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Welcome to DAY ONE of American Flowers Week, which continues through next Tuesday, July 4th, Independence Day!

The Slow Flowers Community is boldly sharing this message: Beautiful, fresh and seasonal flowers are worth celebrating! They are grown here, by real people on real U.S. flower farms!

This is our third year celebrating American grown flowers in all 50 states – coast to coast from north to south.

I’m thrilled with the incredible enthusiasm and participation from flower farmers, floral designers, retailers, grocery chains and avid gardeners who are joining in to help raise awareness about the origin of our flowers.

Your use of hashtag #americanflowersweek along with #slowflowers and your personal branding terms is an awesome way to engage with consumers and peers across the U.S.!

I’ve loved seeing the early posts as designers and florists have shared sneak-peeks of their projects on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram – flowers, signage, displays, events and special red-white-and-blue bouquets to celebrate American Flowers Week.

We’ll keep on re-tweeting and re-posting to spread the awareness and attention on social platforms – with the overall goal of getting more folks asking for and buying American grown flowers.

Follow these links to the free resources available to you – as well as details about cool American Flowers Week projects our members are producing around the country (including a few that took place last week in the days leading up to American Flowers Week).

Check out Americanflowersweek.com to download graphics, logos, photography and social media badges that you can use in your own branding or social feeds.

And don’t forget to download our awesome USA Map of state flowers, including individual state coloring sheets. Add your logo and print copies to share and hand out to your community and customers.

I have one more important event to remind you about – the Slow Flowers Summit, which is happening this coming Sunday, July 2^nd in Seattle at the Surf Incubator event space.

You’ve heard from some of our awesome speakers, and this Podcast has shared previews what’s on the agenda for an inspiring day of design innovation, personal inspiration and a bit of radical thinking to send you off with new ideas.

It’s not too late to sign up – we’re expecting and planning for a few last-minute registrants. If your schedule allows, I encourage you to join us!

I’m so happy to bring you some succulent joy today, with a conversation I recorded in late May when I traveled to San Diego to teach.

I have loved seeing the designs, creativity and color sense in the succulent florals of Marialuisa Kaprielian. Marialuisa is the owner of Urban Succulents, based in San Diego. She’s a Slowflowers.com member whose company is uniquely suited for a thriving mail order floral business.

If you recall my podcast episode with Robin Stockwell, author of the new book SUCCULENTS, he mentioned commissioning Marialuisa to design the succulent floral arrangements that appear in his book. You can listen to that episode and see images of her designs in the show notes here.

Because San Diego has ideal weather for growing and producing succulent plants, it’s the perfect headquarters for Urban Succulents.

Marialuisa’s mission is to create living arrangements using only the finest locally sourced succulent plants.

All her succulent arrangements, wreaths, gift boxes, bouquets and other items are made to order so they are fresh when the recipient receives them.  Urban Succulents’ living arrangements and bouquets can be replanted, bringing more enjoyment — a gift that keeps giving, or growing in this case.

Urban Succulents creates living florals for corporate events and galas, weddings and other festive occasions. For holidays and other gifting, the studio offers wreaths and succulent plant assortments.

I know you’ll find our conversation inspiring – and I hope it gives you some new ideas for using succulents in your design work. Or, contact Urban Succulents to special order wired succulents to add to your designs (as shown, left).

I had serious succulent envy spending time with Marialuisa in her home, studio and vast garden filled with plants we never see up in the chilly corner of the Pacific Northwest.

You can find and follow MariaLuisa at these social places:

Urban Succulents on Facebook

Urban Succulents on Instagram

Urban Succulents on Pinterest

 

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 204,000 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 family of 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.

Syndicate Sales, an American manufacturer of vases and accessories for the professional florist. Look for the American Flag Icon to find Syndicate’s USA-made products and join the Syndicate Stars loyalty program at syndicatesales.com.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds, an employee-owned company that provides our industry the best flower, herb and vegetable seeds — supplied to farms large and small and even backyard cutting gardens like mine. Check them out at johnnysseeds.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.

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 and Hannah Brenlan. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.

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Today I’m excited to introduce you to Leslie Bennett, an Oakland-based landscape designer specializing in aesthetically pleasing food-centric gardens. Leslie is the owner of Pine House Edible Gardens, which designs, installs and maintains delicious gardens for private & community clients in the Bay Area.

We’ve been friends for a number of years and it is my pleasure to share a recent conversation we recorded for today’s podcast. Consider this a preview of Leslie’s participation as a Slow Flowers Summit speaker.

