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We’re continuing the 10-week celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Slow Flowers Podcast! I launched the first-ever podcast about flowers on July 23, 2013! This audio storytelling project resonates with so many listeners — people like you who love local, seasonal, and sustainable flowers and who are joining in the Slow Flowers Movement as members, supporters, and allies!

We invite you to help us celebrate by sharing your stories of how the Slow Flowers Podcast has been an inspiring companion to you over the years! Post or send us a video tagged #slowflowerspodcast and we may feature you in our Slow Flowers social media feed! Check out our IG stories on @SlowFlowersSociety, which we will run for the next 10 weeks — you could win one of two priceless prizes! We’ll select two winners among eligible entrants:
1 – win a featured guest spot on a future episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast; and
2 – win a chance to co-host an upcoming monthly Slow Flowers Member Meet-Up. We’ll post the details on social media for you to follow along and participate.

Today is the 2nd Encore Episode as our decade-long retrospective to highlight one episode from each year of the past decade and bring the best of the Slow Flowers Podcast to you. If you’re a longtime listener, you might recognize these flower folks; if you’re new to the Slow Flowers Podcast, I’m excited to introduce you to them for the first time.

Today, I’m happy to introduce you to Lisa Mason Ziegler, who first appeared in September 2014 in Episode 159 and who also has been a return guest and now, through her online educational platform The Gardener’s Workshop, Lisa is a Slow Flowers Podcast sponsor.

Here’s a bit more about Lisa:

What began as a small cut-flower farm producing for local markets has grown into so much more. Lisa has become a leader in the cut-flower growing industry, author, accomplished speaker, teacher, and the owner of The Gardener’s Workshop.

It all began in 1998 because Lisa wanted to work in her garden as her career. At first, she sold her cut flowers to local florists and Colonial Williamsburg. The business soon grew to include florist throughout the Hampton Roads region, supermarkets, farmers markets, a members-only on-farm market, and a bouquet drop-off subscription service.

During this time Lisa began giving programs to garden clubs, master gardeners, commercial growers, and other groups. What became apparent is that people were eager for her simplified organic gardening methods and her greatest gift is sharing them.

The next natural step came when Lisa self-published The Easy Cut-Flower Garden in 2011 (currently out-of-print) a 100-page guide on how-to grow and harvest a small home cutting garden. Her program travels began to spread from Texas to Oregon to New York City and she went on to become published with Cool Flowers in 2014 (St. Lynn’s Press) and Vegetables Love Flowers (Cool Springs Press 2018.)

In 2018 Lisa began creating online courses to share her programs and teachings. This style of teaching with it’s convenience, cost effectiveness, and lifetime unlimited access has proven to be another wonderful teaching tool. In 2019, embracing this technology even further and building an amazing in-house support administration team has allowed Lisa to produce online courses for others.

Lisa’s farm, known as The Gardener’s Workshop is still a small market flower farm (100% outdoor field grown), and an online garden shop. The online store sells the same seeds, tools, supplies, and seed starting equipment that Lisa uses as well as signed copies of her books.  Lisa’s simple, instructive, and delightful gardening messages are reaching far beyond any expectation she ever had.

Lisa has been a member of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers since 2001 and served as the Mid-Atlantic Regional Director from 2016 to 2020. She is also a member of the Garden Communicators International. AND, we should add, a longtime member of Slow Flowers Society.

Lisa has a new book coming out in February 2024 called The Cut Flower Handbook. You can sign up for news about its publication at her website here.

Learn how to grow an abundance of beautiful cut flowers for pleasure or profit. This handbook includes 40 cool-season and 20 warm-season flowers to grow and harvest. Lisa shares how she grows and harvests annual cut flowers and the varieties that have become her tried and true favorites. Learn when to plant cool-season and warm-season flowers in your garden and how garden size alone can help lead to the success or failure of your cutting garden. Get the streamlined steps on preparing, locating, and maintaining the garden. Lisa shares how she starts seeds including soil blocking, plug trays, and planting seeds in the garden. Learn why and how she selects the best starting method for a specific flower seed and her growing conditions. Over half of the book is designated to featured flowers or flower groups, including growing facts, firsthand experiences, tips for home gardeners and flower farmers, harvesting and conditioning steps, and favorite varieties.

