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Earlier this summer, I joined my husband on a beautiful drive that culminated at the point where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean; the Columbia is the natural border between the states of Washington and Oregon.

Here, there is a historic maritime town called Astoria, which was first visited by explorers and fur traders in 1811 and founded in 1876.

The reason I wanted to tag along with Bruce was because I’ve been meaning to visit Kathleen Barber of Erika’s Fresh Flowers.

Kathleen grows and designs flowers in a secret garden adjacent to her home in Warrenton, Oregon, the town just south of the metropolis of Astoria.

We met up at 3 Cups Coffee House in downtown Astoria, where owner Carly Lackner displays Kathleen’s weekly arrangements. This is the seeming “heart” of the community where people come in for a designer cup of caffeine and a home-baked pastry and stay for meetings, conversation, reading and fascinating views of the Columbia River shipping traffic.

After we jumped in Kathleen’s car, I accompanied her on a bouquet delivery to the Astoria Co-op Grocery. Another important home-grown business, the Co-op is a source of local food from local farms, and local bouquets from Erika’s Fresh Flowers. After a delicious lunch at a farm-to-table restaurant specializing in vegetarian and vegan options, we drove back to Kathleen’s home and garden-farm.

I followed her through the rows, raised beds, high tunnels and borders inside a fenced area about 3/4-acre in size. You can hear me asking her about specific flowers and foliage that she grew and harvested for an arrangement she had in mind to promote American Flowers Week.

Here’s more about Kathleen, from the Erika’s Fresh Flowers web site:

Kathleen and her daughter Erika

Erika’s Fresh Flowers is named after my daughter, Erika, who at 14 years old took over my mother’s flower stand, which was simply a way to make extra money from the joys of gardening. As Erika picked and picked, another stand was built on the other side of town.

A local florist put in a request to buy several bunches at a time directly from Erika. On one delivery to the flower shop, the florist made the check out to“Erika’s Flowers“ and therefore named the business. Erika started her first job working for that florist at 17 years old and continued through college. She has since graduated, married and lives further South in the Willamette Valley but her passion for flowers is still part of her life.

Kathleen Barber inside one of her Warrenton, Oregon, high tunnels (hoop houses) for dahlias.

Kathleen received a degree in Business Management and began a career as an Office/Operations Manager. After having her second child she decided to stay home with her children. In 2005, her passion for all things floral blossomed into a family business and Kathleen formally launched Erika’s Fresh Flowers.

A Kathleen Barber floral arrangement, which she photographed in her studio.

She also writes: I enjoy the ability to play with flowers and be with my family. I love creating lush bouquets and arrangements with ingredients that I grow myself. The pleasure of giving others something I created just for them and seeing their response is fun and fulfilling.

We are a locally owned flower farm and design studio with a garden style inspired by the wild, unique botanicals around us.  We tend to a cutting garden with a vast selection of flowers, foliage and herbs grown with sustainability practices in mind so as to preserve our land here on the North Oregon Coast.

A word about the quite excellent growing conditions that Kathleen enjoys. True confessions, this description comes from Wikipedia, but since I am a former Oregon resident, this feels pretty darned accurate: Astoria lies within the Mediterranean climate zone with very mild temperatures year-round, some of the most consistent in the contiguous United States; winters are mild for this latitude (it usually remains above freezing at night) and wet. Summers are cool, although short heat waves can occur. Rainfall is most abundant in late fall and winter and is lightest in July and August, averaging approximately 67 inches of precipitation annually. Snowfall is relatively rare, occurring every few years or so.

Astoria is tied with Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Port Arthur, Texas, as the most humid city in the contiguous United States. The average relative humidity in Astoria is 89% in the morning and 73% in the afternoon. (a side note, with cooler temperatures in the air, this ‘humidity’ is altogether different from what you’d experience in Louisiana or Texas, perhaps this is why Kathleen has such beautiful skin!)

Temperatures reach 80 °F only four days per year and only rarely reach 90 °F. Normally there are only one or two nights per year when the temperature remains at or above 60 °F.

With 191 days annually producing measurable precipitation, irrigation isn’t Kathleen’s problem! She enjoys the benefits of being able to grow and harvest some type of crop — flowers and foliage — nearly year-round, keeping her local customers quite delighted with Slow Flowers, Coastal Style.