She will be one of four panelists who will share insights and perspective during the Inclusion/Diversity dialogue led by Chantal Aida Gordon of TheHorticult Blog, last week’s guest. These two women will be joined by Nicole Cordier Wahlquist of Grace Flowers Hawaii and Riz Reyes of RHR Horticulture. Together, these innovators and creatives are telling a narrative that we can all benefit from, especially as we desire more meaningful, authentic and ethical lives.

I’ve had the privilege of interviewing Leslie about her design work for a number or articles, including a Los Angeles Times piece.

This summer, you can find two beautiful and informative stories about Leslie’s projects that I was honored to write — one appears in the SUMMER Issue of Garden Design, called “Bearing Fruit,” about a landscape in Atherton, California, part of the magazine’s Great Gardens Across America series, and the other appears in the July issue of Better Homes & Gardens, on newsstands this week, called “Dyed & True,” about an urban backyard filled with plants that produce textile pigments, which Leslie designed for her Berkeley clients.

There was a portion of one of my interviews with Leslie that landed on the cutting room floor, thanks to an editor’s space crunching tendencies, but it is too fabulous not to share it here. I think this will help introduce Leslie to you and give you insights into what makes her tick as a creative individual:

Leslie Bennett trained as a lawyer and turned her professional life upside down to learn organic food farming, emerging a landscape designer who specializes in stylish edible gardens.

With several years of experience in other horticulture and design ventures, she launched Pine House Edible Gardens in 2015. Growing food originally influenced Leslie’s search for a connection with the land, one that led her away from corporate law to study permaculture in the U.K. and work on a series of organic food and biodynamic farms in Jamaica and Northern California.

“I loved growing food, but I rejected the idea that it had to be strictly utilitarian,” Leslie recalls. “I remember wondering where the beauty was. It seemed like the organic movement sometimes rejected frivolous things like incorporating beauty alongside food production. One afternoon in the bean fields, I realized, ‘I’m not into this. This reminds me of my law firm,’ so I put a stop to that and started doing what I wanted to do.”

Since leaving row crops behind, Leslie has pursued edible and ornamental harmony in her design work. Her enthusiasm is contagious, attracting clients who yearn for the bountiful environments she helps them attain.

“I’m motivated by making a space meaningful for those who live there,” she says.

You’ll love hearing from Leslie in today’s episode and if you’re heading to Seattle for the Slow Flowers Summit on July 2nd, you’ll love meeting her in person. Our event bookseller will have copies of The Beautiful, Edible Garden (Ten Speed Press, 2013), a guide to incorporating edibles into the ornamental landscape, of which Leslie is a co-author, and she’ll be signing copies after her presentation.

And if you follow Leslie’s Instagram feed @pinehouseediblegardens, you will soon realize she is as much a floral designer as a foodie. Her landscapes are filled with useful and beautiful plants to harvest, not just for the body but for the eyes and soul. Leslie makes it a practice to give her clients cutting garden options in all four seasons; I wish more landscape designers took this approach and I love that her firm is showing the way.

Here’s how you can find Leslie at her social places.

Pine House Edible Gardens on Facebook

Pine House Edible Gardens on Instagram

Pine House Edible Gardens on Twitter

American Flowers Week launches one week from today on June 28th — and it’s not too late to jump onboard and use this social media and promotional campaign to put you and your local flowers on the map! You can check out americanflowersweek.com for all the cool details, including our just-released Coloring Map of the USA with every state flower designed by Jenny Diaz.

This is free for you to download, print and share with clients and customers this month. Feel free to add your own logo to the PDFs and get promoting! And I’d love to see your finished pages — when you post use #americanflowersweek. Please join in and help spread the word — let’s get trending on Twitter, Instagram and other social platforms!

The Slow Flowers Summit is one of our major events that will take place during American Flowers Week and you’ve heard me talking about it for quite a while. I really can’t believe the day is almost here. We have registrants coming from Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, California, Oregon, Iowa, Alaska and, of course, Washington State. I’m blown away by the response from the Slow Flowers Community. We have a limited number of tickets left, so it’s not too late to come to Seattle for a jolt of ideas, inspiration, innovation, instigation and more! Grab your registration tickets here.

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 202,000 times by listeners like you. We hit this big milestone earlier in the week — thanks for helping us reach it!

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 family of sponsors:

Certified American Grown Flowers. The Certified American-Grown program and label provide a guarantee for designers and consumers on the source of their flowers. Take pride in your flowers and buy with confidence, ask for Certified American Grown Flowers.  To learn more visit americangrownflowers.org.

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.

Syndicate Sales, an American manufacturer of vases and accessories for the professional florist. Look for the American Flag Icon to find Syndicate’s USA-made products and join the Syndicate Stars loyalty program at syndicatesales.com.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds, an employee-owned company that provides our industry the best flower, herb and vegetable seeds — supplied to farms large and small and even backyard cutting gardens like mine. Check them out at johnnysseeds.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.

