The Slow Flowers Podcast is the award-winning show known as the “Voice of the Slow Flowers Movement.” Launched in 2013 as the original flower podcast, we’ve devoted more than 10 years to covering the business of flower farming, floral design, and the Slow Flowers sustainability ethos. Listen to a new episode each Wednesday, available for free download here at slowflowerspodcast.com or on iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.
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 #slowflowersand 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.
Get out your crayons: Our American Flowers Week Map of State 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).
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 2nd 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!
Marialuisa Kaprielian of Urban Succulents puts her own brilliant twist on floral design with sedums, echeverias, kalanchoes and more!
Succulents + fresh flowers in a bouquet designed by MariaLuisa Kaprielian.
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.
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.
Succulent bridal bouquets aren’t always only green!
Thoroughly feminine!
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.
Individual succulents, wired and ready to be used for floral design.
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:
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
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.
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.
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 Timespiece.
The Summer issue of Garden Design magazine features an extensive spread about Leslie’s edible-ornamental design for a Bay Area family.
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.
Leslie Bennett forged a holistic life for herself as a garden designer, speaker, author and advocate for edible landscapes.
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.
Here are some of Pine House Edible Gardens’ recent flowery Instagram posts!
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.
Get out your crayons: Our American Flowers Week Map of State Flowers!
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
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.
At New Covent Garden Flower Market with Jennifer Pinder
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.”
Inspired by a rustic bench nestled in a meadow, this setting is one of three designed by Jennifer Pinder for British Flowers Week
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.”
There are three entries to Jennifer Pinder’s designs for British Flowers Week:
Jennifer was inspired by meadows to create this installation celebrating British wildflowers.
Detail of the rustic bench scene.
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.”
“Buttonholes” for British Flowers Week.
More Buttonholes
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.
Urn extravaganza
Detail from Jennifer’s urn design.
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.”
Five floral designers whose work will be higlighted during British Flowers Week: Mary Jane Vaughan, Jennifer Pinder, Urban Flower Company, Petal & Stalk and Carly Rogers.
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.
Mary Jane Vaughan shopping for locally-grown British Flowers at New Covent Market.
British floral designer Mary Jane Vaughan
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!
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.
There are three entries to Mary Jane Vaughan’s designs for British Flowers Week:
A curved floral chandelier by Mary Jane Vaughan features 500 stems of British-grown stock, moss and camellia foliage.
Close up of Mary Jane Vaughan’s curved floral chandelier for British Flowers Week
The Showstopper (above): A curved canopy of white stocks and laurel leaves.
Close-up of Mary Jane Vaughan’s sculptural necklace for British Flowers Week 2017
Hadid’s designs were often inspired by the movement of water. So Mary Jane chose to make a fluid-shaped asymmetrical necklace. An intricate wired design, it features lilac sweet peas, blue cornflowers, white stocks, pale pink antirrhinums, alchemilla mollis, ferns and a single peony.
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.
Inspired by Hadid’s Visio crystal vase, Mary Jane designed two slender curved vases. Shiny laurel leaves have been attached to the papier-mâché designs, which are complemented with a profusion of delicate, pastel purple sweet peas.
CLose-up of Mary Jane Vaughan’s design with sweet peas.
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.
Get out your crayons: Our American Flowers Week Map of State Flowers!
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.
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!
Learn how to make and dye beautiful ribbons using safe and natural plant dyes.
Susanna Luck, textile artist and floral designer
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.
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.
Country Gardens feature on Chantal & Ryan’s TheHorticult.com
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.
Stylemakers in Better Homes & Gardens
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.
A self-described plant nerd, Chantal puts a fresh twist on horticulture in her posts and writing.
Chantal Aida Gordon is coming to Seattle to speak at the Slow Flowers SUMMIT
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!
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’sNYT bestselling book The Drunken Botanist!
The mission of this organization is to advance the art of professional floral design through education, service and leadership, and to recognize the achievement of excellence in this art form.
AIFD was established in 1965 and today is one of the leading nonprofit organizations in the floral industry, with a focus on professional development, accreditation and education.
