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I’ve lots to share with you, so before introducing today’s episode, let me jump right into the Flower News of the Week:

First off, the winner of our drawing for a free copy of Alethea Harampolis and Jill Rizzo’s beautiful new project, The Wreath Recipe Book, is Jen Beck, a professor, nonprofit consultant, and artist based in Austin, Texas.

Thanks to the people at Artisan Books for sending this info-packed prize her way- and thanks to everyone who took the time to comment about their favorite seasonal and local wreath ingredients.

Next, I am so pleased to announce that flower farmer Sid Anna Sherwood of Annie’s Flower Farm in Sequim, Washington, reached her funding goal for an interest-free loan via an innovative nonprofit program called Kiva. When I posted a bonus interview with her on October 29th, Sid Anna she still needed to raise close to three-quarters of her goal.

Thanks to listeners of the Slow Flowers Podcast and to the amazing way that news spreads on Facebook, that huge amount of money – more than $7,000 of crowd-lending, was raised in 9 days! Every penny will be paid back over the course of three years and Sid Anna’s customers will continue to benefit from her lovely local flowers, grown on a new piece of leased farmland on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

I also want to give my personal congrats to two previous guests of the Slow Flowers Podcast. First, to Erin Benzakein, owner of floret flowers, for being one of the winners of Martha Stewart’s American Made Awards, given to her in person by Martha this week in NYC. Bringing local and domestic flowers to the consciousness of Martha’s followers is super important. I hope this award inspires everyone to think about the origins of their flowers and the people who grow and design with them.

Next, a huge shout-out to Farmgirl Flowers and creator Christina Stembel for reaching their 4th anniversary this week. Stay strong and flourish, my friend!

Earlier this week, I received a wonderful email from Slowflowers.com members Kay Studer and Susan Studer King of Buckeye Blooms in Elida, Ohio. We recently met in person at the ASCFG Conference and they thoughtfully followed up to tell me about a recent effort to reach out to potential bridal customers. After their consultation, Susan and Kay sent her a note like this one:

We hope you have had a great fall so far and that plans for your wedding are proceeding smoothly!

We just wanted to follow up with you to confirm if you would like to contract our flowers and design services for your wedding. We are planning our spring flower crop now and are actually able to custom-grow flowers exclusively for you! As both a flower farm and a floral design studio, Buckeye Blooms is able to provide the very freshest, sustainably-grown flowers possible for your special day. We offer numerous varieties of flowers not available to traditional florists, which means your bouquet will be unlike any other!

Whether you decide to go with Buckeye Blooms or not, we do hope you will consider requesting seasonal, locally-grown or at least domestically-grown flowers for your bouquets. Incredibly, over 80% of flowers used by traditional florists are imported–primarily from Ecuador and Colombia where environmental and human health regulations are lax (I–Susan– used to live in Ecuador and can tell you stories of what I saw….).

Seasonal, locally-grown flowers arrive to you fresher and more fragrant, plus you help to support local farmers and the local economy. You can learn more about the local flower movement at fieldtovase.com and slowflowers.com.

We have found that brides love telling their guests that their flowers were grown in Ohio and came a field not far away– and that they know the farmer that grew them. This can really add a special, personal touch to your wedding day.

Educating consumers about their choices in flowers is something we are passionate about, so whatever you decide we do hope you will consider locally-grown flowers!

This is worth a hip, hip, hooray – Buckeye Blooms, I love your efforts at outreach and education. I know that it will inspire other flower farmers to convey similar messages to their existing and potential clients. Many thanks for your leadership in the Slow Flowers Movement!

Today’s guests are none other than Jennie Love of Love ‘n Fresh Flowers in Philadelphia, and her friend, fellow designer and frequent flower customer Sullivan Owen of Sullivan Owen Floral & Event Design, also of Philadelphia.

The two shared the stage at ASCFG last month in a packed ballroom where they designed with gorgeous local flowers and discussed their craft in a talk called “Design Basics.”

Even though this interview is audio-only, I believe what you’ll hear will stimulate you to think about floral design and seasonal and locally-grown flowers in a new way.

Sullivan and Jennie have a lot to share and even their casual asides are packed with juicy information that will help you in your own floral business, be it growing, designing – or both!

Here’s a little more about them both:

Owner and creative director at Love ‘N Fresh Flowers, Jennie Love is a trained professional horticulturist and an experienced, life-long farmer.