It’s Day Two of British Flowers Week, folks!

Meet Jennifer Pinder and feast your eyes on her three signature designs celebrating U.K.-grown flowers.

Passionate about British Flowers, Jennifer’s wild, luxurious and deeply romantic floristry style lends itself perfectly to using homegrown blooms. Each of her three stunning designs showcases the natural beauty which British cut flowers and foliage exude.

Jennifer has made the transition from working as a lawyer in London to becoming a full-time florist in Kent.

Championing British flowers, her business has bloomed with the help of her meticulous focus on posting beautiful images on Instagram.

She’s wowing brides-to-be and florists alike with her stunning natural floristry style.

Jenn says: “I’ve always really liked gardening. But it was only when friends were getting married and my own wedding that I encountered floristry for the first time.”

“I then decided that flowers would become a hobby and I started doing floristry courses for fun. I learnt a lot and they were especially good for grasping the basics. I helped at friends’ weddings and actually did my own wedding flowers, gradually I started to think about whether I could make a business out of this new passion.”

“The real trigger for me changing my career all comes down to Instagram. I’d started an account, which was flower based, when I was a lawyer. It didn’t build up a huge following, but it built up enough of a following that I was getting floristry enquiries. So that gave me the confidence that if I did leave my job, I would have some work coming in.”

“Like lots of people, I discovered that an office job wasn’t for me. I was desperate to leave but didn’t know what I could even do. So it was a very lucky coincidence that I found something that I really, really loved.”

At the end of 2014, Jennifer left her job as a lawyer, set up her business The Brixton Flower Club, went full-time as a florist and started taking on small weddings.

“I was living in Brixton at the time and was working in my kitchen. Then, in January 2016, my husband and I moved to Kent. I wanted to have a studio and a big garden to be able to grow flowers. In my garden, there are now masses of roses, gorgeous foliage and shrubs and I have a separate plot where I grow annuals. At the moment I also use imported flowers but I’m aiming to use just British flowers within the next two years.”

Read more about Jennifer’s approach to designing with locally-grown British flowers.

There are three entries to Jennifer Pinder’s designs for British Flowers Week:

Showstopper Design | Rustic Bench Nestled in a Meadow Setting

Pink foxgloves and scabiosa, purple alliums and salvia, pastel coloured cornflowers, lilac delphiniums, geraniums, white orlaya grandiflora, cow parsley, nigella and irises, plus brizia, ivy and mint…all play important parts in this wonderful installation featuring an old rustic, weathered bench nestled in a meadow setting.

Jennifer says: “I feel the design represents my own personal journey of finally being amongst the flowers. This is my ideal setting, sat outside, reading a book, with flowers all around me.”

Technical Design | 3 Styles of Buttonholes

Drawing on the rich and long history of buttonholes, Jennifer has created three styles of buttonholes from various eras, with different symbolism behind each of them.

There is much speculation but the tradition of buttonholes is thought to originate from Ancient Greece, when male members of the wedding party would wear small bunches of flowers, usually with fragrant herbs to ward off evil spirits. Here, stems of homegrown mint and lavender have been mingled to create a scented nosegay.

Signature Design | Urn Design

Known for her natural, rambling floral creations, Jennifer has created an exquisite urn design using chicken wire.

She says: “This is what I love to create the most – big things, especially wild urns. They’re what seem to drive people towards me and so it makes sense for me to create one for my signature design!”

Foxgloves, roses, peonies, delphiniums and orlaya grandiflora in a muted colour palette of white, cream and soft pink have been beautifully arranged, with cornflowers adding a dramatic splash of deep burgundy. And a wonderful variety of foliage in contrasting hues add texture and movement to the design.

British Flowers

“I offer 100% British wedding packages and for my other weddings, I use as many British flowers as I possibly can. I feel it’s worth going the extra mile to get them when you can.”

“For wedding consultations, the couple are able to choose a very loose colour palette, either pale colours or dark and vibrant. That’s how tight I allow their brief to be because I like the flexibility to choose the flowers. And that means that I can use British flowers, because I’m not tied to a certain type, like peonies. So, if they’ve finished early, I can use something else instead. I’m really obsessed with colour. I like to check the flowers and make sure that everything sings together on the day.”

“If florists are interested in using more British flowers, my top tip is to get your couples to trust you to choose varieties without their involvement and then you’ll find sourcing flowers a lot less stressful. You’ll go to your flower market or grower, look at what’s best and that’s what you’ll take home with you.”

