We’ve been collecting video clips to share this Valentine’s Day Season!

First up, a video featuring Maura Whalen of Casablanca Floral in Seattle, who invited me into her beautiful studio to record this pre-Valentine’s Day clip.

We filmed the segment last October (with digital genius Andrew Brenlan, whose name is familiar to Slow Flowers Podcast listeners). Our idea: To promote local and American-grown flowers that viewers around the country can order and send for V-Day.

A publicist with whom I often work shopped around the video — our target was The Today Show — but alas, producer there turned us down for an in-studio segment. Others picked it up, including Garden Design magazine, so I’m delighted and grateful that Maura donated her time and studio to help with the project.

Special thanks to our floral partners for providing beautiful product, including:

Stargazer Barn

CalCallas

Fabulous Florals

Urban Succulents

Farmgirl Flowers

and a custom arrangement by Maura Whalen of Casablanca Floral!

MORE Slow V-Day Goodness!

On Monday, February 12th, I was contacted by a producer for ABC World News Tonight who wanted to do a Feb. 14th segment on local flowers for Valentine’s Day.

Surprisingly, he asked me to round up “selfie videos” from several Slow Flowers members around the country in which they would speak directly to anchor David Muir and tell him what types of local flowers customers could find at their shops, stores and studios this Valentine’s Day.

Within 24 hours, six Slow Flowers members agreed to record clips and send them into ABC News.

The segment was slated for tonight, along with an in-person visit to Emily Thompson Flowers, a Slow Flowers member in Manhattan (and I learned that interview with Emily was actually filmed at her shop yesterday).

So we were all ready to go and then the horrifying news about the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, happened this afternoon. The producer contacted all of us and said the story had to be “held.”

Of course, this is what happens when “feel-good” news stories are bumped by sad and tragic news stories. My heart and prayers go out to the victims, students, teachers, parents and families whose lives will be forever changed by this insane act. As a response to the shooting, Slow Flowers is making a donation to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, an organization that is challenging the National Rifle Association’s huge financial influence over our political landscape. I encourage you to join me or find a similar organization in your community to support.

We received permission from ABC World News Tonight to share the “unaired” video clips. I am doing this because I’m so impressed and grateful for the contributions of members who are committed to the Slow Flowers Mission and want to share their stories with the larger community.

See the great message from Jimmy Lohr of greenSinner in Pittsburgh above.

Here are more wonderful clips to enjoy. It would have been awesome to view these along with millions on tonight’s National News. That didn’t happen, but I’m confident we’ll have another opportunity in the future.

Thanks, Lisa Waud of pot and box — you shared a great message about your local community of makers, artists and growers!

Love the voluptuous floral scene in front of Michelle O’Brien’s Goose Hollow Flowers in Portland — and she sends an important message to viewers about her commitment to Oregon-grown and American-grown flowers.

Nichole Skalski, partner in California Sister Floral Design in Sebastopol, CA, values local flower farmers and also sources from farms across the state. She has a Valentine’s Day message for you!

Los Angeles-based Whit McClure of Whit Hazen shared her vision for sustainable and local floral design on Valentine’s Day and all year long. Love her message!

Our good friends at Field & Florist – Heidi Joynt and Molly Kobelt — are flower farmers and floral designers. Here’s how they’re keeping it local at Valentine’s Day in Chicago!

Okay, that’s it for now! Thanks to all for being spontaneous. There’s a lot of value in being a Slow Flowers member — and one of those benefits is that I might just call YOU for a press opportunity next time!

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I’m so pleased to share this week’s interview with you, a conversation with mother and daughter duo — Margie Dagnal and Kate Dagnal of Goose Creek Gardens in Oakdale, Pennsylvania, a boutique specialty cut flower farm just outside Pittsburgh.

I first met Margie virtually, when she contributed to the Slow Flowers campaign on Indiegogo earlier this year.

And then, if that wasn’t enough, she gave me an incredible gift by contributing flowers that two other Slowflowers.com friends Jimmy Lohr and Jonathan Weber of Green Sinner incorporated into a lovely floral arrangement for my Pittsburgh-based publisher St. Lynn’s Press. PS, Jimmy, Jonathan and Margie refused to take a penny from me either. These people are all so generous!

When I visited Pittsburgh in August, I had arranged to spend a morning at Green Sinner, touring the very cool urban cutting garden and floral studio that Jonathan and Jimmy own (you can hear our podcast interview here).

Those two cooked up a delightful surprise and arranged for Kate and Margie to make their Goose Creek Gardens “delivery” during my visit. It was a Thursday morning and while I knew I was about to be part of a weekend conference, a little voice in my head was saying: “You can’t leave Pittsburgh without making a visit to Goose Creek Gardens.”

And lo and behold, Jonathan and Sam Rose, who tends to the Green Sinner cutting garden, offered to pick me up and drive me out to Goose Creek Gardens for a weekend visit. We toured the farm, wandered down to the bottom of the property, along the paths, into the high tunnels and more, all the while chatting constantly about this beautiful bloom and that one.