In our interview, Kathleen demonstrates how she weaves together art and commerce in both her flower farming and floral design work, making it look much easier than I know it is.

Here is how to find and follow Erika’s Fresh Flowers:

Erika’s Fresh Flowers on Facebook

Erika’s Fresh Flowers on Instagram

Erika’s Fresh Flowers on Pinterest

Kathleen Barber Photography

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 116,000 times by listeners like you. THANK YOU to each one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much. Last month marked our highest listenership to day — 5,561 people downloaded the Slow Flowers Podcast during August. 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 the home page at right.

Thank you to our lead sponsor for 2016: 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.

More sponsor thanks goes to 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.

A big bouquet of thanks goes to Longfield Gardens… providing 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.

Heartfeld thanks to 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

And finally, Welcome to our new sponsor, the 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 and Hannah Brenlan. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

READ MORE…

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I’m so excited to share my recent interview with Beth and Jason Syphers of Crowley House Flower Farm in Rickreall, Oregon.

About 10 miles west of Salem, Oregon, the state’s capital, there is a charming turn-of-the-20th-century farmhouse where the gardens flourish, the fields are lush and colorful, and the activity inside co-owner Beth Syphers’ design studio is thoroughly inspiring.

I met Beth last year at the first Pacific Northwest Cut Flower Growers meet-up held at Our Table Cooperative outside Portland, and felt an immediate connection to her warmth, kindness, and support for Slow Flowers.

Jason joined her at our Portland meet-up this past April and I could tell he’s one of those super-essential spouses that creatives need in their lives.

When I asked them if I could visit their farm during an recent summer trip we had planned, I wasn’t surprised to be told YES.

I set aside a full day to drive about one hour south of Portland to Rickreall, where a curving country lane called Crowley Road led me to the driveway of a beautiful homestead.

Beth and Jason greeted me and led me on a tour of their property, including a peek inside the converted garage-studio where Beth processes and designs flowers, and hosts her workshops. We walked through the fields and into the high tunnel to see what was in bloom, and eventually sat down at the kitchen table to record this interview. Jason’s voice can be heard at the top of the segment, but we soon lost him to a business phone call.

Beth shares this introduction on the Crowley House Web Site: What started out as just a flower design hobby ten years ago, has grown over time into the family farm of today. The need to produce high quality blooms for my designs, and an ever changing parade of color, texture and fragrance; plus the appeal of the slower, simpler lifestyle for my family – the need to feel the soil on my hands and feet, to see the sun rise and set on our fields, and the smell of the country morning dew – has headed me down the path of flower farming and the amazing adventure that has become Crowley House.

The simple pleasure, or smile, that graces the face of our customers as they hold and smell a bouquet of our fresh flowers is one of the high points of our day. Crowley House is pleased to offer many garden heirloom roses, sweet peas, flowering vines, delicate woodland blooms and gorgeous berries in dozens of varieties, all of which represent just some of the flower varietals that we grow and which makes up the framework and style of our farm and design work. Nearly all of the flowers used in our designs are Crowley House grown, but occasionally we will use materials grown by other USA regional growers.

Crowley House offers a wide range of services from a simple bucket of flowers for the DIY creative folks, to full event styling and coordinating floral service – for weddings, corporate events, parties, memorials and various Family Events.

Thanks so much for joining us today. Be sure to follow Crowley House Flower Farm at these social places:

Crowley House Flower Farm & Studio on Facebook

Crowley House Flower Farm & Studio on Instagram

Sign up for Crowley House’s e-newsletter here

You can tell we had a lot of fun together. Meeting Beth and Jason was a memorable highlight of my summer trip to Oregon!

I have some news about Lisa Waud’s new project, Detroit Flower Week, which is coming up October 11-15, 2016. Inspired by her amazing 2015 production, The Flower House, Lisa has dreamed up a fantastic week of lectures, workshops and other events featuring all local and American-grown flowers.

I invited her to give us the details and listen for info about how you can take advantage of a special Slow Flowers promo code for discounted day pass tickets — if you act before the end of August. Follow the ticket link here and use “Slowflowers” for a 15% off discount on day passes (must be purchased by end of day 8/31). Perhaps I’ll see you there! If you can’t make it, the Slow Flowers Podcast will bring you recordings of some of the voices gathered at Detroit Flower Week, so stay tuned.