“You just can’t beat the truly natural shapes, colours and scents of the flowers that aren’t mass-produced. For me, nothing compares to using homegrown flowers to create something beautiful. That’s why I’m a florist and why I plan to be a florist for the rest of my life. When I leave a wedding and I know I’ve done a great job, that I’ve nailed it. Well, nothing beats that for me.”

JENNIFER PINDER | WWW.JENNIFERPINDER.COM

INSTAGRAM: @JENN_PINDER_FLOWERS

I’m thoroughly inspired by my friends at New Covent Garden Flower Market in London, the brains behind British Flowers Week, now in its fifth year!

In fact, I recently wrote this homage to Helen Evans and her colleagues for the American Flowers Week feature in the current June 2017 issue of Florists’ Review magazine.

Here’s a portion of my report:

In 2015, while in London for the Chelsea Flower Show, I met with Helen Evans, one of the geniuses behind New Covent Garden Market’s successful British Flowers Week (BFW) campaign (June 19-25, 2017). 

The U.K.’s most important wholesale floral hub launched BFW in 2013 as a low-budget social media-driven “annual celebration of seasonal locally grown flowers and foliage that united the U.K. cut-flower industry, and sparked public and media interest in where our flowers come from.”

It has become a popular and successful campaign to promote British flowers and floral designers. By the time we had finished sipping from our steaming mugs of tea in the Market’s employee breakroom, I thought, “I should start an American Flowers Week.”

In late May of 2015, I returned to the U.S. inspired by the BFW model and equipped with Helen’s suggestions and resources, and introduced American Flowers Week (AFW) one month later.

Today marks the Day One of British Flowers Week and I’m so in love with the work of Mary Jane Vaughan, the first featured designer, and with her floral choices, including British-grown stock, sweet peas and other beautiful botanicals.

Please enjoy and follow along, as we’ll be sharing all five days to inspire you — AND to get you excited about your own plans for American Flowers Week, coming up with the June 28th-July 4th unveiling of more flowery goodness!

Floral Designer: Mary Jane Vaughan

Known for the simplicity and understated elegance of her designs, Mary Jane Vaughan has gone from running a shop in Fulham, London to becoming an award-winning luxury weddings, events and contracts florist some thirty years later.

Read more about Mary Jane’s approach to designing with locally-grown British flowers.

There are three entries to Mary Jane Vaughan’s designs for British Flowers Week:

The Showstopper (above): A curved canopy of white stocks and laurel leaves.

Technical (above): The inspiration for Mary Jane’s three exquisite British Flowers Week creations was found in the work of her favourite British architect, Dame Zaha Hadid OBE. Hadid’s bold, undulating designs combine geometry with femininity and nature, which is what Mary Jane also strives to do in her work.

Mary Jane says: “I’m a huge fan of Hadid. She designed the London Olympics Aquatic Centre. I managed to get tickets to see it and I was so excited to be under her roof. So, to be able to create something inspired by her work means a lot to me, because I think she was an amazing, incredible talent. All her shapes are so fluid, organic and asymmetrical. They’re very bold and very brave. There’s so much that I love about them.”

Hadid‘s designs were often inspired by the movement of water, and so we chose – for our technical design – to make a fluid-shaped, assymetrical necklace of lilac sweet peas, blue cornflowers, white stocks, pale pink atirrhinums, alchemilla mollie, ferns & a single peony.

Signature (above): Inspired by Hadid’s Viso Vase. Slender & curved, our vases were made with laurel leaves and filled with the beautiful British favourite – the sweetpea. An intricate wired design, it features lilac sweet peas, blue cornflowers, white stocks, pale pink antirrhinums, alchemilla mollis, ferns and a single peony.

Read more about British Flowers Week

Get involved in American Flowers Week, coming up June 28-July 4. Lots of details and resources available here!

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American Flowers Week and the Slow Flowers Summit are just around the corner — our week-long celebration of American-grown flowers and design begins on June 28th and continues through July 4th — check out americanflowersweek.com for all the cool details, including our just-released Coloring Map of the USA with every state flower designed by Jenny Diaz.

This is free for you to download, print and share with clients and customers this month. Feel free to add your own logo to the PDFs and get promoting! And I’d love to see your finished pages — when you post use #americanflowersweek. See All 50 State Flowers and download pages here.

We’re especially excited around here for the Slow Flowers Summit, which takes place on Sunday, July 2nd in Seattle during the heart of American Flowers Week. You’re invited to participate — and you can find all the details here. Tickets are selling at a brisk pace and it’s time to grab yours!

I’ve heard from many of you heading to Seattle to attend the Summit interested in knowing what else is going on when you’re here.