I’ve known floral designers over the years who have achieved that coveted AIFD credentialing after their names and to be honest, I was a little intimidated. However, after getting to know these amazing talents and understanding how driven they are to elevate the profession, well, I have a different attitude now.
Stacey Carleton, AIFD, of The Floraculturist
One of those people who’s helped me get to know AIFD is today’s guest, Stacey Carleton, owner of The Floraculturist .
I first met Stacey virtually when I was writing an article about Jeanie McKewan, a wonderful flower farmer who owns Brightflower Farm in Stockton, Illinois. I asked Jeanie to connect me with some of her customers and one was Stacey, then a floral manager at a Chicago Whole Foods.
I was so delighted with Stacey’s response when I interviewed her — she was so committed to sourcing locally-grown flowers from farms like Brightflower and her comments enhanced the article by giving industry validation Jeanie’s practices, product and relationships.
And as these things go, Stacey and I became Facebook friends, but we’d never met in person. Now, she is the Marketing Chair for AIFD and I recently sat down with her for an interview about the organization.
AIFD’s National Symposium is coming to Seattle, July 1 through 5 and since it’s in my own backyard, I plan on attending for a few days. You’ll hear us discussing the program and the various ways you can also attend — one need not be a member to take advantage of this incredible opportunity to hear from world class speakers like my friend Arthur Williams of Denver’s Babylon Floral Design, featured in a chapter of The 50 Mile Bouquet.
Here’s a bit more about Stacey:
Three of Stacey’s arrangements, created with all-local California-grown botanicals.
Stacey Carlton AIFD is a second generation floral designer and educator residing in Chicago. Her extensive educational journey is supported by her life-long training in floristry, horticulture, and visual arts. Inducted into The American Institute of Floral Designers in 2010, she is an internationally published artist most recently in the highly coveted 2016/2017 International Floral Art Book by Stitching Kunstboek.
Stacey is celebrating a three year consecutive win from Fusion Flower Magazine’s International Designer of the Year competition with four medals in 2016. Her freelance work has taken her across the country to different markets of the industry most notably in California designing for elite clientele in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Santa Barbara, and Montecito.
Stacey created this arrangement while living in Southern California with locally-sourced ingredients.
She prefers to demonstrate her natural modern design aesthetic in large scale installations, wedding and event decor, visual editorials, floral fashion, and street art. Stacey has also developed a fabulous Aromatherapy “Bar” program to incorporate in her clients’ special events, and I’ll share the link to that innovative project, as well.
We actually met in person to record this interview. Stacey was in Los Angeles to freelance for Brad Austin Imaginative Florals and I had traveled to SoCal to ultimately teach at In Bloom, for Flower Hill Promenade in Del Mar. I found her working in the most glorious setting, Brad’s home studio that’s imbedded in his beautiful courtyard and garden.
We took a moment to turn on the recorder and it was fun to add a bonus guest, Anthony Vigliotta, the current AIFD president who is based in Los Angeles and frequently freelances for Brad Austin, as well.
Both are clearly passionate about advancing the artistry of the floral and horticulture industry by supporting design education and encouraging individual style and techniques.
Enjoy our conversation and follow this link to connect with AIFD when you’re in Seattle. I’m hoping that people coming to attend the Slow Flowers SUMMITon Sunday, July 2nd, will consider hanging around for a few days to take in AIFD’s offerings.
Thanks so much for joining us today. You’ll find me at the AIFD Symposium on Monday, July 3rd at the downtown Seattle Sheraton, where Slow Flowers will have an exhibit during the morning Partners Expo — gotta get the word out about Slowflowers.com and the new model of floral design, right?!
The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 196,000 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.
Don’t forget to register for the Slow Flowers Summit — it’s less than 4 weeks away and tickets are selling at a brisk pace. 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 during the heart of American Flowers Week!
Thank you to family of sponsors:
And thank you to our lead sponsor for 2017: 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
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.
Welcome to DAY ONE of American Flowers Week, which continues through next Tuesday, July 4th, Independence Day!
This is our third year celebrating American grown flowers in all 50 states – coast to coast from north to south.
The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 204,000 times by listeners like you.
Thank you to our family of sponsors:
