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The 2027 Slow Flowers Summit will take place live and in-person on the grounds of Filoli Historic House and Garden, the famed cultural destination in the San Francisco Bay Area. Late last month, I traveled there for a site visit and planning session, meeting up with several of Filoli’s horticulture and floriculture team members, including Jackie Salas, today’s guest. The weather was glorious and Jackie led Niesha Blancas, our social media manager, and me on a walk through Filoli’s cutting garden while we filmed and recorded content. While introducing us to the vast perennial and annual beds and borders, Jackie clipped and gathered some of her favorite blooms, foliages, and texture elements for an arrangement she subsequently designed. This was a delightful education for a flower-lover like me, as Jackie shared about the character of California gardens, the history of cut flower growing and design at this renowned estate garden, and how she favors plants with two or three uses – both in the landscape and the vase. Filoli plays a leading role in horticulture and gardening education, with an emphasis on sustainability and design, and we know you and other Slow Flowers Summit attendees will be enriched by your time there next June. Today’s conversation is a beautiful preview – as we are gearing up to open Early Bird ticket sales on November 1st.

You may have heard that we’re celebrating our 10^th Slow Flowers Summit next year. The dates are set for June 20^th to 22nd, 2027 and you’re invited to join the Slow Flowers community as we highlight new ideas and leading voices in floral design, flower farming, and sustainability topics. The big news is that the Summit will take place in the San Francisco Bay Area at Filoli Historic House & Garden. This might sound familiar, and it is – because Filoli’s leadership has invited us to return after our successful 2021 conference there.

I’m so excited that we’ll again experience a full immersion of the gardens, landscape, and natural areas at Filoli, as we learn from expert Slow Flowers instructors, including from Filoli’s horticulture and floriculture teams.

Today’s guest is Jackie Bergquist Salas, Horticulture Production Manager at Filoli. Here’s more about Jackie. She is a San Francisco Bay Area native who has always had a passion for petals. As a child growing up in the East Bay, she thought it normal to harvest backyard roses for Thanksgiving centerpieces, and large bouquets of fresh Calla Lilies from her yard long into May. She took this passion to UC Davis, where in 2005 she earned a B.S. in Environmental Horticulture with specializations in Landscape/Turf Management and Nursery Production/Floriculture. While at Davis she also worked in the university’s Floriculture Labs. Continuing her florific journey, Jackie she obtained a M.S. in Public Horticulture from the University of Delaware and the Longwood Garden’s Graduate Program in 2009. She picked up floral arranging skills at a private estate after college, and honed her growing skills at Children’s Fairyland in downtown Oakland, California. These experiences led her to her dream job at Filoli Gardens and Estate, where she manages the Horticultural Production spaces and staff.

As I mentioned, Niesha and I spent a few hours recently, touring the cutting gardens as Jackie introduced us to the late summer-early autumn plantings. After meeting the plants where they grow, we followed her into the floral arranging room in Filoli’s mansion, a special place where all the vase collections are stored, flowers are dried, and design supplies are stocked for staff to easily create close to 20 arrangements weekly for the public and administrative areas. I encourage you to watch the replay video of my conversation with Jackie as we toured the gorgeous Filoli Cutting Gardens and as she designed a seasonal arrangement. You’ll find it at slowflowerspodcast.com or on our YouTube channel for Episode 790. By the way, Filoli Horticulture is a member of the Slow Flowers Society and we’re so grateful for their involvement as both a host venue and fellow members.

One more series of thank you’s I want to share. During our few days in the Bay Area, Niesha and I were joined by several Slow Flowers members, including some of our Summit speakers and designers. We had a great time on a walk-through of the Filoli mansion, and later visited in the Café at Filoli for networking and good friendship. A special thank you to our Filoli counterparts, including Jim Salyards, Brendan Dellerba, Sonia Capitant, Aimee Sanders and Marlene(a) Delgado for all their input and guidance – you showed us a magnificent time and it’s a preview of what’s to come.

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Thank you to speakers who joined us, including Kristine Albrecht (and her husband Brion Sprinsock) of Santa Cruz Dahlias, Jacqueline Pham of Pham Peony Gardens, and Melissa Olson of Penflora Designs. We also welcomed Teresa Sabankaya, who has agreed to serve as the Creative Director for the Floral Takeover at the Filoli mansion. Sarah Reyes and Laura Sasso of Wildflower and Fern in Oakland also joined us. What a treat to connect in person as we all began to imagine the many ways we can deliver a fantastic, inspiring, and idea-filled 2027 Slow Flowers Summit.

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Thank you to our Sponsors

This show is brought to you by slowflowers.com, the free, online directory to 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, My Patio Tree: Expertly Grown Plants, Perfectly Designed to Elevate Your Garden. Their second-generation family tree farm has curated the best-performing, cutting-edge, multi-zone varieties to enhance your garden, patio or special event. Every tree purchased supports Plant With Purpose, a nonprofit organization that restores hope by reversing global poverty and environmental damage. Learn more at mypatiotree.com.

Thank you to Charles Little & Company for supplying our industry with some of the most beautiful and sustainably-grown design ingredients, available nationwide through their website at charleslittleandcompany.com. Based in Eugene, Oregon, the farmers at Charles Little & Company have been growing and drying flowers since 1986. New products and dried flower collections are added to their website at the first of each month. Check it out at charleslittleandcompany.com.

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.

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The Slow Flowers Podcast is a member-supported endeavor, downloaded more than 1.6 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; Speaker Joy
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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

Visit an urban cutting garden with me today – and meet long-time Slow Flowers member Eleanor Blackford, a wedding florist whose studio produces designs using only what she grows on her 6,000-square-foot city lot in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. You’ll learn more about what Eleanor grows, inspired by her English grandmothers and their prolific cottage gardens. After years running Bash & Bloom as a Seattle wedding and event business, Eleanor rebranded as Bloomwood Floral to reflect her shift from producing big “bashes” toward creating personalized, garden-inspired floral commissions for couples. With a desire to be entirely “slow” in her practices, this new model fits Eleanor and her husband Matt’s lifestyle as entrepreneurs and parents of two young children.

Ten years ago last month – in May 2015 – I recorded our 96^th episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast with Eleanor Blackford of Bash & Bloom, a Seattle-based wedding and event designer and Slow Flowers member who I frequently ran into at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. I invited Eleanor to sit down in my living room and chat with me about her decision to go foam-free as part of her design philosophy.

It’s high time to revisit Eleanor’s story and last week I visited her home-based micro-farm in South Seattle, where I filmed our video interview as Eleanor led me through her production and display gardens – all of which provide 100% of her design ingredients these days. We discussed how Bash & Bloom has evolved into Bloomwood Floral, and how Eleanor’s focus has shifted in part because she and her husband are now parents to two young children.

“I feel like ‘urban farming’ is my calling. Growing food, growing flowers — It’s something we assume can’t be done in a city, but it can, and it can be worth it. And there can still be space for a life outside farming, too.”

Eleanor Blackford, Bloomwood Floral

Here’s a bit more about Eleanor:
Eleanor grew up in gardens and around gardeners. Her vivid memories include exploring her nana’s garden at her North Yorkshire Moors cottage in England where she was born and helping her my mum as a kid in their family vegetable garden in Minnesota, where she earned 5¢ for each potato beetle she squished. The first flowers Eleanor ever grew were zinnias, marigolds, and sunflowers in a tiny patch of dirt that her dad dug for her behind their house next to the big garden. In each apartment she lived in as an adult, Eleanor managed to find a way to grow something—even if it was just herbs in the kitchen window.

After spending her 20s trying to make the 9-to-5 thing work, Eleanor missed being creative and started playing with flowers. In 2010, she launched bash & bloom, now Bloomwood Floral, as a way to scratch that creative itch. After flowering for a dear friend’s wedding, knowing there was no turning back, she left a non-profit career and threw herself into making this life in flowers work.

When Eleanor met her husband in early 2013, he came with a house on a 6,000+ sq ft lot. Which, by Seattle standards, is a giant parcel. There was a big concrete raised bed and within a few months of them dating, Eleanor had commandeered the garden to plant vegetables and start cosmo seeds. Today, the property is devoid of grass, and just about every square foot of space is taken up by Bloomwood Florals’ urban farmlet. As she says, “The growing bug is a real thing, and I have it.”

Most days, you can find Eleanor out in the garden or up the street at her Pea Patch spot, often with two lively children in tow. As I mentioned, it was a joy to film a video tour of Bloomwood Floral and the nearby Pea Patch. You will hear some background noise, thanks to the proximity of Interstate 5 and to Boeing Field, where small but noisy private planes seem to take off and land with as much frequency as those at SeaTac Airport near me.

If you’re in Seattle, check out Bloomwood Florals’ IG feed — @bloomwoodfloral — to see if there’s a popup sale of hand-tied garden bouquets! I’m hoping to grab one this week.

READ MORE – from our August 2019 profile of Eleanor in Florists Review

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Slow Flowers on the Road!

Coming up — you can find the full calendar for dates from June 8-13 when I’ll be joined by my co-author Robin Avni for an June East Coast book tour to promote The Flower Farmers. All of the events are free, so please come and say hello! We’d love to see you, especially if you’re a Slow Flowers member!

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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 A-ROO Company, your one-stop shop for in-stock floral packaging. From sleeves and wraps to labels and tags, A-Roo Company has a full selection of eco-friendly items or to start the process of developing a look that is uniquely yours. Visit www.a-roo.com to see it all.

Thank you to Charles Little & Company for supplying our industry with some of the most beautiful and sustainably-grown design ingredients, available nationwide through their website at charleslittleandcompany.com. Based in Eugene, Oregon, the farmers at Charles Little & Company have been growing and drying flowers since 1986. New products and dried flower collections are added to their website at the first of each month. Check it out at charleslittleandcompany.com.

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Thank you for joining me today! The Slow Flowers Podcast is a member-supported endeavor, downloaded more than one 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.

---

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!

---

Music credits:

Drone Pine; Gaena; Contrarian
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