We’re sponsoring a fabulous one-day workshop held 11 am to 3 pm on Saturday, July 1st the day before the Summit at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market.

I want to introduce you to Susanna Luck of Nettle Textiles, who’s calling the class The Art of Plant Dyeing.

A Portland textile artist and floral designer Susanna has been making and incorporating hand-dyed ribbons and linens into her design repertoire.

If you’re interested in learning more about naturally-dyed silks, cottons and linens to use in your work, you’ll want to sign up! Find the details here.

As you may know, I’ve invited many of my flower friends and floral crushes who I greatly admire to speak at the Slow Flowers Summit, including today’s guest, Chantal Aida Gordon.

We met virtually several years ago through our mutual friend Jennifer Asher of Terra Sculpture, when Jennifer asked me to share my insights with Chantal about the ins and outs of speaking gigs.

When we finally met in person a few years later, I felt like a kindred spirit came into my life. Chantal and Ryan Benoit, her collaborator in the popular blog thehorticult.com, attended one of the Field to Vase Dinners that that I co-hosted in the San Diego area — at the Flower Fields. They endeared themselves further by posting a lovely review of the evening, which included Chantal’s engaging storytelling and Ryan’s beautiful photography.

I very much wanted to bring Chantal for Seattle to moderate a panel on inclusion and diversity in our green worlds of horticulture and floriculture. And she is coming – I’m so jazzed for our attendees to meet her. I was in Southern Cali last month to teach and I met up with Chantal in Los Angeles to record today’s interview.

Here’s a little more about her:

Born in Brooklyn and now a resident of LA, Chantal Aida Gordon is the cofounder of The Horticult, a site that covers where gardening intersects with culture—from horticulture and design to cocktails and art. (Bona fides include a spread in The New York Times and “Gardening Blog of the Year” from Better Homes & Gardens.)

Together with Ryan Benoit, they’ve written about community gardens, floral care, and DIY plant habitats.

Outside The Horticult, Chantal’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Zagat Guide, and American Short Fiction.

Her favorite flowers to grow are epipyllums and her favorite cut flower is the dahlia.

Chantal is wrapping up work with Ryan on their first book How to Window Box, forthcoming from Clarkson Potter in Spring of 2018.

This book will show you how to build and plant window boxes in colorful, fun and inventive ways.

They’re putting a fresh spin on windowsill gardening with plant combinations both classic and unexpected. You can even pre-order How to Window Box on Amazon now!

Follow Chantal at these social places:

@chantalaida_garden

@thehorticult

The Horticult on Facebook

The Horticult on Pinterest

The Horticult on Twitter

 

It’s time to sign up for the Summit and you can find the registration link and more details at debraprinzing.com. The Summit’s mission is summed up in 5 simple but impactful words: We want to Inquire, Inform, Include, Instigate and Inspire!

The information you will gain in a single day at the Summit is an incredible value for just $175 — and members of slow flowers receive a great thank-you rate  of $135.

Your registration includes all lectures and coffee & alight breakfast, lunch and a cocktail reception with speakers — plus a flower lovers’ swag bag and chance to network with the doers and thinkers in our botanical universe.

Oh, and did I mention our signature cocktail? It’s The Herbarium, a concoction featured in our keynote speaker Amy Stewart’s NYT bestselling book The Drunken Botanist!

READ MORE…

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Today, we’re commemorating the 200th episode of the  Slow Flowers Podcast. It’s an amazing milestone worth celebrating!

For 200 consecutive weeks, ever since our first episode on July 23, 2013, we’ve brought you original programming about local, seasonal and sustainable flowers and the people who grow and design with them.

That means you’ve received nearly four years of meaningful and informative content — delivered through your ear-buds — my engaging conversations with flower farmers, floral designers, cut floral and plant experts, authors, entrepreneurs and innovators in the Slow Flowers Community.

And I thank YOU for joining me!

I’ve scheduled a very special guest to share with you for this 200th episode: Berkeley, California-based designer Max Gill.

I first met Max during the summer of 2011 while working on The 50 Mile Bouquet. Photographer David Perry and I were in SF shooting a chapter of the book with Susie Nadler and Flora Grubb at Flora Grubb Gardens . . . and Flora asked if I knew Max. I told her no, and she immediately made a connection, introducing us by phone. It was one of those serendipitous threads I am so often given and frequently follow . . . not sure where it will lead but eager to discover that answer.

Max invited David and me to meet him a few days later and what resulted was nothing short of beautiful. We were able to tour and ultimately photograph Max in his Berkeley studio and personal cutting garden . . . and then he invited us to follow him to Alice Waters’ famed bistro Chez Panisse Cafe & Restaurant, just blocks from Max’s home, to capture him on camera while he created the first of that week’s major floral displays for the restaurant’s interior.

