-the-top as more people in floristry and flower farming learn from one another, and adopt our values as their own.

Please let me know if any of this resonates with you and thanks for joining me in the conversation! A special thanks to Robin Avni for co-producing this year’s report. We’ll have the full report to share as a PDF with links in the coming days.

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Slow Flowers Podcast LIVE at the NWFGF

After connecting with so many of you virtually, I’m excited to share that we have a great opportunity for you to connect with me and so many other Slow Flowers member at Slow Flowers Podcast LIVE at the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival, February 18-21, 2026. For the first time ever, you are invited to join the studio audience to watch and listen during a recording of the Slow Flowers Podcast with Debra Prinzing. The tapings take place once per day, during the Festival. Meet four Slow Flowers Members who will be in Seattle to lecture at the festival and promote her new garden or floral book coming out this spring.

The guests include – Briana Bosch, Blossom & Branch Flower Farm (Colorado), with new book: The Regenerative Gardener’s Handbook; Theresa Sabankaya, theresasabankaya.com (California), with new book: Modern Florigraphy; Janice Cox, Natural Beauty at Home (Oregon), with new book: Beautiful Roses; and Elizabeth Brown, Foxglove Farmhouse (Maine), with new book: The Beginner’s Cut Flower Garden.

SLOW FLOWERS PODCAST LIVE Entry is FREE to Slow Flowers Members (guests are welcome) BYOC: Bring your own hot beverage or cold drink.

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Thank you to our Sponsors

This show is brought to you by slowflowers.com, the free, online directory to more than 700 florists, shops, and studios who design with local, seasonal and sustainable flowers and to the farms that grow those blooms. It’s the conscious choice for buying and sending flowers.

Thank you to our lead sponsor, Flowerbulb.eu and their U.S. lily bulb vendors. One of the most recognizable flowers in the world, the lily is a top-selling cut flower, offering long-lasting blooms, year-round availability, and a dazzling petal palette. Flowerbulb.eu has partnered with Slow Flowers to provide beautiful lily inspiration and farming resources to help growers and florists connect their customers with more lilies. Learn more at Flowerbulb.eu.

Thank you to the Seattle Growers Market, a farmer-owned cooperative committed to providing the very best the Pacific Northwest has to offer in cut flowers, foliage and plants. The Growers Market’s mission is to foster a vibrant marketplace that sustains local flower farms and provides top-quality products and service to the local floral industry. Visit them at seattlegrowersmarket.com.

And thank you to Longfield Gardens, which provides home gardeners with high quality flower bulbs and perennials. Their online store offers plants for every region and every season, from tulips and daffodils to dahlias, caladiums and amaryllis. Check out the full catalog at Longfield Gardens at longfield-gardens.com.

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Thank you for joining me today! The Slow Flowers Podcast is a member-supported endeavor, downloaded more than 1.5 million times by listeners like you. Thank you for listening, commenting and sharing – it means so much. As our movement gains more supporters and more passionate participants who believe in the importance of our domestic cut flower industry, the momentum is contagious. I know you feel it, too. If you’re new to our weekly Show and our long-running Podcast, check out all of our resources at SlowFlowersSociety.com.

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I’m Debra Prinzing, host and producer of the Slow Flowers Show & Podcast. The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Andrew Brenlan. The content and opinions expressed here are either mine alone or those of my guests alone, independent of any podcast sponsor or other person, company or organization. Next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more Slow Flowers on the table, one stem, one vase at a time. Thanks so much for joining us today and I’ll see you next week!

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Music credits:

Drone Pine; Gaena; Rue Severine
by Blue Dot Sessions
http://www.sessions.blue

Lovely
by Tryad 
http://tryad.bandcamp.com/album/instrumentals
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In The Field
audionautix.com

The trend line is moving up!

It’s Earth Day 2022 and wow, has the past year been packed with great news for flower and garden lovers!

One year ago, Slow Flowers Society announced the first consumer insights around cut flower purchases, collected as part of the 2021 National Gardening Survey. The NGS is a well-regarded survey conducted annually since 1973, which tracks consumer behavior and produces a comprehensive market research report used by the lawn and garden industry to make strategic decisions around product development and sales.

Last year’s Survey established benchmarks on consumer attitudes about domestic and locally-grown cut flowers and their purchasing preferences. The findings were so encouraging and they gave us a statistically accurate tool to evaluate consumer attitudes and behavior shifts from 2020 moving forward.

For 2022, Slow Flowers has again partnered with the National Gardening Association, sponsors of the National Gardening Survey. This year’s research was conducted for a full month, from early January through early February. Around 2,600 people completed the national survey.

In planning for our second consecutive year, we worked with the NGS to expand last year’s questions to add the phrase “floral arrangements” to the cut flower question. We are excited to share those insights with you:

Q: “When buying cut flowers and flower arrangements, how important is it to you that they are Locally Grown?“

For 2022, 65% of respondents indicated it is Very or Somewhat Important that cut flowers and floral arrangements they purchase are locally grown.