Jennie has led numerous workshops over the past five years, including the sold-out Seasonal Bouquet Project LIVE series and classes for Longwood Gardens’ Floral Design Certificate program.

She has also presented to many garden clubs and other groups throughout the Mid-Atlantic area.

A charismatic and passionate flower farmer, Jennie found her natural niche as a ‘farmer florist’ for wedding and event design, becoming a recognized leader of the local flower movement.

She was recently featured in the New York Times for her farm-to-centerpiece efforts. Her distinctively lush and textural floral designs have been used in hundreds of weddings as well as for numerous photo shoots, magazines, style blogs and books. Jennie is a board member for ASCFG and write a regular column for The Cut Flower Quarterly.

Sullivan Owen is the owner and creative director of Sullivan Owen Floral & Event, her eponymous floral design studio, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

She is sought after for her lush and fashion-forward style, and is a trendsetter whose work is regularly featured in wedding publications, and most recently in Martha Stewart Weddings. Her business acumen and background in marketing and branding have made her just as passionate about running an excellent business as she is about creating gorgeous designs. She loves working with the best flowers available and loves to get to know the growers behind the amazing products they cultivate.

If you haven’t started following Jennie or Sullivan on their various social platforms, you can follow them at these links:

Jennie on Pinterest

Jennie on Facebook

Jennie on Instagram

Sullivan on Facebook

Sullivan on Twitter

Sullivan on Instagram

 

Next week’s guest is event designer Emily Ellen Anderson of Lola Creative in Seattle. Then, you’ll hear another presentation recorded at the ASCFG Conference. . . so I promise lots of good stuff in the coming weeks.

On another note, a few weeks ago I dedicated an episode to a little girl named Shylah who faced many challenging health issues. Blessedly, your prayers, thoughts, meditations and good wishes have been felt. She’s out of the hospital and back at home. And while there are months and months of treatment ahead, everyone around Shylah feels optimistic about her recovery. Among others, this floral tribe has gathered around her and I thank you for sharing in my best wishes for this little one’s swift road to good health.

Listeners like you have downloaded the Slow Flowers Podcast more than 25,000 times. If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

My personal goal is to put more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. I promise that when you tune in next week, you’ll hear another insightful and educational episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast.

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

 

 

 

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Today’s interview was inspired by an email I recently received from Mary Kate Kinnane and Maureen Azize, partners in The Local Bouquet, based in Little Compton, Rhode Island. Their full-service floral design studio uses locally and domestically grown blooms for every occasion – and it’s their dedication to this philosophy that prompted them to reach out to me. 

Their letter was just one of several similar “cries for help” from Slow Flowers believers around the country, including Justine Lacy and Jessica Stewart of Foxglove Brooklyn Floral Design Studio, who were my podcast guests two weeks ago.

The essential question is this: HOW CAN SMALL FLORAL BUSINESSES MOTIVATE THEIR WHOLESALE SUPPLIERS TO OFFER AMERICAN GROWN FLOWERS FROM LOCAL FARMERS AND OTHER DOMESTIC SOURCES?

Here’s the note that Mary Kate and Maureen sent:

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Today’s podcast is actually NOT about American flowers, but about our gifted and inspiring kindred spirits across the Atlantic. They are a few of the many flower farmers and designers who are part of their own local flower movement in Britain.

During the past several months, I often noticed the hashtag #britishflowers pop upon Twitter. It was fun to read comments and re-tweets and click through to view beautiful photos of British designers, farmers, gardens and flowers.

One of the Twitter names that I started interacting with was Cook & Carlsson, and I soon learned that Lizzie Cook and Moa Carlsson are the two women behind that venture.

With the alluring tagline: “English Grown Flowers,” Cook & Carlsson is a London-based design studio combining the talents of Lizzie Cook, a photographer and artist, and Moa Carlsson, an architect who has worked most recently worked in landscape architecture.

They describe Cook & Carlsson as an “independent flower monger,” and you’ll hear in our conversation the charming explanation for their use of that term. Lizzie, who has the British accent, and Moa, whose accent reveals her Swedish heritage, have joined their mutual love of nature with a desire to create beauty using flowers they grow or forage, as well as flowers they source from other UK flower farmers. 

Here’s more about Moa Carlsson, in her own words:

I grew up in the most northern part of Sweden, amongst aconitum, arctic bramble and Norwegian spruce, and in a family with a long tradition of growing food and flowers. My sister and both my mother and my grandparents kept large grounds living in tune with the seasons, which in their part of Sweden is rather harsh. (for example, you can’t grow apples there).