Now, on to the story of Crowley House!

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 113,000 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 to the right.

Recently, a flower farmer in the Slow Flowers Community who is deaf asked me if we would ever consider producing transcripts of our episodes so she could read these conversations. It was a poignant reminder of how casually those of us who are in the hearing world take our senses for granted. So I am going to try to produce transcripts, which cost an estimated $50-$75 per episode to transcribe, edit and prepare for download. Your contributions will help make this possible and eventually, we’ll go back and transcribe the archives if we’re able to raise enough funds!

Thank you to our lead sponsor for 2016: 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.

More sponsor thanks goes to 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.

A big bouquet of thanks goes to Longfield Gardens… providing 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.

And finally, thank you 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

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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From Debra: It’s summertime and between my travels and my editor Andrew Brenlan’s vacation schedule, we simply could not get our new episode formatted and uploaded for you this week.
So . . . I dug deep into the archives of 159 episodes that we’ve aired for more than three years in order to share one of my favorites with you.

As it turns out, Episode 155, our August 19, 2014 interview with Slowflowers.com members Jimmy Lohr and Jonathan Weber of Pittsburgh-based greenSinner is the most listened-to episode ever! Our interview has been downloaded nearly 2,000 times!

So please enjoy this return engagement of my visit to greenSinner. Whether you’re a flower farmer or a floral designer — or a little bit of both, you’ll learn volumes and find great inspiration!

Click here to read the Episode 155 Show Notes

Follow greenSinner at these social places

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 112,500 times by listeners like you.

THANK YOU to each one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

So 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 the home page at debraprinzing.com.

Thank you to our lead sponsor for 2016: 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.

More sponsor thanks goes to 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.

A big bouquet of thanks goes to Longfield Gardens… providing 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.

And finally, thank you 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

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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In the world of self-promotion in which we all live (or some may say “endure”), it’s always refreshing to meet someone who just lets his or her work speak for itself.

I’m married to someone like that and since I’m a clinical extrovert, I sometimes find frustrating to see someone who is so incredibly talented, someone who actually possesses an innate gift, who doesn’t want to broadcast their story to the world.

Maybe that’s the job of the Slow Flowers Podcast — to share stories of those modest, unsung heroes who are doing amazing work in our profession.

So today I want to share one of those voices with you and let you hear his story. His name is Gonzalo Ojeda and he and his wife Maria own Ojeda Farms in Ethel, Washington. Ethel is located southeast of Washington State’s Mt. Rainier–more importantly for customers of the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market, it’s about 1 hour 45 minutes south of Seattle — on a good day. Gonzalo or one of his farm crew makes at least one if not two round-trips a week to deliver a huge selection of healthy flowers to the market floor, driving on I-5 – one of the worst traffic corridors on the West Coast. You never hear him complain, though. He’s a passionate grower who started cut flower farming as a side gig while handling a full-time job at a commercial nursery that grows ornamentals for local big box retailers.

This is Gonzalo’s bio from the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market “about us” page:

Gonzalo was born and raised on a farm in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico. His family grew volumes of tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers and onions for many generations and sold them to large-scale wholesale buyers.

When southern Mexico began experiencing major droughts a few decades ago, vegetable production went into decline and Gonzalo came to the U.S. to work for a short period so he could help pay off his family’s farm debts. He was just 21 and his mother worried for him because he only knew a few words in English. “I knew how to say ‘chicken’ and ‘table’ and that’s about it,” he recalls. Gonzalo arrived in Washington State, got himself just enough schooling to learn how to ask for a job in English and began working picking strawberries and raspberries.

Within the year, he had secured a job working in greenhouses, propagating ornamental plants. He liked the work and has stayed with the same company for nearly 20 years. At first, he always thought he would return to Mexico, but the droughts continued… and then he met his wife Maria. They bought their Ethel farm in 2000. Gonzalo began experimenting with growing perennials in his spare time after work and on weekends–starting with a few hundred feet of astilbes, soon adding several acres of peonies and other perennials. Through hard work and a strong drive for quality, Gonzalo and Maria now have ten acres of perennials in production. Like their beautiful flower crops, the Ojedas have become firmly rooted in Washington State, with their three sons, Ricky, Fernando and Esau.