It was an unforgettable experience for all of us. Later, Alice shared this quote for the story:

“Max is an amazing forager – he brings a sense of aliveness and seasonality, reinforcing the principles of the restaurant.”

And his friend, design mentor and occasional collaborator Ariella Chezar told me this:

“Max, with his heart of gold, is a genius at creating small, magical worlds that you cannot help but be drawn into. With tenderness and skill, he assembles his elements, resulting in the most perfect balance of haphazard wildness and clear purpose. His arrangements always look just right.”

Max recently visited Seattle to teach a very popular Master Class, followed by an unforgettable design lecture at Seattle Wholesale Growers Market – and while he was in town, I recorded this short conversation with him.

Here’s a bit more about Max, from his web site’s “about” page:

After receiving his degree in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley, Max was compelled by more creative pursuits, eventually finding floral design the perfect medium as it seemed to him to draw from all of his greatest passions: gardening, sculpture, painting and art and theater history. 

Originally from upstate New York, Max has called the Bay Area home for almost 35 years.  Perhaps best known for his work at Chez Panisse where he has done the flowers for over a decade, Max started Max Gill Design in 2005 and now offers full floral services for weddings, special events and private clients including Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Lauren McIntosh.  

Informed by natural process, Max’s work is distinguished by his reliance on specialty blooms and botanical rarities gleaned from local growers, his own formidable cut flower garden in North Berkeley, and a long list of Bay Area nurseries.  

He writes this:

My work is always botanically inspired. What I find most compelling in nature is when plants are struggling to find their place in the environment. As they fight to overcome the challenges of space and light, often surprising us with their juxtaposition, they create beauty through adaptation.

Download our PDF of the chapter, “Flowers for Chez Panisse,’ from The 50 Mile Bouquet.

Here’s a peek at two of Max’s alluring botanical designs that appear in the just-released new book, “In Full Flower,” by photographers Gemma and Andrew Ingalls for Rizzoli Books. It’s stunning work that will leave you wanting more.

And you can find more by following along with Max on his Instagram feed.

Thanks so much for joining us today.

Back when the 100th episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast aired in June 2015, I noted that listeners had downloaded episodes 53,000 times since the start of the show.

Having reached the second-hundred-episode mark, even more fans are engaging with the show, with a total of 193,000 downloads to date — meaning today we have nearly triple the number of Slow Flowers Podcast listeners than for the first 100 episodes.

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.

It’s time to sign up for the Slow Flowers Summit and you can find the registration link here.

The information you will gain in a single day at the Summit is an incredible value for just $175 — and members of Slow Flowers receive a great thank-you rate of $135.

Your registration includes all lectures and coffee/light breakfast, lunch and a cocktail reception with speakers — plus a flower lovers’ swag bag and chance to network with the doers and thinkers in our botanical universe.

I can’t wait for you to join us in Seattle on July 2 in the heart of American Flowers Week!

Thank you to family of 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.

Syndicate Sales, an American manufacturer of vases and accessories for the professional florist. Look for the American Flag Icon to find Syndicate’s USA-made products and join the Syndicate Stars loyalty program at syndicatesales.com.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds, an employee-owned company that provides our industry the best flower, herb and vegetable seeds — supplied to farms large and small and even backyard cutting gardens like mine. Check them out at johnnysseeds.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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

The countdown for American Flowers Week and the Slow Flowers Summit has begun — we’re only five weeks away from the June 28th kickoff of American Flowers Week 2017 and just shy of six weeks from the Slow Flowers Summit, which will take place on Sunday, July 2nd in Seattle.

You’re invited to participate in both — and you can find all the details and links here in this post.

I’ll be previewing as many of our Slow Flowers Summit speakers as possible over the coming weeks. First of all, please meet James Baggett, science and horticulture writer, garden editor at Better Homes & Gardens and a true pioneer in garden media.

I’ve written and produced stories for this incredibly generous and talented man for years and I count him as a friend. In fact, as I mention often, if given a choice, I’d rather be his friend for life than ever write a single story for him in the future.

James is definitely demonstrating his friendship and support for my passion by agreeing to be our master of ceremonies during the Slow Flowers Summit.

He’s flying to Seattle from his home town, Des Moines, Iowa, where BH&G and its parent company Meredith Corp. are based. As luck would have it, my travels took me to Des Moines last month when Meredith sponsored my lecture at the Wonder of Words festival on Earth Day. While there, I grabbed a short interview with James to share with you.

