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I’m so pleased to introduce Amy Kunkel-Patterson of Seattle-based Gather Design Co. as this week’s Slow Flowers Podcast guest.

Before our main interview, I want to quickly share a conversation I recorded earlier this week with Alicia Schwede of the Flirty Fleurs Blog.

Like me, Alicia is a fellow marketing committee member at Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. We also collaborate with Longfield Gardens on education and promotion of gardening with the bulbs and flowers in their catalog. I was so impressed with the Flirty Fleurs tulip collection that Alicia “curated” for Longfield last year and I asked her about her process.

Be sure to check out images of Longfield’s spring-flowering bulbs, including Alicia’s collection — I’ve posted links at today’s show notes. Longfield has just opened up the online ordering for spring-flowering bulbs. Of course, that seems a little counterintuitive because you’ll be planting them in the fall, right? But some of the hottest varieties will go quickly, so it’s smart to shop now. Note: Longfield’s Tulip Shop will “open” in mid-April.

Amy and I met in January 2016 when she participated in a master class with Lisa Waud of pot & box and Flower House Detroit. Lisa was hosted by the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market to teach a large-format installation course and I spent the day interviewing the participants and photographing the process. You can read about that workshop here and listen to the interviews.

Amy impressed me for many reasons, including her enthusiasm for collaboration and her story– she told me she was working full-time as a practicing attorney. And by coincidence, she was at a law firm I knew quite well, having been quite involved as the spouse of a law partner at that firm years ago.

We continued our conversation last summer when Amy volunteered to work with Alicia Schwede to produce her annual “dahlia wall” at SWGMC. Amy jumped in to help her produce it. I was there to film a time-lapse video of the installation and so, we had hours and hours to chat while working.

I had just finished up American Flowers Week 2016 and was already scheming what I hoped to achieve for American Flowers Week 2017.

I mentioned wanting to produce several floral-inspired fashion shoots with iconic American flowers like sunflowers, roses, peonies, dahlias and other flowers. Amy spontaneously said: “I’ll make one for you!”

That simple response led to what turned out to be the most amazing design — a high-fashion gown created with a host of flowers supplied by Seattle Wholesale Growers Market.

Amy created something truly beautiful for American Flowers Week 2017 and it has been so hard for all of us involved to sit tight and keep the photography under wraps until we kick off the American Flowers Week campaign.

So you’ll hear us talk about this project a bit — and I promise you will be blown away when we begin to unveil the images, and floral fashions I’ve commissioned from other teams around the country — leading up to June 28 to July 4th.

So, let’s meet Amy. Here is her introduction from the Gather Design Co. web site:

I’m Amy; welcome.  My love for flowers runs deep and true.  I grew up ‘helping’ in my mom’s, grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s gardens, learning how to grow flowers, and more importantly, how to pick and arrange them.  

This is where the name Gather comes from – I’ve always been good at what my family broadly terms “hunting and gathering.”  I was the kid who couldn’t ever pull myself out of the blackberry patch where I wanted to pick just one more berry, or away from the beach where I spent hours collecting the tiniest, wave-polished pebbles which I called jewels.  

On a trip through Europe, I managed to gather upwards of 40 pounds of rocks, each special in my mind, from beaches my husband and I walked.

I take the same tireless care in gathering vintage vases for my collection and seeking out the most luscious seasonal blooms for my clients.  

Gathering also sparked the event design side of Gather, as I love to start with an idea – color, texture, an heirloom treasure – and spin it into an entire experience, gathering context and detail along the way.

I believe in letting flowers shine as they do in nature.  I let each stem dance and delight in their own loveliness, highlighted and supported by every other bit of foliage and flowers in an arrangement.  My designs are at once unique and timeless, romantic and whimsical, pensive and wild.  I strive to learn about and befriend each of my couples, noting the blooms that bring them joy and the colors that inspire them, so that their flowers embody the essence of who they are.

I purchase from local farmers whenever possible and source safely and sustainably-grown flowers.   I seek out rare and interesting blooms, foliage, berries, seedpods, and other elements to incorporate the season, the place, and the people into each bouquet or arrangement.

Always hungry for the next adventure, I’ve also started hand-dying cotton and silks for table runners, ribbons, and styling pieces.

Find Amy at these social places and follow along on her creative journey:

Gather Design Co. on Facebook

Gather Design Co. on Instagram

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 177,000 times by listeners like you. THANK YOU to each one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

If you value the content you receive each week, I invite you to show your thanks and support the Slow Flowers Podcast with a donation — the button can be found on our home page in the right column. Your contributions will help make it possible to transcribe future episodes of the Podcast.