Because of our schedules, I rarely run into Gonzalo when he’s at the Market (ie, he’s in and out long before I’m up and about).

But I’ve been wanting to visit his farm and record an interview for this podcast. I made time for that visit in mid-June when I had a trip scheduled to Portland for another assignment. And because it was Saturday, Gonzalo was home with the boys but Maria was not — she has begun to sell their flowers at the nearby Olympia Farmers Market, a year-round farmers’ market, open every Saturday, with extended Thursday-through-Sunday hours in the peak season.

I turned on the recorder and Gonzalo and I began by walking around the vast farm, starting with a peek inside the high tunnels and hoop houses. We moved to the fields of woody ornamentals, perennials and annuals, a beautiful quilt of bloom color and healthy, vigorous plants. Along the way, I asked Gonzalo about his life as a flower farmer, about specific varieties and about how he manages two jobs and tens of thousands of stems.

I hope you enjoy our conversation and be sure to follow Ojeda Farms’ new Instagram feed here.

Here is a gallery of the Ojeda Farms’ Peonies.

Thanks for listening! Rumor has it that Gonzalo and Maria will open up their farm for a private Seattle Wholesale Growers Market tour next spring during the peak of peony season, so if you’re a buyer’s card holder, you’ll be lucky enough to get in on that event. You can find Ojeda Farms’ lush, Salmon Safe flowers at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market right now — and I promise you — the farm cranks out super healthy, fresh flowers. I want to add that Tammy Myers of First & Bloom, a Slowflowers.com member and past guest of this podcast, wrote a blog post last summer about her visit to Ojeda Farms, which you can read here. Something Tammy wrote is worth repeating here:

“Optimal flower picking time is in the early morning or late evenings, especially during the summer months.  Not only is it easier for the farmers to work in cooler conditions, but it’s also best for the crops.  The flowers, commonly referred to as cuts or stems, are picked from the fields and immediately placed in coolers.  As soon as a flower starts to warm up in warmer temperatures, it begins its blooming cycle. The longer the cut stays in cooler temperatures, the longer it stalls the blooming cycle.  From the moment that flower is cut from the field, it’s an absolute race to get them from field to florist to customer.

I wasn’t going to mention it…. BUT…… can you actually say that about imported grocery store varieties????  

I don’t think sooooo!

This crucial step in flower farming and probably agriculture in general, is just part of the everyday grind flower farmers face.  Yet, there was something so special and personal about Ojeda Farms, I had to know more.”

 

Like Tammy, the curious urge to “know more” is an emotion that leads many of us to consider the faces of farmers behind faces of flowers. Thank you for joining us today.

Recently I was encouraged to add a “donate” button for this podcast. I sheepishly did so and this week we received our first  contribution — from listener Ann Carper of Washington, D.C.

I’m not sure I know Ann, or whether we’ve met in the past. That she would make a small donation to sustain the production and broadcast of the Slow Flowers Podcast was a lovely thing.

We spend out-of-pocket about $5,000 each year to record and produce 52 episodes. Thanks to the financial support of our four sponsors about half of that is underwritten, but it still doesn’t come close to covering my travel or time spent to bring you stories of flower farmers and floral designers in as many geographical areas as possible.

So 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 the home page at debraprinzing.com.

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 111,000 times by listeners like you. We ended the month of July with our second-highest episode download count ever — 5,015 times. That’s amazing considering we’re at the peak of flower farming season and I know people are busy! THANK YOU to each one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

Thank you to our lead sponsor for 2016: 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.

More sponsor thanks goes to 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.

A big bouquet of thanks goes to Longfield Gardens… providing 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.

And finally, thank you 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.

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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I want to start this episode sharing more details about the upcoming Slow Flowers Creative Workshop that I’ll be co-teaching with Teresa Sabankaya of Santa Cruz’s Bonny Doon Garden Co. on Sunday, August 21st and Monday, August 22nd.

This valuable experience is designed to help you clarify, document and communicate your personal aesthetic message as a floral professional.

In a safe, supportive and intimate setting, our small group will focus on YOU! We’ll go deep into Slow Flowers “brand building” as each participant finds his or her own voice as a floral storyteller.

If you’ve been thinking about investing in your businesses’ future, now is the time to sign up. Today’s podcast interview features my conversation with Teresa about some of the content that we plan to cover.