That’s up from the 2021 National Gardening Survey, which found that 58% of respondents indicated it is Very or Somewhat Important that the cut flowers they purchase are grown locally.

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Q. “When buying cut flowers and flower arrangements, how important is it to you that they are U.S. Grown?“

For 2022, 61% of respondents indicated it is Very or Somewhat Important that cut flowers and floral arrangements they purchase are U.S. Grown.

That’s up from the 2021 National Gardening Survey, which found that 57% of respondents indicated it is Very or Somewhat Important that the cut flowers they purchase are U.S. Grown.

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Combined Importance When Buying Cut Flowers/Floral Arrangements

These numbers are encouraging! What’s to account for the needle moving? The 2022 survey included a wording change — from “Cut Flowers” to “Cut Flowers/Flower Arrangements.” As NGS researcher Paul Cohen explained, it’s likely that these numbers are due to a significant increase in the percentage of respondents who said they made a flower purchase. He also notes that the addition of “flower arrangements” likely spurred more respondents to report flower purchases. Paul Cohen also speculates that the significant backlog of weddings that created a boom year for weddings in 2021 (from only 1.3 million in 2020 to roughly 2 million in 2021) also contributed to the increased number of customers for local and US-grown cut flowers. And as a footnote, 2022 is forecast to be another banner year for weddings, with 2.5 million couples expected to tie the knot.

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Where Do Consumers Purchase U.S.- and Locally-Grown Flowers?

With input from the Slow Flowers community, we added a new follow-up question to the National Gardening survey. We asked:

Q. “When purchasing cut flowers and flower arrangements that you know are grown within the U.S. or locally grown, which of the following places have you purchased them from?”

The most common purchase locations for cut flowers and flower arrangements grown within the US or locally grown were supermarkets, mass merchants/discount stores, retail florists and farmers’ markets.

Supermarkets: 32.5%

Mass Merchandiser/Discount Stores: 28.6%

Retail Flower Shops: at 26.1%

Farmers’ Markets: 23.8 %

There is still much room for education around flower origin. Just over 13% of respondents stated they were unsure or do not know where the flowers they purchased were grown.

Other notable outlets included:

On-Farm Shopping: 9.5%
eCommerce Flower Websites: 5/6%
CSA flower subscriptions: 3.7%

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So what does this mean for you and your floral enterprise? Slow Flowers’ investment to participate in a national survey brings the conversation about the origin of cut flowers and floral arrangements to the center of the dialogue.

Simply by asking these questions, we elevate local and domestic flowers to top of mind — and this is important. The statistics reflect an ongoing cultural shift, one that I predict will only increase.

The survey results are a free resource for our members and we encourage you to incorporate the findings into your own branding, marketing and conversations to elevate your platform.

Next week, we will release a member press kit with resources that include a press release, survey graphics, and social media assets for your use. If we want more people to talk about local and domestic flowers, we need to give them something to write about! We’re doing the same, thanks to your support! You can look for these resources in a special member mailing or find a link to download them at slowflowerssociety.com

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Since Slow Flowers Society’s roots were established in 2013, there is a perennial question I’ve been asked over and over: How Do We Know if Consumers Care about Local Flowers?

I strongly believe having a statistically-accurate snapshot of people’s attitudes is one important way the Slow Flowers Movement can demonstrate and help move the needle on this subject. Yet, I’m aware of only two surveys that ever asked consumers about their attitudes toward domestic and local cut flowers — one in 2013 conducted by the California Grown Association and one in 2019 conducted for the Washington Flowers Project in my region. Clearly, we need research metrics to measure and document how awareness and attitudes are changing around one of the most important topics of the Slow Flowers Movement.

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At the beginning of 2021, Slow Flowers Society began to collaborate with and invested in the well-respected National Gardening Survey, which has been conducted annually since 1973. Now, for the first time, the National Gardening Survey has established benchmarks around consumer attitudes on domestic and locally-grown cut flowers. The findings are so encouraging and we now have a statistically accurate tool to use to track changes and shifts in future years.

I’m so pleased today to welcome the two men responsible for the 2021 National Gardening Survey, David Whitinger, National Gardening Association executive director, and Paul Cohen, research director and a professor in the Department of Business Administration at Carleton University and principal of Paul Cohen & Associates.

Dave and Paul will explain more about the National Gardening Survey, which is the comprehensive market research report that leaders in the lawn and garden industry count on each year to track consumer shifts and help them make strategic marketing decisions.

The Survey provides in-depth and up-to-date marketing information on industry trends, household participation, consumer profiles and retail sales. Nearly 2,500 U.S. households respond each year to an array of questions about their behavior and spending power in the lawn and garden space. Companies in the gardening industry financially support the research and sales of this year’s 361-page report provide revenue for the National Gardening Association.

Download our graphics inspired by survey findings. You are welcome to use them in your own conversations with customers, newsletter articles, blog posts and social media. It’s my goal that the Slow Flowers membership will join me and encourage discussion about consumer behavior and attitudes!

Social media graphics for IG:

Let’s dive right so you can hear the “big reveal” as we hear how survey respondents answered the two Slow Flowers questions:

How important is it that the flowers you purchase are American-grown?

and

How important is it that the flowers you purchase are locally-grown?

