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I’m so pleased today to share a long-distance conversation I recorded a few weeks ago with Kay Studer and Susan Studer King, mom-and-daughter farmer-florists based in the Northwest Ohio community of Elida, where they grow and design.

The two are doing exciting things in their community, region and state and I know you’ll learn much from their experience, which they so generously share in the interview.

But first up: A bit of news. You may recall my interview a few months ago with Lisa Waud of Detroit’s pot and box, a studio, wedding and event florist who has taken it upon herself to dream up a project called “The Flower House” – a 100-percent American grown floral installation in an abandoned house in the Motor City.

Lisa has big plans and since our podcast, her first interview ever, she has garnered a lot of attention from the floral design and flower farming community, as well as the media. The Flower House will take place October 16-18, but this weekend, Lisa and her fellow floral artists will unveil their plans at a preview event to be held in a neighboring vacant house. As Lisa promises: “It will whet the whistles of interested florists, curious visitors and potential sponsors.”

I’ll be there to help the designers celebrate the launch of this incredible project. Please check out the links at The Flower House to find out how you can attend – especially if you’re in the Detroit area this coming weekend.

And if you want to get involved, please help FLOWER HOUSE BLOSSOM AND GROW. The team has just kicked off a funding campaign on my favorite crowd-funding platform Indiegogo so you’ve gotta know they’re smart cookies! Follow links to the campaign and donate at whatever level you feel you can. I’m intrigued by the fun perks, ranging from $5 to $5,000.

A few that listeners of this podcast might love:

• an American-made tote bag straight from Michigan crafters for $40
• a special fragrance inspired by The Flower House for $75
• a picture frame made from wood salvaged from The Flower House and made by Lisa Waud’s Dad for $100
• a private dinner in Detroit hosted by Lisa and her team for $5,000

Some amazing talents are participating in this fabulous project and I am excited to watch it bloom, flourish, blossom and beautify Detroit, to use as many metaphors as I can think of!

Okay, today’s guests will be equally inspiring. Kay and Susan are gardeners, farmers and family. They love flowers, of course.

As Buckeye Blooms, the mother-daughter team grows flowers without the use of any toxic chemicals and they express their earth-friendly values season after season by growing high-quality, super-fresh flowers.

“Just as a home-grown tomato tastes better than a store-bought one, we believe the freshest and most beautiful flowers come from the garden rather than the refrigerated section of a big-box store. By purchasing locally-grown flowers, you get fresher, longer-lasting blooms, while supporting Ohio farm families.”

The land on which Kay and Susan operate Buckeye Blooms has been in the Studer family for several generations.

Located in northern Allen County, Dolau Farm features a meadow set aside for permanent conservation, dense woods, mature windbreaks, and an established perennial garden in addition to the large flower field.

The historic 1880’s farmhouse is set back off of the road down a picturesque lane shaded by towering maple trees. Surrounding the house are many species of trees, woody ornamentals, grasses and greenery in addition to dozens of old-fashioned and unusual flower varieties. The Buckeye Blooms flower shop and design studio occupies what used to be the milking parlor of the “big barn.” The shop is also used for farm flower parties and other special events.

Environmental conservation is important to the Studer and King families and it is at the core of their farm operations. Hundreds of hardwood trees have been planted to prevent soil erosion, provide wildlife habitat and combat climate change. Recycling and energy conservation measures are implemented for every step of the flower production process.

“We don’t use toxic chemicals. Period. Plus, we put our money where our mouth is: we donate a portion of our profits to charitable organizations that work on behalf of food security, community gardens and solutions to climate change.”

Here’s a bit more about Susan and Kay:

Susan Studer King’s background is in the environmental nonprofit field.

For more than eight years, Susan worked for Ohio Environmental Council where she led statewide efforts to reform Ohio’s factory farm, wetland and agricultural drainage laws and also served as the Council’s Development Director.

Prior to partnering with her mother to create Buckeye Blooms, Susan and her husband served as Peace Corps Volunteers in Ecuador where they saw firsthand the many negative environmental and social impacts of the commercial rose industry in Ecuador.

Upon returning to the U.S., Susan & Jeremy moved back to the farm to start Buckeye Blooms and to live a low-carbon lifestyle.

Susan now splits her time between “the farm” and Granville where she does freelance writing; she serves on the Licking County Local Food Council and tries to steer her toddler out of trouble.

Kay Studer brings a lifetime of gardening experience to Buckeye Blooms.

Kay served as the Horticulture Program Coordinator at Ohio State University Extension Service in Allen County where she managed the Master Gardener program for more than 15 years.

Kay received national recognition and numerous awards for her leadership and programs at the Children’s Garden in downtown Lima.

An expert in diagnosing garden pest problems and an accomplished freelance landscape designer, Kay also has a great eye for floral design.