You’re also invited to join the Slow Flowers Meet Up from 3-6 pm on August 22nd! Check out details here.

In August 2014, a writer named Susan Langenhennig of the Times Picayune, the major daily newspaper in New Orleans, published an article, which she titled:

The farm-to-vase movement: Local flower farms sprout on urban lots around New Orleans.

Susan wrote: “The mantra of the eat-local food movement is heading into the flower fields. Decades ago, that ethos began opening eyes to agricultural practices and sparking questions of how and where food is grown. Now a nascent cut-flower farming industry in New Orleans hopes to get consumers to think as much about the provenance of the bouquets they buy as the food they eat.
Within the last year, several local flower farmers — all of them growing on small urban lots — formed the New Orleans Flower Growers Association to pool resources and share advice. The group’s farmers use sustainable practices, without the synthetic herbicides and pesticides typical in the commercial flower industry. Selling locally, they hope to reduce the average bouquet’s carbon footprint to just tiptoes.”

Susan quoted today’s guest, Denise Richter, who owns Pistil & Stamen, a flower farm with business partner Megan McHugh. She also highlighted veteran and emerging flower growers in the New Orleans Flower Growers Association, and she asked me to comment on the “trend” that’s called Slow Flowers.

“It’s a gradual awareness in where our flowers come from. Food is way ahead… It’s the same customer who will ask in a restaurant, ‘Where was this salmon caught or raised?’ What’s the food mile? What’s the flower mile?”Foodies and gardeners “get it first,” Prinzing said.

When the story was published Slowflowers.com was literally two months old and no one from Louisiana had joined as members. Through the article, I connected virtually with Denise and other New Orleans Flower Collective members and invited them to join Slowflowers.com.

They did and their involvement has helped visitors to the site — people from across the country — to find and connect with some wonderful resources for local, Louisiana-grown cut flowers and floral design. Here is their mission:

The New Orleans Flower Growers Association (NOFGA) is a small group of New Orleans based flower growers that share a love of growing and a commitment to natural and sustainable practices. Growers exchange knowledge, marketing and production resources to support a burgeoning organic and local flower production industry. NOFGA also connects buyers with the flower farmers who are producing locally and sustainable grown flowers.

Last month, I met Denise in person. As you’ll hear in this episode, she visited the Pacific Northwest recently and was warmly welcomed by the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market community of farmers and florists. We met over pizza and beer when Diane Szukovathy and Dennis Westphall invited Denise to stop by Jello Mold Farm for a community gathering after the Market’s flower farm tour.

I was jazzed to make a human connection to someone I only previously knew through social media, but I couldn’t let Denise sneak out of town without turning on the recorder to capture a conversation with her about Pistil and Stamen. I asked her to update the Slow Flowers Podcast audience on the New Orleans flower scene, two years after that original article appeared.

Here’s some background on this dynamic team:

Denise Richter left a fashion career at Calvin Klein to study food systems and community organizing at NYU, and has been working on farms and urban gardens ever since.  She came to New Orleans to start the Edible Schoolyard NOLA, an organization that aims to change the way students eat, learn and live in 5 public charter schools in the city. As a garden educator and garden manager for seven years, she spearheaded curriculum development, staff mentoring, and garden builds.  Building garden classrooms that were as aesthetically pleasing as they were functional and educational, she has always loved and cared about making beautiful spaces for community members of all ages to enjoy.   This extended to bringing the outside in, making bouquets from the garden for the cafeteria tables, front office desk and for special school events.

Megan McHugh came to New Orleans to start a garden education program at MLK Charter School in the Lower 9th ward.  With a degree in Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing, she has been always less interested in the nitty gritty science behind agriculture (soil scientist she is not!) than the utter delight and magic behind growing food and flowers.  Her passion for creating meaningful and fun experiences for students within their regimented school day led her to garden education, along with her years of community gardening experience. When her small program lost its funding, she began working with Denise at ESY NOLA, developing gardens.  She soon became the resident florist of the school, fielding bouquet requests regularly, and her plant choices became very influenced by her need for design material!  This creative, multi-functional gardening is one reason Pistil & Stamen is so adept at using edible elements in their work such as unique herbs, peppers, asparagus and more.