I’ll be hosting Lisa on IG Live today, August 2nd, for a fun conversation, so check it out @slowflowerssociety — and you’ll find all of my Slow Flowers Podcast 10th anniversary Live Chats in the archives there.

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News of the Week

We just dropped the August Slow Flowers Newsletter yesterday – you’ll want to check it out for all the news updates, inspiring content, and free resources we’ve packed up for you. There’s lots more details about a special Slow Flowers presentation in Seattle on Friday, September 29th with famed British Sustainable Floral Designer Shane Connolly who will give an illustrated lecture and design demonstration followed by a book-signing — this is his only West Coast appearance in North America in 2023 and the tickets are just $45.

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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 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.

Thank you to our lead sponsor, Farmgirl Flowers. Farmgirl Flowers delivers iconic burlap-wrapped bouquets and lush, abundant arrangements to customers across the U.S., supporting U.S. flower farms by purchasing more than $10 million dollars of U.S.-grown fresh and seasonal flowers and foliage annually. Discover more at farmgirlflowers.com.

And thank you 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 next sponsor thank you goes to 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. Visit them at seattlewholesalegrowersmarket.com.

Our final sponsor thanks goes 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.com.

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I love all this floral goodness and I am so happy you joined 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

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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!

Music credits:

Turning On the Lights; Gasland; 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

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Today’s episode was recorded on October 20th at the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers and features veteran flower farmer Pamela Arnosky of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers in Blanco, Texas, west of Austin.

Pamela’s presentation — about selling to supermarkets — was paired with Lisa Mason Ziegler’s session on selling to florists, which you heard several weeks ago. Head’s up – like all the ASCFG sessions and panels, this is a one-hour presentation, so don’t feel badly if you have to take it in over several days.

Before we get started, here’s some great news I have been waiting weeks to share.

Earlier this year, my friend Christina Stembel of SF-based Farmgirl Flowers, joined me on a fabulous 4-day trip to Homer, Alaska, where I spoke and taught for the Homer Gardeners’ Weekend. You can listen to our podcast episode recorded in Homer, here.

It was my second visit to Homer during Alaska’s glorious peony season and I was thrilled to both watch Christina’s discovery of these gorgeous, incomparable American-grown flowers and to introduce her to my peony farmer friends in that community.

Like they say, “all good things happen for a reason!” Not only was Christina instantly floored by the beauty of the Kenai Peninsula, she went crazy about fields and fields of Alaskan peonies available in July (the Peony season is CA is only the month of May.)

To this, I just smiled, knowing only more good things would come from her discovery in Alaska.

Pretty soon, literally within minutes of visiting the farm, our creative juices started flowing. We asked ourselves: “What if we bring other peony lovers here, all the way to Alaska — to discover and participate in the magic of what we just experienced?” 

Since the sun doesn’t really set until close to midnight, we brewed and brainstormed some unforgettable late-night conversations. Together with our delightful host, Beth Van Sandt, co-owner of Scenic Place Peonies, we started envisioning a “Peony Party,” a private, custom event, limited to an intimate group of flower lovers, florists, farmers and friends to come experience the magic of Alaska grown peonies.

The Peony Party was finally made real when the members and farmers of the Alaska Peony Marketing Group extended their enthusiasm and support in August of 2014.

Today, we’re launching the new web site and invite you to check it out at PeonyParty.com.

Our fabulous event is scheduled for July 10 to 13th, 2015 and there are only 20 spaces open to students.

Unlike most of the floral design and farmer-florist intensives you’ve seen in the past year or so, we’ve packed ours with serious value-added bonuses.