Kay’s first big floral design job: her daughter Susan’s wedding in 2000. Buckeye Blooms is headquartered on the family farm she has lived on since childhood.

Thank you so much for joining me this week and please return again, as I continue to share insightful and educational episodes recorded exclusively for the Slow Flowers Podcast.

Listeners like you have downloaded the podcast nearly 46,000 times. Until next week please 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 Wheatley and Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.

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This week’s episode coincides with Earth Day, fittingly symbolic for the Slow Flowers Movement and flower farmers, floral designers and product innovators who are working to change our industry and push for progress to alter the status quo.

So I’d like to share a few news items as well as two follow-up interviews featuring guests of past Slow Flowers Podcast episodes.

Listen closely to find out how you can win prize packages from each of our guests – you’ll want to get in on the good stuff!

First off, if you enjoyed last week’s interview with Jenny Elliott and Luke Franco of Tiny Hearts Farm in New York’s Hudson Valley and Rachel Gordon of Taproot Flowers of Brooklyn, please check out more photos that I’ve added to the show notes. They’re onto something really special and I encourage you to listen if you missed that episode – and enjoy the beautiful flowers the three of them grow and arrange in their worlds.

Second, I want to share details about this week’s Fashion Revolution Day, which takes place on April 24th.

If you believe in Slow Flowers, you should also embrace and support Slow Fashion, which has so many parallels in terms of labor practices, environmental concern and trade policy.

Slow Fashion asks questions about the origins of the clothing we wear that are virtually identical to the questions Slow Flowers asks about the bouquets we bring into our homes.

Fashion Revolution Day 2015 marks the second anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which killed 1,133, and injured over 2,500 people.

According to Fashion Revolution’s data, one in six people work in the global fashion supply chain. It is the most labor-dependent industry on the planet, yet the people who make our clothing are hidden from us, often at their own expense, a symptom of the broken links across the fashion industry.

Wow, doesn’t that sound identical to the floriculture industry? On April 24th, coordinated teams around the world will challenge global fashion brands to demonstrate commitment to transparency across the length of the value chain, from farmers to factory workers, brands to buyers and consumers.

Zady.com, an innovative online fashion brand based in New York City, is serving as U.S. chair of Fashion Revolution Day. Slow Flowers has been invited to help promote the cause. Check out this Slow Fashion/Fashion Revolution event taking place in Brooklyn. Slow Flowers hopes to have ongoing involvement with Slow Fashion in the future.

I am inspired by what the fashion industry has done in just two years to mobilize conscious consumers to care about the origins of their clothing — and in the future, I hope the floral industry will be just as vocal. I don’t wish for a fatal disaster to occur at an unregulated flower farm in a distant land to make us all wake up and start asking about the origins of our flowers.

What you can do on April 24th is to use your own social channels to get active. Take a photo of yourself wearing an item of clothing inside out. Tag the brand, share the photo on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the hashtags: #whomademyclothes and #fashrev.

Not to take away from this important endeavor, but perhaps you’ll be inspired to ALSO take a photo of yourself holding flowers that came from a US mega-retailer, big box store or supermarket and tag that retailer on your social sites with the hashtags: #whogrewmyflowers and #slowflowers. Just a thought.

Thanks for caring!

READ MORE…

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I’ve often talked about the exciting changes we’re experiencing with the Slow Flowers Movement as a “cultural shift,” not a Trend.

I credit sustainability expert and founder of Ci: conscientious innovation, Kierstin DeWest, the very first guest of this podcast in July 2013, for teaching me this concept. Trends are often momentary; cultural shifts are significant, meaningful and long-lasting changes in the marketplace.

There is a cultural shift taking place that is redefining the relationships consumers, florists and flower farmers have with one another. This is happening at all levels of the flower pipeline, from U.S. Flower Farms large and small seeking Certified American Grown status to brand and label their flowers – in order to satisfy the demands, especially at the mass market – for transparency in flower origin, to the grassroots efforts, region by region, to connect the people who grow flowers with the people who design and sell them.

READ MORE…

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Attention emerging flower farmers and #farmerflorists!

I know you’ll appreciate this week’s guests because they are both in the early phases of launching their floral businesses.

Either you’ve already been there so parts of their stories will sound familiar or you’re in the thick of building a floral enterprise – farming and/or design – and will draw inspiration from their candor about the challenges, opportunities and decisions about the direction to take.

With planting and harvesting season and months of weddings upon us, I can assure you that our episode is timely. Like all of my guests on the Slow Flowers Podcast, there is much to learn from what they have to share.

Please welcome Betany Coffland of Chloris Floral and Lennie Larkin of B-Side Farm. Together, they embody a unique collaboration for people who are growing and designing American flowers. Be wowed by the collective beauty of their work.