The women share this from the Pistil & Stamen web site:

Seven years ago, we met over coffee to chat about our mutual profession, school gardening, and realized we had even more in common than that. Both of us having designed, tended to and taught in gardens throughout the city, we found in each other a shared passion for creating the most beautiful spaces we could –  growing native plants, cut flowers and gorgeous perennials along with our veggies.  Growing food for people on its own wasn’t enough.  We wanted to grow beauty for them as well.
And now, we happily hand our clients arrangements grown in urban gardens on St. Claude Ave and Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard.  We design bouquets as we do our gardens –  with respect for natural forms and movement.  And we are quite pleased to create habitat for increasingly threatened pollinators, and that our gardens inspire many a passerby to stop and smell the roses, or the sweat peas, or the jasmine.
Community-minded and eager to share these green spaces in the heart of our city, we love having people to our gardens for workshops, parties, and volunteer days.

Follow Pistil & Stamen on Facebook

Find Pistil & Stamen on Instagram

Be Inspired by Pistil & Stamen on Pinterest

I love one point that Denise made about the New Orleans Flower Growers Association/Collective. She noted that the local media “would not have done a story about one of us – but collectively, there is a story.” I couldn’t agree more.

If you are involved in an interview or photo shoot with media in your region, be sure to add a rich layer of relevance to the narrative by telling the writer or editor to the Slowflowers.com community. We can help give your story national context and validate that you are a pioneer in bringing local and sustainable flowers to the marketplace. Put that journalist in touch with me so I can share a voice of affirmation to what you’re doing. Don’t miss the opportunity to place yourself in the national conversation about domestic and local flowers.

And please get in touch with me if you would like more statistics and sources to validate the metrics around local flowers. As always, I’m available at debra@slowflowers.com When you highlight Slow Flowers in your local press, you’re helping sisters and brothers in the Slow Flowers movement everywhere as well as yourself!

This week we also published a new piece listing the Value of your Slowflowers.com membership. It’s a membership that is so much more than helping customers find you. It is about branding, marketing, connections and community. Download a high-res version of this piece here and share it with colleagues who’ve yet to invest in themselves or their businesses by being part of this important national cause.

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 110,000 times by listeners like you. THANK YOU to each one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

Thank you to our lead sponsor for 2016: 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.

More sponsor thanks goes to 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.

A big bouquet of thanks goes to Longfield Gardens… providing 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.

And finally, thank you 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

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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I have some very special news to share with you – GWA | The Association for Garden Communicators — announced last week that Slowflowers.com is a SILVER MEDAL winner in the 2016 Media Awards program.

This follows last year’s Silver Award for our infographic titled: “Where do your flowers come from?”

We’ve poured so much creative effort into developing Slowflowers.com’s valuable, meaningful content and it’s thrilling to receive industry recognition for this important digital resource that connects consumers everywhere with American Grown flowers across the country.

Please celebrate with me — together we’ve created this success!

Today’s guest is flower farmer Dawn Severin, owner of All My Thyme, which is based in Mount Vernon, Washington.

All My Thyme is a wholesale flower farm dedicated to hand-tending English garden roses, a variety of cut flowers and herbs, and fresh and dried lavender — all for the floral trade.

Dawn is a gifted grower — a civil engineer-turned flower farmer and current member of the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market.

On a recent visit to her farm I saw beautiful perennials, herbs and annuals, and of course, beloved garden roses. Thousands of rose plants occupy the heart of Dawn’s farm, a well-organized layout of rows, beds and one high tunnel cover a four-acres-plus area, part of the 15-acre homestead in Washington’s Skagit Valley.

All you have to do is track Instagram to know that roses are more popular than ever before, especially in the wedding floral world. Dawn grows David Austins, Kordes, old-fashioned and hybrids alike, with a petal palette ranging from whites and creams to the deepest burgundies.

It’s really impossible to capture the vast knowledge and expertise that makes All My Thyme’s roses so cherished here in the Seattle marketplace. Her roses are romantic, fragrant, healthy and super fresh. Grown with great care and attention to what her floral customers really want — artistic design elements for their brides and special event clients.

I have known and loved Dawn’s flowers for a few years, but I only recently set aside time to visit her for a first-person tour of the roses! I turned on the recorder to capture our conversation, which took place while we walked through the farm.