Thank you to our garden of Slow Flowers Sponsors

Arctic Alaska Peonies, a cooperative of 50 family farms in the heart of Alaska providing high quality, American Grown peony flowers during the months of July and August. Visit them today at arcticalaskapeonies.com

Seattle Wholesale 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. Find them at seattlewholesalegrowersmarket.com

Longfield Gardens 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. Visit them at lfgardens.com.

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

I’m Debra Prinzing, host and producer of the Slow Flowers Podcast. Next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more American grown 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 KineticTreeFitness.com.

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Before I introduce you to today’s inspiring guest, Megan McGuire of Red Daisy Farm outside Denver, I want to share more details about the upcoming Slow Flowers Creative Workshop that I’ll be co-teaching with Dundee Butcher of Russian River Flower School in Sonoma’s wine country — Monday, October 17th and Tuesday, October 18th.

This valuable workshop experience is designed to help you clarify, document and communicate your personal aesthetic message as a floral professional – in both written and visual formats suitable for your web site, social media and mobile platforms.

In a safe, supportive and intimate setting, our small group will focus on YOU! We’ll go deep into Slow Flowers “brand building” as each participant finds his or her own voice as a floral storyteller. If you’ve been thinking about investing in your businesses’ future, now is the time to sign up.

Now, I’m so pleased to return, at least in my memory, to Colorado. I spent several days in the Rocky Mountain State during the month of August, visiting flower farms, meeting talented designers and seeing their work, and recording several interviews.

Today’s conversation is the third in my Colorado series, so if you missed the interview with Denver floral designer Robyn Rissman and her collaborator Alicia Schwede — the design team that created the Field to Vase Dinner flowers at The Fresh Herb Co., or if you missed the recent interview with Don Lareau and Daphne Yannakakis of Zephyros Farm and Garden, here are the links to those episodes:

Episode 260: Blooming in Colorado with Robyn Rissman of BareRoot Flora and Alicia Schwede of Bella Fiori Floral Design and Flirty Fleurs

Episode 262: Luxury flowers on Colorado’s Western Slope with Daphne Yannakakis and Don Lareau of Zephyros Farm & Garden

For years, Megan McGuire and her husband Terry Baumann had their eyes on a charming early 20th century farmhouse in Brighton, Colorado, just outside Denver. By the time that they finally became the owners, it seems as if the Red Daisy Farmhouse possesses them – but in a good way, a very good way.

Meg is a Slowflowers.com member and we’ve corresponded for nearly a year about my wanting to visit her if I returned to Colorado.

READ MORE…

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Earlier this month I returned to Longmont, Colorado, just outside Boulder, to a beautiful destination called The Fresh Herb Co.

Flower farmers Chet and Kristy Anderson, past guest of this podcast, again hosted an al fresco Field to Vase Dinner for the Certified American Grown campaign.

Slow Flowers and yours truly continues to be involved in the Field to Vase Dinner series — as a sponsor and co-host.

I have loved spending time in Colorado over the past several years, getting to know flower farming leaders like Chet and Kristy, and meeting others in the floral world, including designers, florists and retailers who value local flowers.

I flew into Denver three days before the August 13th event at The Fresh Herb Co. and picked up a rental car for what turned out to be a 5-hour drive west — across the state to the Western Slope of Colorado.

My destination was Zephyros Flower Farm, where Slow Flowers members Daphne Yannakakis and Don Lareau hosted me for a few days.

You’ll hear my interview with them in September. Another upcoming Colorado episode will introduce you to Megan McGuire of Red Daisy Farm in Brighton, where I spent a few nights after returning to the Front Range/Denver area.

Today, I’m delighted to introduce you to the design team responsible for creating the floral presentation at Boulder’s Field to Vase Dinner. Typically featured Field to Vase Dinner florists are selected from those who are active Slowflowers.com members, and this is considered a valuable opportunity and perk. At the beginning of 2016 when Kathleen Williford, the dinner tour’s former event planner, and I put our heads together, we were in immediate agreement that Robyn Rissman of Bare Root Flora in Denver was our top choice.

When I reached out to Robyn to chat about the opportunity, our conversation turned to the Flirty Fleurs Magazine, a collaboration between Robyn and her good friend Alicia Schwede, of the Flirty Fleurs blog.

The publication has been produced each of the past two years and I’ve contributed articles to both the 2014 and 2015 editions, so while Robyn and I didn’t really know one another, she was familiar with my work and I was certainly familiar with her work.

During our phone conversation I was hit with a brainstorm and said: What if we asked Alicia to work with you on the flowers for the Field to Vase Dinner? And that was the cincher for the deal! Alicia’s deep ties to Colorado, where she lived and worked as a florist for more than a decade, made their partnership a natural option.

READ MORE…

My friend Alicia Schwede of the Flirty Fleurs blog recently set for herself a huge new creative challenge: To design and produce her own floral magazine. The result is simply beautiful and last night, I finally got my hands on the brand new issue of Flirty Fleurs: For the Love of Flowers, Edition One.