This episode was recorded in the San Jose hotel lobby after the conclusion of ASCFG’s “Growers’ Intensive” last month.

Betany Coffland has always possessed an artistic soul. Her first career lies in singing opera where she trained at the Juilliard School of Music.

Often gifted with an armload of bouquets on opening night, Betany frequently imagined herself in a Jane Austen novel.

The quintessential professional, Betany has given us permission to include snippets of her operatic performances, including the French art song, “A Chloris.” Check out her professional opera site here. 

After moving to Sonoma County and reading the book, The Dirty Life, she was inspired to volunteer at a local flower farm to see if she would enjoy getting dirt under her nails and having the outdoors as an office.

Betany swiftly and deeply fell entranced with how stunning and heartbreakingly gorgeous locally grown flowers are.

For 18 months, she co-owned Chica Bloom Farm, acting as the lead designer and wedding coordinator.

She especially loved getting to know her community through delivering weekly flower CSA bouquets.

In the winter of 2014, Betany launched Chloris Floral. The namesake Chloris perfectly combines her two artistic endeavors, classical singing and floral design.

Not only is Chloris the Greek goddess of flowers, she is also the heroine of Betany’s favorite French art song, “A Chloris,” by Reynaldo Hahn.

This song has special meaning because it was performed by a dear friend at Betany’s wedding to her husband Joseph. Now part of Betany’s repertoire, she continues to perform A Chloris.

Chloris Floral is a flower design studio in Sonoma County committed to using 100% local and seasonal blooms grown using organic practices. By supporting and building upon the strength of the local farming community, Chloris ensures the availability of fresh, locally grown blooms necessary to create achingly beautiful old world designs.

In her “day job,” Lennie Larkin is the community farm manager at Petaluma Bounty, a nonprofit community farm that  works to create a healthy and sustainable food system for everyone in Petaluma, California.

At Petaluma Bounty, Lennie grows lots of vegetables and a seriously beautiful patch of flowers that are sold locally, including at farmers’ markets.

She will share her story, so I don’t want to give too much away, but let me quickly introduce Lennie’s new flower farming business, B-Side Farm.

She describes B-Side as a small, bustling flower farm that grew out of her obsession with fragrant blossoms.

It sits on a fertile piece of land in the rolling hills of Petaluma, in the southern pocket of Sonoma County, California. From show-stopping dahlias to rare foliages and simple herbs, B-Side specializes in favorite old-fashioned flowers, picked daily and bursting with dreamy scents.

Lennie’s flowers and arrangement supply a family of local-minded florists and specialty stores in Petaluma, San Francisco, and Oakland, and she welcomes orders of loose flowers and specialty arrangements for pickup straight from the farm. Read Lennie’s extended bio from her new web site.

Lennie and Betany are founding members of the North Bay Flower Collective, a group of flower farmers and floral designers in the North SF Bay Area.

I love the motivation that led to the formation of the North Bay Flower Collective: To lean on each other for support and pull our resources together to build a flower growers’ alliance helping each farmer and florist to grow and thrive. 

Here are the links to Betany’s social sites for Chloris, to Lennie’s social sites for B-Side and to the North Bay Flower Collective.

You’ll want to follow these talented individuals and watch how their coming design season unfolds:

Find Betany here:

Chloris Floral on Facebook

Chloris Floral on Instagram

Chloris Floral Web Site

Find Lennie here:

B-Side Farm on Facebook

B-Side Farm on Instagram

B-Side Farm Web Site

Thank you so much for joining me this week and please return again, as I continue to share insightful and educational episodes recorded exclusively for the Slow Flowers Podcast.

Listeners like you have downloaded the podcast more than 42,000 times. Until next week please 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 Wheatley and Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.

Out of the blue recently, an editor for the American Alliance of Museums’ annual TrendsWatch publication contacted me for permission to reprint the Slow Flowers‘ “Where do your flowers come from?” infographic in the organization’s 2015 annual report.

I really had no idea how this illustrious association of cultural institutions planned on using the infographic, but of course, I said YES.

The publication just landed in my in-box and I have to say, it’s pretty impressive.

Each year, the TrendsWatch report highlights top trends that the Center for the Future of Museums staff and advisors believe are highly significant to museums and their communities.

The story of “Slow Flowers” appears in an article titled “Slooow: better a tortoise than a hare,” which highlights slower cultural experiences in all consumer categories.

In addition to the Slow Culture section, the TrendsWatch report cited Ethical Consumerism (which has a lot of connections to Slow Flowers, as well), Personalization, Rising Sea Levels, Wearable Technology and Open Data as subjects of importance to the Museum community.

Here’s a PDF of the article: Trendswatch 2015. You can download a PDF of the entire TrendsWatch report here after completing a short registration form.