Here is a list of the roses that Dawn and I discussed during our conversation:

A Shropshire Lad (David Austin)

Anna’s Promise (Weeks)

Charlotte (David Austin)

Clair Renaissance (Poulsen)

Crocus Rose (David Austin)

Crown Princess Margareta (David Austin)

Distant Drums (Weeks)

Eglantyne (David Austin)

Hot Cocoa (Weeks)

Ice Girl (Kordes)

James Galway (David Austin)

Jubilee Celebration (David Austin)

Jude the Obscure (David Austin)

Koko Loko (Weeks)

Lemon Pompon (Kordes)

Orange Pompon (Kordes)

Pink Pompon (Kordes)

Sombreuil (David Austin)

Spirit of Freedom (David Austin)

Susan Williams-Ellis (David Austin)

Tranquillity (David Austin)

Wollerton Old Hall (David Austin)

All My Thyme is a Salmon Safe certified flower farm, meaning that all of Dawn’s practices are safe for local waterways and salmon habitats, as evaluated by a third party agency.

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 109,000 times by listeners like you. THANK YOU to each one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

Thank you to our lead sponsor for 2016: 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.

More sponsor thanks goes to 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.

A big bouquet of thanks goes to Longfield Gardens… providing 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.

And finally, thank you 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.

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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You hear me say this every Wednesday morning:

“This is the weekly podcast about American Flowers and the people who grow and design with them. It’s all about making a conscious choice and I invite you to join the conversation and the creative community as we discuss the vital topics of saving our domestic flower farms and supporting a floral industry that relies on a safe, seasonal and local supply of flowers and foliage.”

This podcast is brought to you by Slowflowers.com, the free, nationwide online directory to florists, shops, and studios who design with American-grown flowers and to the farms that grow those blooms.  It’s the conscious choice for buying and sending flowers.

This podcast has been downloaded more than 107,000 times during the course of three years — in fact, the number of downloads in year three equal year one and year two combined — and that means more and more people are hearing the message of American grown flowers and the farmers and florists who bring those blooms to you.

The popularity of this podcast shouldn’t be measured in metrics alone, but here is a telling one: I remember being thrilled that 15,000 individual episodes had been heard at the close of the first year. Look how far we’ve come. I’m honored and humbled that you’re listening today and that so many wonderful voices have agreed to be part of this podcast celebrating American flowers.

The debut of the Slow Flowers Podcast preceded the launch of the Slowflowers.com directory by 10 months, but with the Podcast’s third birthday, I feel like all our Slow Flowers’ Milestones of the past year are intertwined and here are some of the significant strides worth acknowledgement and celebration:

1. With today’s episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast, we have produced 156 consecutive weekly episodes of this internet radio program. On average, listeners download about 5,000 times each month. You can find the archives of this program on the right column of our home page. I’m always pleased to see that new listeners who’ve just discovered the Slow Flowers Podcast return to download earlier episodes in order to “catch up” on those conversations.

2. Slowflowers.com now has 700 listings across the country and in our new Canada section, and we’re building toward 1,000 members. In a market filled with imported flowers, Slow Flowers gives you essential tools to differentiate yourself and your floral business. The Benefits far surpass the modest investment of a $50 Standard or a $200 Premium membership. The site currently enjoys more than 4k monthly visits and 21k monthly page views. That’s pretty powerful!Other benefits are too vast to list in detail, so we’ve decided to create an infographic about the Values of your Slowflowers.com membership. Stay tuned for that useful resource — it will be available in the coming weeks.The Slow Flowers Community is vast and its impact and influence is magnified when our voices and stories are joined together as one. You are part of this network of like-minded flower farmers, floral designers and industry leaders who share passion for saving our domestic floral industry. Our Facebook forum offers support, encouragement and ideas for everyone who joins.Finally, your Slowflowers.com membership helps pay for public relations efforts to position the Slow Flowers story with print and digital media outlets in search of new content. The payoff means we enjoy ongoing media coverage that few members could achieve individually, but that’s entirely possible when we come together with a unified voice.
3. Social Media. With the recent wrap-up of the 2nd annual American Flowers Week, we’ve been blown away by your participation across new and conventional media platforms. The hashtag #americanflowersweek produced a record-breaking 1.3 million potential impressions tracked on Instagram and Twitter alone.
4. If that seems impressive, consider the reach and impact of the #slowflowers hash-tag. Last week I alluded to the fact that use of this hashtag is at an all-time high, reaching nearly 3.0 million impressions in a single month. The frequency is only increasing, so thank you for engaging with the message of slow flowers in your own postings.