Alicia asked me to pen a story for her inaugural issue and she gave me the assignment of interviewing two of her favorite design studios: Botanique, owned by Kelly Sullivan of Seattle and Verbena: Flowers & Trimmings, owned by Karin Plarisan and Karly Sahr of Roseville, California.

Of course, since all three are involved in the Slow Flowers Movement and members of Slowflowers.com, it was an easy “yes” on my part.

I’m sharing a little preview of my involvement in the Flirty Fleurs magazine here. Click to order a digital or printed copy so you can read every word.

For $19.95, the printed copy is worth every penny. You’ll love the luscious look, the pearly-matte paper stock, the elegant graphic design and pages bursting with flowers. Alicia and her team pulled off something that many people dream of doing, but few can ever take from idea to reality.

The story I wrote: “Meet the Farmer-Florist,” begins this way:

Meet the farmer-florist

Marrying science and art, a new crop of floral designers are growing their own botanical ingredients

By Debra Prinzing

I first wrote about a “farmer-florist” in 2012, with the publication of The 50 Mile Bouquet (St. Lynn’s Press). In a chapter titled “The Accidental Flower Farmer,” which profiled San Francisco floral designer Baylor Chapman, owner of Lila B. Design, I documented Baylor’s decision to start growing many of her own flowers, vines, ornamental shrubs, succulents and herbs, in order to diversify the palette with which she designed.

Even two years ago, I didn’t know that the “farmer-florist” category was going to be the phenomenon it has since become. In that chapter, I wrote: “Increasingly, there are designers who, by necessity, harvest floral ingredients from their own gardens. As well, there are growers who assume the role of floral designer, satisfying a bridal customer’s request for unique, straight-from-the-farm bouquets. That these two world are happily intersecting is due to curiosity, innovation and experimentation on the part of designer and grower alike.”

Today, more than two years later, all you have to do is search the hashtag #farmerflorist and dozens of self-references appear on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Designers and flower farmers alike are describing themselves as farmer florists, including two of the most recognizable names in the industry, Erin Benzakein of floret and Jennie Love of Love ‘N Fresh Flowers. No longer considered something outside the accepted scope of what a flower farmer is supposed to do (grow flowers) or what a floral designer is supposed to do (create beautiful bouquets using flowers that someone else cultivated and harvested), there is a lovely blurring of the lines between those formerly  conventional roles.

But to give credit where it is due, an entire generation of specialty cut flower farmers has been designing bridal bouquets and farmers’ market bunches for a long time. Lynn Byczynski first wrote about the business opportunities for flower farmers to design and sell their bouquets back in 1997 when her book The Flower Farmer was first published (the second, updated edition came out in 2008). But long before then, British designer-to-the-royals Constance Spry (the first celebrity florist) cut blooms, branches and foliage from her family’s land to sell in her London flower shop as early as the 1930s.

Thanks to a newfound passion for local and seasonal floral ingredients, more floral designers are putting on their gardening gloves and cultivating small and large patches of earth for cutting gardens, rose borders, raised beds and hedgerows – anywhere a few extra flowers can be planted and cared for. So we asked three Farmer-Florists to share their motivations for doing just that.

Here’s hoping that Alicia will continue her project to plan her 2nd edition of Flirty Fleurs. And here’s to farmer-florists everywhere, for bringing beauty to our lives!

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As we launch this podcast’s second year, I’m honored to continue bringing great conversations to you each week.

Some of the most rewarding side benefits of interviewing flower farmers, floral designers and other influential voices in the field-to-vase floral industry are the “field trips” that bring me close-up and in-person to see the sources of our American flowers – the farms, the studios, and the retail spaces where such amazing beauty connects us with nature and the seasons. 

This happened again last week when I invited myself to Everyday Flowers in Stanwood, Washington, for a visit.

Owned by veteran grower Vivian Larson, this established cut flower farm is a sight to behold. Viv is a precision grower, who cares deeply about her flowers – from the first seedlings emerging from trays of and trays of soil to the voluptuous bunches of blooms that are picked with great attention to detail, processed, bunched and delivered to her design customers.  

Located about an hour north of Seattle, Everyday Flowers is situated on a gorgeous piece of land with a more than 180-degree view to the Puget Sound’s many islands – Camano, Whidbey, the San Juans – all the way up to Canada – and north toward Mount Vernon. Vivian and her husband Jim, a commercial fisherman, raised two children here and are now helping raise three grand-children. It is a bucolic place with a beloved horse who adds agricultural character to the scene, as well as rows and rows of field-grown annuals and perennials located next to several large and very tidy hoop-houses containing even more flowers. 

Vivian is a founding member and board vice president of the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market, and I’ve known her for several years through that relationship. Some would say she is the glue that holds that place together, a true diplomat when it comes to synthesizing points of view and navigating the true meaning of a cooperative – one that benefits all members for the greater good. 