Katie and Margie are super passionate about growing flowers. Flowers were once a secondary crop to Goose Creek’s main endeavor – growing veggies and herbs. For years, while Margie and her husband Mark, a landscaper, produced salad greens and other delicacies for Penn’s Corner Farm Alliance, young Katie grew flowers.

This year, things have changed, thanks to several issues: From pressure on farmers’ market food prices to seasonal flooding that affected some of Goose Creek’s fields, not to mention Kate’s lifelong obsession with growing cut flowers . . . all these incidents gave them several signs to move into flowers 100 percent of the time.

Katie is now a grownup – a young mom who works side-by-side with her parents running Goose Creek Gardens as a cut flower farm.

Katie and Margie shared photographs of some of their “Friday Night Romance” bouquets for you to enjoy. These are part of an ongoing series of bouquets that Katie creates at the end of each week, to share with her followers and other #farmerflorist friends on Facebook and Instagram. I think they are pretty darned romantic – and beautiful!

 

I hope you learn as much as I did by hearing this interview. And here’s how you can follow Goose Creek on other social platforms:

Goose Creek Gardens on Facebook

Goose Creek Gardens on Instagram

Up next week: a conversation with the inimitable Kelly Norris, who shares his passion – and genius – about a lesser-known category of his favorite flower: The miniature tall bearded iris. Kelly is the award-winning author of A Guide to Bearded Irises and I’m so excited to introduce him to you in a very lively conversation.

Listeners like you have downloaded the Slow Flowers Podcast more than 21,000 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.

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Last week, this podcast came to you from Homer, Alaska.

This week, my travels brought me to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Let’s just say I’m coping with a little jet lag, but summer is my busy season for lectures and photo shoots, so I’ve learned to enjoy my MVP Gold status on Alaska Airlines.

But the other thing I have thoroughly enjoyed has been the chance to connect with great flower farmers and floral designers – coast to coast – who are part of the Slow Flowers movement. In the coming weeks you’ll hear from several of these awesome folks who I first “met” virtually, through social media and — more importantly — because they have joined Slowflowers.com.

Today you will meet two of them: Jimmy Lohr and Jonathan Weber, owners of greenSinner, an urban role model that promotes American-grown flowers in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood (by the way, Lawrenceville is now called “new Brooklyn” for hipster, indie, design-focused vibe).

Jonathan and Jimmy state their beliefs up-front-and-center on the home page of their web site:

“greenSinner brings you local, sustainable cut flowers and plants. We love fresh flowers (don’t you?), but we don’t love that they come from Ecuador drenched in chemicals (yuck). We’re trying to make the world — our world and yours — a little greener and a little more beautiful. We grow flowers right here in western PA and source as many materials and plants as we can in a 500-mile radius. Not only is it better for the environment, but you also get fresher flowers and more local and unusual varieties. Beyond flowers, we focus on vintage or re-purposed containers and event decor and sustainable practices.”

The guys at greenSinner first caught my attention when they contributed to the Slowflowers.com campaign on Indiegogo earlier this year. Not knowing anything about their business, I looked them up and sent them a note of thanks.

Only a few weeks after the campaign ended, I found myself in early March attending Holly Heider Chapple’s NYC Chapel Designers’ conference, where I was included in the speaker lineup. Of course, I was there to encourage her members to consider joining the American Grown flower movement, to refocus their wedding and event work to include seasonal and local flowers and to introduce these designers to the notion of working closely with flower farmers.

And there was Jimmy, a charming teddy bear of a guy, front and center, making me feel welcome. He wasn’t the only one who “got it,” but he was definitely the most enthusiastic. I learned that he and his partner Jonathan believe in designing weddings and events with locally grown flowers and plants and that they owned a postage-stamp-sized cutting garden behind their shop. We made plans for me to visit in August when I knew I’d be in Pittsburgh for the Garden Writers Association’s annual symposium.

In the ensuing months, not only did we stay in touch, but when I worked with Kasey Cronquist on the launch announcement of the Certified American Grown brand on July 1st, we invited Jimmy to speak on behalf of floral designers.

Jimmy picked me up at my hotel in downtown Pittsburgh early one morning and we drove a short distance to greenSinner’s studio. After a walking tour to see their backyard growing operation, their greenhouse and the small cutting garden they planted behind a neighboring studio where their stained-glass artist friend works, we sat down for a short podcast interview.

Before we get started, let me introduce you to the two men you’ll hear next. This is straight from greenSinner’s web site:

Jimmy Lohr, Chief Eccentric Officer:

Jimmy, in a limerick:
There once was a boy from the sticks
Who grew up and left all the hicks.
He studied the arts
And big event parts
Then moved home to share all his tricks.

Jonathan Weber, Farmer-General
Jonathan, in a haiku:
Jonathan Weber
internet marketing dude
now he’s a farmer

These guys definitely express their values in everything they do as designers and business owners – and it was such a pleasure to spend time on their turf in Pittsburgh.

Thanks for joining this lively conversation. I’m grateful for listeners like you who have downloaded this flower-powered podcast more than 18,000 times. If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Please join me in putting 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