James A. Baggett has been a garden editor and writer for more than 20 years. In addition to his new role as BH&G’s garden editor, he shaped content at Country Gardens® magazine as its editor in chief for nine years after serving previously as editor of Perennials^TM and as the founding editor of Nature’s Garden^TM magazines, both Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications.

James also is the former executive editor of Country Living Gardener and Rebecca’s Garden magazines. He is the author of Flower Arranging, a Best of Martha Stewart Living Book (Oxmoor House) and the former garden editor of American Homestyle & Gardening.

James formerly gardened in New York City — where he tended a 10-x-20-foot garden behind an 1850 brownstone — and he now gardens in Des Moines, where all the available land surrounding his Arts & Crafts bungalow has been given over to flowerbeds, specimen trees and shrubs, and containers.

James has a Bachelor of Journalism degree, from the University of Missouri-Columbia’s famed School of Journalism. In 2015, the American Horticultural Society honored James with the B. Y. Morrison Communication Award, which recognizes effective and inspirational communication – through print, radio, television, and/or online media — advancing public interest and participation in horticulture.

“Garden writing is science writing with Jazz Hands” — James Baggett

Click here to download the James Baggett Profile, “Charming, Disarming and Engaging,” written by Maryann Newcomer for to the GWA Association of Garden Communicators newsletter. His curiosity and passion about everything in the natural world comes through in all aspects of his work and his life, and I’m thrilled that he’ll be joining us as the emcee for the Summit.

Next up, past guest of this podcast, Emily Ellen Anderson of Seattle-based Lola Creative. If you missed my interview with Emily (episode 168) you’ll want to go back and hear her entire journey of arriving at a floral career drawing from a background in landscape architecture.

It’s inspiring and it’s one of the reasons I asked Emily to speak at the Slow Flowers Summit on the topic of “Reinvention: Professionally, Artistically + Sustainably.” She will share her story and talk about how creatives are morphing with the changing cultural scene, changing aesthetic tastes and changing values.

And a huge bonus of having Emily involved in the Summit will be her “live” demonstration of building a foam-free floral wall.

It was during our recent walk-through of the Surf Incubator Event Space where our Summit will be held, that I recorded our short audio conversation. Our mutual friend Liz Browning of Laughing Girl Flowers was with us and we were all so excited to see the environment that will house the Summit gathering. We also discussed logistics of building a mini version of the massive floral wall that Emily and her team created for the 2016 Seattle Art Fair.

Her business, Lola Creative, is comprised of a team of art-minded, world-wandering, endlessly curious event and visual art professionals and ready to get obsessed with their clients’ projects. They specialize in design and production of bold events with a focus on brand enhancement and generating a meaningful connection between guests and a host organization, styled photoshoots and creative direction for online content and marketing campaigns, exceptional weddings for excellent couples. Lola Creative includes craftspeople, architects, project managers, marketers, writers, painters, organizational master-minds, and bold thinkers. Lola operates out of a light- filled studio in Edmonds, Washington, serving the entire state and Northwest region.

Lola promotes sustainable flower growing, low waste events, and low-impact practices of all kinds, including composting plant waste, reusing materials, and sourcing locally and responsibly. Lola Creative has ceased the use of floral foam for its toxicity and non-biodegradability. A portion of profits benefit scientific research, creatures, and kids’ education in entrepreneurship, art, and technology.

Check out Curious Lola, Emily’s blog where she shares tips, stories and videos about building, running and designing an event design and floral business.

Find/follow Emily at these social places:

Lola Creative on Facebook

Lola Creative on Instagram

Lola Creative on Pinterest

Thanks for joining us today. The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 191,000 times by listeners like you. THANK YOU to each one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

It’s time to sign up for the Summit and you can find the registration link and more details right here.

The information you will gain in a single day at the Summit is an incredible value for just $175 — and members of Slow Flowers receive a great thank-you rate  of $135/ Your registration includes all lectures and coffee/light breakfast, lunch and a cocktail reception with speakers — plus a flower lovers’ swag bag and chance to network with the doers and thinkers in our botanical universe.

I can’t wait for you to join us in Seattle on July 2 in the heart of American Flowers Week!

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 family of 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.

Syndicate Sales, an American manufacturer of vases and accessories for the professional florist. Look for the American Flag Icon to find Syndicate’s USA-made products and join the Syndicate Stars loyalty program at syndicatesales.com.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds, an employee-owned company that provides our industry the best flower, herb and vegetable seeds — supplied to farms large and small and even backyard cutting gardens like mine. Check them out at johnnysseeds.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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

We’ve been talking about networking, collaboration and community quite a bit lately and this week’s topic continues that thread with Seattle’s Flower Power.

This intentional cohort of floral designers and farmer-florists formed in early 2016 with a core group of new friends, many of whom met while taking a large-scale installation workshop with Lisa Waud of Pot & Box when she came to town.