Most workshops like this do not include lodging or meals. Guess what? Ours includes 3 nights’ of lodging all but one or two meals. The early-bird price is $2995, a $500 discount if you sign up before end of January.

And here’s my wonderful little secret. If you sign up for an Alaska Airlines Visa Card ASAP, you will receive 25,000 bonus miles in your first year – that’s exactly what you need to fly round-trip from many US cities on the west coast or to cover at least a one-way ticket from many US cities on the east coast.

 

And now, on to Pamela Arnosky. With her husband Frank, Pamela farms 20 acres of cut flowers in Central Texas. The Arnoskys grow more than 70 varieties of flowers – year ’round – and sell through many grocery store accounts, as well as to florists and at their own on-farm market.

They are popular speakers at regional and national ASCFG events, thanks in large part to their expertise and humorous presentation style. They say they’ve weathered just about anything from hurricanes and tornadoes to Mothers of Brides. Previous guests of this podcast, you can hear their last interview in Episode 130.

This is a priceless and highly practical presentation – and if you’ve ever contemplated getting into the grocery store bouquet business, there is one person you need to learn from – and that’s Pamela Arnosky. Sit at her feet and listen, learn and be inspired.

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. 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.

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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I’m so pleased to share today’s conversation with you, recorded in August at the Garden Writers Association symposium in Pittsburgh.

My guest is Lisa Mason Ziegler, owner of The Gardener’s Workshop.

Lisa’s organic flower farm is located in the midst of Newport News, in southeastern Virginia, on a little less than 3 acres. What began as a small cut flower farm in 1998 has grown into a vibrant operation:  The Gardener’s Workshop produces over 10,000 stems a week in season (mid-April to mid-November) and sells to upscale florists, to nearby Colonial Williamsburg, to area supermarkets and direct-to-consumers with a Garden Share program.

Lisa spends her time out of harvest season teaching others about organic gardening and growing cut flowers through lecturing and writing. Her lectures have reached from Texas to New York City—far beyond any dream she ever imagined.  In 2005, Lisa added a shop to her business, offering the tools, supplies and seeds that she uses in her own garden and cut flower farm.

I first learned of Lisa when I stumbled upon her self-published book, “The Easy Cut-Flower Garden,” a handy 92-page guide to growing a season of fresh-cut flowers from a 3-by-10-foot garden that Lisa wrote and produced in 2011.

I ordered the book and often refer to it, especially when I’m fantasizing about tearing up some of my lawn and add more cutting garden real estate to our yard.

Not too long ago, Lisa’s name popped up again, when my publisher Paul Kelly, owner of St. Lynn’s Press, told me that she was writing a new book for their list.

That’s one reason we were able to connect in Pittsburgh, our publisher’s home base. Lisa’s new book, Cool Flowers,  is all about how to grow and enjoy hardy annuals. In it, she shares her 16-years of growing experiences and the sheer joy of this group of flowers that are often left out of gardens.

Cool Flowers is all about how and when to plant hardy annuals so that spring in the garden will be nothing short of sensational.

Once their needs are met, this diverse yet easy group of flowers will change spring in the home garden forever.  The most important thing is to allow them to get established during cool weather. Plant them in the right spot at the right time, nestle their roots deep into rich organic soil, and stand back.  When happy, these hardy annuals need little intervention, other than having someone gaze on their beauty, or perhaps to cut a few for the kitchen table. Some of Lisa’s favorites include snapdragons, Bells of Ireland, sweet peas and sweet William.

Every flower gardener needs this book! Lisa Ziegler’s Cool Flowers brings to flower gardening a brand new point of view that introduced me to all sorts of possibilities for my floral palette – as a gardener and floral designer. Her valuable tips for success with hardy annuals will extend your garden’s blooming season, no matter where you live. If you want to make the most of all seasons in your garden, Cool Flowers is a must-have.

Thanks to support from listeners like you, this podcast has been downloaded more than 20,000 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 Hannah Holtgeerts and Andrew Wheatley. Learn more about their work at hhcreates.net