I studied and worked as an architect in Sweden, Austria, England and America. Right now I live in London, but I am a PhD student at MIT in Boston, where I am studying computational technologies to design and simulate the changing of landscapes.

In my free time I dig in my friends gardens and in the urban plots where we do guerilla gardening; I do hiking and mountaineering; I am a painter and I have a hunting license (mostly forest/mountain birds and hare).  

Here’s more about Lizzie Cook, in her own words:

I grew up in the Caribbean amongst the audacious vibrancy of hibiscus, frangipanis and flowers from the Flamboyant tree, all of which fired my senses as a child.  The fragrance and colours of the frangipani flower at the right time of day is pretty intoxicating!  When I went to Falmouth College of Arts in Cornwall to study photography, I fell in love with all of the tropical gardens, which reminded me of the flora and fauna of warmer climes.  I had a very free childhood, outside, rarely wearing shoes and in nature, noticing the changing seasons, being free to take it all in.  I love being near the water and I currently live on a narrowboat on a river in East London, still trying to hold onto that freedom and proximity to nature, especially in the City of London.  I like seeking out the quieter natural areas, but enjoy the diversity and pace of London.  It is a privileged thing to cycle home from the hectic city back to a peaceful boat on a river surrounded by nature reserves, and I feel very lucky! 

Cook & Carlsson on their philosophy: 

We live really close to one another, just on the outskirts of London, which means there are lots of small natural refuges where you can feel like you are still connected with the wider countryside.  It was in these places where our imaginations were fired and it’s really where we had the idea of using flowers and foliages that we saw around us, but which had been forgotten about or blocked out by the increasing urbanization.  We began looking and learning about the species that were around us and rediscovering their simple beauty; we began mixing them with other things, falling in love with the results. Doing so and by growing our own flowers, we try to bring back varieties that London shoppers rarely get a chance to buy.

For us, it’s about the lifestyle that comes along with the business. We are very lucky to visit lots of local gardens, growing sites, nurseries, meeting local growers and hanging out with people who are on the same page as far as our ethos is concerned. Then we collect all of our material and put it together, which we relish as it appeals to our strong creative sides, the combination of which seems to be magic! Many laughs and good biscuits make good arrangements, we have found. 

 

Through our exchanges, I learned that Cook & Carlsson is the first London-based member of the “Flowers from the Farm” organization, which was founded by Gillian Hodgson. Lizzie and Moa were sweet enough to connect Gill and me.

Part two of this interview is with a true kindred spirit. Gill is the Mother of the British Flowers movement. She grows flowers at her own farm, Fieldhouse Flowers in Yorkshore. Here is how Gill describes her flower endeavor: 

“Fieldhouse lies in the Vale of York at the foot of the Yorkshire Wolds and we have 200 acres of light sandy land.  We farm wheat, barley and carrots and I have my flowers on just one acre. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were here before us – and my great-great-grandfather farmed at the next-door farm.  John, my husband, and I have been here 25 years now.  The house was built around 1780; it’s draughty and takes a lot of upkeep – but it’s a great family house and we love it.” 

As you will hear in our interview, Gill has been putting much of her energy into promoting British flowers through Flowers from the Farm. She and others came together in 2011 to launch this network of cut flower growers. Read more about the group’s origins here. 

“Our aim is to create a brand for British flowers as a World class product,” reads the organization’s web site. And the tag-line: “Putting British flowers back into every vase in the country,” sounds comfortably familiar with the way I conclude each of my podcasts.

I invite you to join all three of them on a Twitter chat any Monday. The #Britishflowers chat takes place at Noon Pacific/3 p.m. Eastern every Monday (and that means 8 p.m. GMT/Greenwich Mean Time). Please look for these inspiring leaders of the #britishgrown flower movement on Twitter and more. 

To follow up on Gill’s story about the “fake” British Valentine’s bouquet and how the UK flower farmers used social media, especially Twitter, to highlight the inaccuracies, follow this link to Flowers from the Farm’s media report. 

 

 

So many connections to make as together we promote our domestic cut flower farming industry and the floral designers who care about the origins of their design work.

Special thanks to Lizzie and Moa for permission to use the photographs they provided; and to Gill for permission to photos of her farm and the Flowers from the Farm participants.