Vivian is the daughter of farmers who taught her those intangible skills of building good soil and caring for the land. “I always had a patch of earth where I grew flowers as a child,” she recalls. When Vivian’s own children were small, in 1990, she asked her husband to prepare a large area of ground. She began growing flowers and selling her bouquets at a nearby farm stand. “People would wait there to get my flowers or I’d have standing orders,” Vivian recalls. “Good flowers sell themselves – I’ve never had to advertise.” 

Experience has taught Vivian to know which varieties are successful as cut ingredients, which colors are reliable over time and which flowers produce the longest stems. “I’ve always known there were certain types of flowers that lasted better than others, especially if cut at the right time, and treated properly post-harvest,” she explains. “The fact is, I have a choice of what to grow and I choose to grow plants that are going to be happy at my farm and hold well in the vase.” 

For example, Vivian grows larger quantities of white, pink and yellow lilies because they are more popular with buyers. Similarly, the Karma dahlias have been bred for 18-20 inch-long stems and longer vase life, so she focuses on those. 

Vivian has a good idea of what wedding designers and their clients are looking for and how they use each flower. While she has in the past done some of her own design work, the bottom line is that Vivian is first of all a flower farmer. “Honestly, I just enjoy growing more than anything else!”  

 

We were lucky to have another guest along for my flower adventure – Alicia Schwede, a floral designer and owner of the Flirty Fleurs blog, joined Vivian and me for dinner and then returned early the following morning, clippers and urn in hand – for a floral designers’ whirlwind session. We loved creating arrangements and bouquets with Vivian’s flowers.

 

Everyday Flowers uses sustainable growing practices and the farm is Salmon Safe certified. No herbicides are used on the farm and on the rare instance when insecticides are used, they are OMRI-approved (Organic Materials Review Institute) products, Vivian explains. 

“I have a good beneficial insect population, including bees and ladybugs and I grow cover crops to suppress weeds and add more organic matter back in the soil,” Vivian explains. “I also have ‘Sassy’ my horse who does her share by producing great compost.” 

2 Workshops + 1 Saturday = Flower Filled Day
When: May 3, 2014
Where: The 95 Yesler Collective Studio, 3rd floor (Seattle)
Who: Debra Prinzing & Alicia Schwede

Workshop #1 – 10:00-12:00
Seasonal Flowers with Debra Prinzing

What: A seasonal, hands-on floral design workshop for gardeners, DIY designers and flower lovers alike.
When: 10-12
Who: Debra Prinzing, Slow Flowers advocate and author of The 50 Mile Bouquet and Slow Flowers. Debra is an award-winning writer, editor and speaker. She has spoken and/or led hands-on floral design workshops at major botanical gardens and for leading garden clubs including the Dallas Arboretum, Denver Botanic Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden, Los Angeles Arboretum, Pasadena Garden Club, Seattle Garden Club, the Garden Club of Santa Barbara, and more. She was the 2014 Floral Curator for the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show. Learn more about Debra at www.debraprinzing.com.

Seasonal Flowers introduces students to of-the-moment flowers for growing and arranging as each reflects her/his personal style and creative muse. Taught in a 2-hour session, the workshop is formatted as follows:

• Introduction of seasonal flowers, foliage and other botanicals
• Discussion of growing methods and popular cultivars
• Discussion of harvesting/post-harvesting treatments
• Principles of color and elements of design that relate to specific floral ingredients
• Eco-friendly design techniques and care tips

You’ll take home a custom floral arrangement or bouquet for your home, along with a resource handout.

A la carte Price: $95 per student; or take advantage of the bring-a-friend price of $175 for two

Supply fee per student/per class: $15 (includes vase, tools and floral design supplies)

Lunch Break – 12-1pm, lunch on your own.

Workshop #2 – 1:00-4:00
The Bridal Bouquet & Pricing Workshop with Alicia Schwede 

What: A hands-on floral design workshop with a discussion and learning session about pricing designs.

When: 1:00-4:00pm
Who: Alicia Schwede, owner of Bella Fiori & editor of the Flirty Fleurs Floral Designer Blog. Alicia is the author of Bella Bouquets Book, which will be available for purchase at the workshop.

The Bridal Bouquet & Pricing Workshop is a hands-on workshop where you will learn how to design luscious hand-tied bouquets. After we design a beautiful bridal bouquet we will have a discussion and learning session about pricing our designs. All instruction and fresh flowers are included, please bring your own tools.

Investment: $195.00 

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Please note: You may choose to take one or both of the workshops. Either way, the workshops must be paid for separately.

Register for Debra’s Workshop

Register for Alicia’s Workshop

 

Questions? Send Alicia an Email
Or send Debra an Email
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