Thank you so much for joining me today as we geeked out on the research and contemplated what consumers think about your cut flowers. I’m eager to hear what you think! Do the rankings of 57% preference for domestic flowers and 58% preference for locally-grown flowers resonate with you experience as a flower farmer or floral designer? Please let me know your thoughts!

We are already beginning to plan for additional questions to pose in the 2022 National Gardening Survey, so please reach out if you have suggestions and/or if you’re interested in sponsoring this endeavor as a Slow Flowers partner. Let’s leverage the power of research and use this well-regarded study to validate our values and beliefs around the importance of local and domestic cut flowers.

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Thanks to Ellen Frost of Local Color Flowers and Lisa Ziegler of The Gardener’s Workshop for helping me present a bonus Slow Flowers Meet-Up last week. Ellen shared her timely preview of her upcoming online course, “Growing Your Business With Local Flower Sourcing.” Registration for Ellen’s course continues through Friday, April 22nd so check out the link I’ve shared and join me in congratulating floral designer Teresa Rao of Belle Petale for winning our giveaway of one complimentary registration to Ellen’s course.

Please join me TOMORROW, April 22nd, on Earth Day, for an interactive IG Live Q&A on Sustainable Floral Design with Tobey Nelson and Becky Feasby. The event takes place at noon Pacific/3 pm Eastern. You’re invited to join us at @slowflowerssociety on Instagram! Hope to see you there!

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JOIN ME AT THE WHERE WE BLOOM BOOK LAUNCH!

You’re invited to join the Virtual Book Launch & Happy Hour on Tuesday, April 27th at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern to celebrate the publication of BLOOM Imprint’s first title, Where We Bloom! 
The Zoom Party will include a Q&A conversation with Robin Avni and me as we discuss how this beautiful and inspirational book came to be. We also will welcome:

• Guest appearances from three of the Creatives whose spaces are included in the pages of Where We Bloom: Maura Feeney of Camellia Faire, Aishah Lurry of Patagonia Flower Farm and Susan Chambers of bloominCouture.
• fun giveaways (2 signed copies of the new book + 2 sets of our BLOOM notecards) along with a few surprises from our Resource Section sponsors

and

• a toast from Emily Thompson, of Emily Thompson Flowers, who wrote the sweet and personal foreword to Where We Bloom

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Thank you to our Sponsors

This podcast is brought to you by Slowflowers.com, the free, online directory to more than 850 florists, shops, and studios who design with local, seasonal and sustainable flowers and to the farms that grow those blooms.  It’s the conscious choice for buying and sending flowers.

And thank you to our lead sponsor for 2021, Farmgirl Flowers. Farmgirl Flowers delivers iconic burlap-wrapped bouquets and lush, abundant arrangements to customers across the U.S., supporting more than 20 U.S. flower farms by purchasing more than $9 million dollars of U.S.-grown fresh and seasonal flowers and foliage annually, and providing competitive salaries and benefits to 240 team members based in Watsonville, California and Miami, Florida. Discover more at farmgirlflowers.com.

For each Podcast episode this year, we thank three of our Major Sponsors. Thank you to The Gardener’s Workshop, which offers a full curriculum of online education for flower farmers and farmer-florists. Online education is more important this year than ever, and you’ll want to check out the course offerings at thegardenersworkshop.com.

Our next sponsor thank you goes to Red Twig Farms. Based in Johnstown, Ohio, Red Twig Farms is a family-owned farm specializing in peonies, daffodils, tulips and branches, a popular peony-bouquet-by-mail program and their Spread the Hope Campaign where customers purchase 10 tulip stems for essential workers and others in their community. Learn more at redtwigfarms.com.

Our final sponsor thanks goes to Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. Formed in 1988, ASCFG was created to educate, unite, and support commercial cut flower growers. It mission is to help growers produce high-quality floral material, and to foster and promote the local availability of that product. Learn more at ascfg.org.

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Thanks so much for joining us today! The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 716,000 times by listeners like you. Thank you for listening, commenting and sharing – it means so much. As our movement gains more supporters and more passionate participants who believe in the importance of our domestic cut flower industry, the momentum is contagious. I know you feel it, too.

I value your support and invite you to show your thanks to support Slow Flowers’ ongoing advocacy, education and outreach activities. You can find the donate button in the column to the right at debraprinzing.com

I’m Debra Prinzing, host and producer of the Slow Flowers Podcast. Next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more Slow Flowers on the table, one vase at a time. And If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto iTunes and posting a listener review.

The content and opinions expressed here are either mine alone or those of my guests alone, independent of any podcast sponsor or other person, company or organization.

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Andrew Brenlan. Learn more about his work at soundbodymovement.com. 

Music Credits:

LaBranche; Brass Buttons; Turning on the Lights; Gaena
by Blue Dot Sessions
http://www.sessions.blue

Lovely by Tryad 
http://tryad.bandcamp.com/album/instrumentals
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In The Field
audionautix.com