My friend Kasey Cronquist started the hash-tag #originmatters. In the UK, Gill Hodgson calls the same idea #knownprovenance. Similar in their intent, both phrases highlight what is going on in both the U.S. and the U.K. Consumers want to know the sources of their flowers. And flower farmers are fully engaged in providing that information!

It has been my pleasure to share with you today’s podcast conversations. Apologies for the uneven audio quality in some places, which was subject to the idiosyncracies of doing interviews via Skype. In the second interview, my voice was quite garbled, while Gillian Hodgson’s came through very clear. So we had to re-record many of my questions and patch together the interview. I’m sure you’ll really enjoy these interviews, despite the minor tech problems. 

Because of the support from you and others, listeners have downloaded episodes of the Slow Flowers Podcast more than 6,500 times! 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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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.

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)

March 20th is just around the corner – thankfully! And blooms are everywhere – under our noses, poking through the soil, erupting from branches, and filling our vases. Hurrah!

Here are some of the hints of spring that have come my way:

1. A DIY designer gets inspired by her own garden’s bounty. Earlier this week, an email with this charming photo appeared in my in-box from Kay Christie, who attended one of my demonstrations at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show last month. Thanks so much for sharing, Kay! And for the kind words. Keep designing!

I wanted to show you an arrangement I just made with cuttings from my garden. I really loved your demo at the flower and garden show. It gave me the idea for this. I also used chicken wire inside to hold the stems. Thanks do much for the inspirational talk.

2. A talented gardener clips goodies from her backyard for a special arrangement. Like Kay, Woodinville, Wash., gardener Peggy Shelley harvests beautiful floral ingredients from her landscape. I visited Peggy and her husband Al Shelley (also a gifted gardener) earlier this month to interview them for an upcoming Better Homes & Gardens article about their garden (the feature will appear in the August 2012 edition). There was a gorgeous bouquet on the kitchen counter and of course, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It included pink-flowering Japanese pieris, bi-colored pink-and-green euphorbia stems, golden thread branch cypress sprigs and lemon-yellow privet foliage. Peggy told me something quite inspiring – and I’m going to remind myself of her passion every time I head into my own garden:

The biggest satisfaction of my garden comes from making a bouquet and giving it to a friend.

3. Local flowers arrive just in time for a Chicago designer. Last Sunday, I was in Chicago to speak at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show (thanks, Bill Aldrich, for inviting me!). I called Lynn Fosbender, who owns Pollen, a sweet, ec0-conscious floral studio, and asked if she could bring a bouquet to my talk and also pass out her business cards. I wanted to showcase Lynn as a home-town resource for Chicago area floral customers, and let them know about her intentional design philosophy of using local flowers whenever possible. “I’d love to come,” she said. “But March 11th is still pretty early. I probably won’t be able to find local flowers from my sources.”

Then, to my delight, Lynn showed up with a vase of the most stunning vibrant orange-and-green parrot tulips I’d ever seen! “Spring has been mild here – and one of my local growers called me on Friday to let me know his tulips were ready to harvest,” Lynn said. What a wonderful treat. I wrote a post about Lynn when I first met her in 2012. Here’s a link to that story. I was so impressed with her vision for her business:

For several years I thought I would like to own a full-service flower shop that was eco-friendly. I knew if anyone should do it, it should be me.

4. See what my own garden yielded this week. I’ve been making a local and seasonally-inspired floral arrangement every single week for the past 20 weeks (since the first week of November). It’s part of my plan to create a book or blog called 52-Weeks-of-Local-Flowers. It’s been fun, creative, and very educational to discover what I can source from local growers, local farmers’ markets, and of course, my own backyard.

Yellow and green are the theme of this week! I used two types of euphorbia (dipping the cut stems in boiling water helped “seal” the ends so the milky white sap didn’t drain into the vase); two types of daffodils that the prior owners of our home planted on the parking strip along the street; lots of bright-yellow-flowering forsythia; and some lovely variegated foliage from the scented geranium plant I’ve been babysitting in my garage under the shop lights. Everything came together nicely in a small green-glazed vase and a vintage flower frog held the stems in place.

Today, strangely, it’s snowing in Seattle. I soaked my sweet pea seeds in water last night and I plan to plant them in flats in the garage today. I had wanted to weed and prep the beds, but really? I think I’ll wait and see if it warms up a bit! Happy Almost-Spring!