Okay, let’s get going on today’s episode. As has become a bit of a tradition, I’ve invited Kasey Cronquist to be today’s guest. Kasey and I have walked side-by-side through this dynamic chapter of American-grown flowers and a week doesn’t go by when we aren’t sharing ideas or comparing notes on the various projects and exciting cultural shifts we’re witnessing in domestic and local flower farming and floral design.

Kasey is the CEO and Ambassador for the California Cut Flower Commission. He’s served in this capacity since 2007. He also administers the Certified American Grown  program.

Since joining CCFC,  Kasey has spearheaded an aggressive public affairs program targeting lawmakers in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

He is recognized as a leading voice for the American Grown Movement in the floral industry, encouraging buyers, retailers and consumers to source more locally grown blooms from domestic flower farmers. In addition to ongoing governmental affairs outreach, Kasey has worked closely with the CCFC marketing and promotion committee to develop strategic plans on behalf of both California flower farmers and farms across the U.S. through the Certified American Grown program.

As we discuss, I volunteer as a member of the Certified American Grown Council to guide the national advocacy and marketing program and Certified American Grown is a financial sponsor of Slow Flowers for 2016.

Kasey and I share the mutual goal of promoting domestic and locally-grown flowers as the highest-quality and most sustainably-grown cut flowers option in the marketplace.

Thank you for joining our conversation today and for joining me to virtually celebrate the 3rd anniversary of this Podcast.

I love the idea of COMMON GROUND, a concept that Kasey and I discuss at the close of our episode. We have so much more to gain by supporting one another in the cause of domestic flowers rather than pitting the idea of Local versus American Grown. All of us have more to gain than to lose by taking this positive approach that saves America’s flower farms, no matter in which state they’re rooted.

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 107,000 times by listeners like you. THANK YOU to each one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

Thank you to our sponsors:
Certified American Grown Flowers.
Syndicate Sales
Longfield Gardens
Arctic Alaska Peonies

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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Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

News and Updates:

Last month I mentioned news about the Slow Flowers Creative Workshop, which I’m co-teaching with Teresa Sabankaya of the Bonny Doon Garden Co., in Santa Cruz, California.

We have a schedule update – the workshop dates have moved and will begin 24 hours later than originally planned. We’ll now begin on SUNDAY August 21^st and continue to MONDAY, August 22^nd in order to accommodate those of you who have Saturday wedding conflicts. Here are the details:

Teresa is founder and creative director of Bonny Doon Garden Co. and past guest of this Podcast. We’re teaming up to lead an intimate group of fellow professionals — floral designers and farmer-florists — for an inspiring, two-part workshop taking place over the course of 1-1/2 days.

Our focus will be floral storytelling and media messaging for your business. This valuable experience is designed to help you clarify, document and communicate your personal artistic message. Go deep into Slow Flowers “brand building” and find your own voice as a floral storyteller.

You’ll also explore and expand your approach to garden-inspired design. Working with Teresa, you’ll identify the artistic inspiration for your aesthetic. Her hands-on exercises will explore how floral elements and complementary elements support your design brand and focus on how mechanics that support your style.

This all takes place in the setting of a beautiful garden, where you’ll feel right at home with beautiful flowers, gardens, farm animals and new friends! Spaces are limited and you won’t want to miss out on the chance to hone your message through words, images and flowers.

American Flowers Week is all wrapped up for 2016, with a record-breaking 1.3 million potential impressions tracked on Instagram and Twitter alone for the hashtag #americanflowersweek, more than 3 times the engagement for the same period in 2015.

As I was analyzing the social media activity, I started digging deeper into the use of the Slow Flowers hashtag, as well. And it was mindblowing to see that our top posts and most influential users of #slowflowers are today’s guests, Mandy and Steve O’Shea of 3 Porch Farm in Comer, Georgia. In the past 30 day period 3 Porch Farm has used the hash-tag 29 times with potential exposure of more than 310,000 impressions.

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