Flower Powers’ monthly gatherings rotate among different member’s homes or studios and focus on business topics and face-to-face social networking . . . today, only 18 months after forming, the list of Flower Power members has grown organically to more than 35 participants.

Many Flower Power members are also involved in Slow Flowers and so somehow I was added to the mailing list . . . every time their monthly meeting notice lands in my in-box, I open it curious to discover the topic and host. I have felt very included but never had a chance to attend until May 1st. Maura Whalen invited me to speak about Slow Flowers when she hosted the group in her beautiful home and garden in Seattle.

Before our evening’s program began, I sat down with Maura and another early Flower Power member Tammy Myers to talk about the reasons why they started the group and how it has served their evolving floral careers.

Maura Whalen owns Casablanca Floral and Tammy Myers owns First & Bloom. Let me introduce a little more about them:

Maura’s Casablanca Floral began in 2014 when she hauled a wreath-making machine into her children’s tree fort and filed for a license to pursue her lifelong dream of a floral business.

 In truth, a passion for flowers and the natural world has been with Maura her entire life, beginning with time spent with her Italian grandmother Flora who had a glorious garden in which Maura loved to play.  At home as a child, her mother made her a deal:  if she weeded the garden, she could create an arrangement for the family table.   Later, Maura worked in a floral shop to pay her way through grad school. Casablanca Floral is the culmination of one woman’s lifelong love for expressing creativity through flowers.

The word Casablanca denotes Maura’s favorite flower and her favorite classic film and to her, Casablanca has always signified ultimate elegance.

Casablanca Floral has bloomed into a thriving business serving the Seattle metropolitan area. Operating out of a beautiful backyard studio rather than a storefront allows Maura to keep her work personal, close to home, and close to the heart.  It’s no surprise that being a mother to two fabulous teenagers entwines and overlaps with Maura’s life as a florist.

And here’s more about Tammy Myers. She writes this on First & Bloom’s web site:

If you had asked me 10+ years ago about owning a florist business, I might have laughed!  Who knew I would be here today.  Like most young twenty-something’s, I was headed to the big city and wasn’t ever going back to the country!  Growing up in a small town outside the Tri-Cities in Eastern Washington, I was drawn to the city like most-  the fast pace, the glitz, the glam, and the opportunity.  And it’s all true.  Those years were fun and still are when I get a chance to sneak away.  But there’s nothing better than the sheer glimmer in my son’s eyes when he discovers something new out in the country.  As parents, we’ve all been there.  We start to live again- better, through our children.  

What I’ve learned over the years is to love what you do.  Surround yourself with passion, integrity, perseverance, and ignore anyone who says otherwise.   

​What I’ve learned in the past couple years is that I’m not really selling flowers.  I’m selling feelings.  The emotion of one person passed to the other as a feeling through the tangible package of flowers.  That’s why it’s so important I get it right.  Getting it right means everything to me and most importantly it means everything to my customers.  It means I played a tiny little part in someone feeling comfort about the life jolting news they received from the doctor or the feeling of celebration for the ass-kicking mountain they conquered called cancer.  It also means I get to see a glimpse into some of the most important days a couple experiences like walking down the aisle or welcoming another amazing person into this world.  And the best part is, someone chose me to help convey those priceless thoughts and feelings.  What a gift that touches me right to the core!

As we mentioned during the episode, I have two past episodes to share with you that relate to today’s guests:
I hosted Tammy as my guest on Episode 201 as she discussed her all-American/all-local sourcing philosophy; and I featured Tammy, Maura and several other designers who are now involved in Flower Power on Episode 230 during the workshop with Lisa Waud when the seed of an idea seemed to be forming for this group.

Flower Power doesn’t officially have a web site or Facebook group but you can get to know Maura and Tammy at their social places:

Casablanca Floral on Facebook

Casablanca Floral on Instagram

Casablanca Floral on Pinterest

First & Bloom on Facebook

First & Bloom on Instagram

First & Bloom on Pinterest

As special thank you to Sarah Gonia of Olympia-based Sarah Gonia Photography. She attended Flower Power as a guest and generously shared these photos with permission.

Thanks for joining us today. The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 189,000 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 family of 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.

Syndicate Sales, an American manufacturer of vases and accessories for the professional florist. Look for the American Flag Icon to find Syndicate’s USA-made products and join the Syndicate Stars loyalty program at syndicatesales.com.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds, an employee-owned company that provides our industry the best flower, herb and vegetable seeds — supplied to farms large and small and even backyard cutting gardens like mine. Check them out at johnnysseeds.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.

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.

Music credits: