Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

Gigi Meyer, on a November walk through her farm, with a few of her goats, Justyn, Daphne, and Ziggy-Zag.

A few weeks ago, my friend Sarah Meyer invited me to have breakfast in our Seattle neighborhood with her visiting cousin Gigi Meyer.

Sarah had told me about Gigi in the past, her closest childhood cousin who owns Windflower Farm, situated on land near Bend, Oregon, is in the central part of the state. 

In April 2012, Sarah sent me an email after she had helped me create the flowers for the kick-off event of a Washington ballot initiative we were supporting. She wrote: 

“Earlier today,  I sent your NYT article to my cousin Gigi (farmer in Bend I mentioned) and she wrote back to say she had just received your book having ordered it from Amazon! 

“I was slightly disappointed to hear that as I had planned to buy it as a birthday present but missed my chance. She is selling cut flowers to Whole Foods and I think is increasing her flower production.”

My breakfast conversation with them introduced me to Gigi’s story – and I knew I wanted to share it with listeners of the Slow Flowers Podcast. Being a farmer is a choice for Gigi. She was drawn to this practice after a career in writing and fine arts. It is a love of place, of animals, of cultivating food and flowers that connects her with earliest childhood memories of riding horses on property her parents owned in Eastern Oregon.

That profound link is evident in Gigi’s thoughtful narrative of being a farmer and more. According to Gigi, Windflower Farm is dedicated to growing gourmet-quality vegetables, herbs, fruit and flowers. She uses only sustainable practices, no chemical herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers. The farm is nestled amidst ranches and the Badlands, in pastoral Alfalfa, just 15 minutes east of Bend. 

Ready for market – fresh from the fields at Windflower farm.

In our interview, you will hear Gigi talk about selling her herbs, vegetables, greens and flowers to the chef at Brasada Ranch. Named “Oregon’s Best Destination Resort,” Brasada is a highlight for many who travel to the Bend area. Travel writer and podcaster Peter Greenberg featured Brasada and many tourism features of Central Oregon in a 2011 podcast — including a 5-minute segment with Gigi. Here is the link – and you will hear Gigi at the 1:34 mark. Greenberg describes Windflower Farm as a “boutique farm,” which is pretty cool.  

In addition to her mixed bouquets, which can be found at Bend’s Whole Foods outlet, Gigi grows and sells the following diverse and hugely impressive floral selection to area restaurants, businesses, florists and wedding customers:

Peonies Asiatic Lilies, Astrantia, Ornamental Broom, Crocosmia, Dahlia, Delphinium, Foxglove, Gladiolus, Iris, Lilac, Sunflowers, Acidanthera, Allium, Amaranth, Amsonia, Aster , Astilbe, Berberis, Campanula, Cattail, Daylily, Echinacea, Echinops, Eupatorium, Forsythia, Kniphofia, Larkspur, Domestic Mullein, Phlox, Pink French Pussy Willow, Scabiosa, Sedum w flower, Solidago, Ornamental Millet Achillea (Yarrow), Ageratum, Agrostemma, Anemone, Asclepias, Babies Breath, Calendula, Celosia, Centranthus, Chrysanthemum, Columbine, Amethyst Coral Berry, Coreopsis, Craspedia, Daffodil, Dianthus, Erigeron, Euphorbia, Filipendula, Geum, Gomphrena, Helichrysum, Lady’s Mantle, Marigold, Nigella, Rudbeckia, Sedum foliage, Shasta Daisies, Snapdragon, Statice, Sweet Pea, Zinnia, Oxe-eye Daisies, Dill, Dusty Miller, Lavender, Chamomile, Ruby Silk Grass, Frosted Explosion Grass, Lamb’s Ear and Rye Grass with seed heads. 

Windflower Farm Flowers – feast your eyes!

Gigi’s vivid summer floral palette.

And here are bridal flowers in a softer scheme.

 Right after we met and recorded this interview in Seattle, I learned that Gigi was recognized for her stewardship as a certified Animal Welfare Approved producer. Here is the announcement: 

“The laying hens, dairy goats, and pigs at Windflower Farm are now certified as Animal Welfare Approved. This certification and food label lets consumers know that these animals were raised in accordance with the highest animal welfare standards in the U.S., using sustainable agriculture methods on an independent family farm. 

Like other AWA farmers across the country, Gigi Meyer recognizes the growing consumer interest in how animals are being raised. Raising animals outdoors on pasture or range has known benefits for animals, consumers and the environment. Meyer applied for AWA certification to help distinguish Windflower Farm products from other products in the market. “As I got into livestock, I felt that what separated my operation from others was my relationship with my animals. In my studies I have learned a lot about what my animals need and I can confidently say that they are happy and that I do my best to understand and provide for their needs,” says Meyer.

Windflower Farm spans 20 acres about 15 miles east of Bend, Ore. Meyer started with a few goats to manage pastures, which turned into a small-scale dairy. Meyer added a small herd of hogs to remove invasive grasses, followed by a flock of laying hens. “I just kept adding elements,” says Meyer. “I realized I wanted to grow a microcosm of nature and manage in a way that it would be a self-affirming circle.”

In the future, Meyer hopes to make the farm an educational space. “I want the farm to be a classroom that can set an example for people who visit of the potential for sustainable farming and local food in our community,” she says.

Pastured eggs from Windflower Farm’s AWA-certified laying hens are available direct from the farm and through a CSA program. Pastured pork and goat’s milk are available through a herdshare program. Contact Meyer for more information at gigimeyer@me.com or 541-318-1417.”

Gigi  (upper left) with her summer 2012 crew and to her right is Cora, her “main hand.” In front, Gigi’s nephew Jake and Maria, the 2012 intern.

It has been my pleasure to share with you today’s podcast conversations.

Because of the support from you and others, listeners have downloaded episodes of the Slow Flowers Podcast more than 7,500 times! I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

 The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net.  

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

Welcome back to the Slow Flowers Podcast with Debra Prinzing.

To start off this week’s episode, I have a personal announcement to make. Last week, on February 19th, I concluded a 45-day funding campaign to generate financial contributions for my new Slowflowers.com project.

With just 32 hours left of the campaign, we’d already reached $18,000!

For listeners unfamiliar with it, Slowflowers.com will be a free online directory to florists, studios, designers and farmers who supply American-grown flowers to the consumer. Thanks to the fantastic crowd-sourcing site Indiegogo, which was the perfect environment to share my passion, more than 220 Slowflowers.com “believers” contributed $18,450 to fund the launch. I owe a special thanks to the California Cut Flower Commission (Premiere Sponsor), the San Franciso Flower Mart (Presenting Sponsor) and Mellano & Co. (Presenting Sponsor), for their major support! 

In the next several weeks, we’ll be finishing up the necessary database and web development, populating the site with details about member florists, designers and farms, and planning the pre-Mother’s Day marketing & promotions launch. Stay tuned for more details!

An interviewer recently asked me: “What do you hope to accomplish with this site?”

My answer? “That every time someone wants to give or send or purchase flowers, they stop and ask: Can I buy American Grown? And the Slowflowers.com site will help them navigate that search.” 

The Arnoskys have always labeled their flowers to promote their Texas origins.

Now, let’s talk about Texas. I have three guests today and you’ll love their larger-than-life personalities.

First, please meet Frank and Pamela Arnosky of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers.

Frank is the new board president of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers, but these two are longtime leaders in the organization. Both Pamela and Frank have served in ASCFG board positions in the past.

I first learned about them in Lynn Byczynski’s wonderul reference book The Flower Farmer, originally published in 1997 and reissued with new bonus content in 2008.  Lynn profiled the Arnosky family’s beginnings as growers of bedding plants and poinsettias in Blanco, Texas, before they added cut flowers in the early 1990s.

The flowers were intended for a farmers’ market that never materialized, so Pam and Frank filled their truck with blooms; drove it to Austin and started knocking on the doors of flower retailers. “People were falling all over when they saw the stuff,” Frank said in the interview with Lynn. “That took us by surprise; we really hadn’t known what to expect.”

Pamela and Frank Arnosky of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers.

Here we are, nearly 25 years later, and the Arnoskys are still viewed by many in the specialty cut flower world as the model family farm. You will enjoy hearing from them both in our conversation today, which touches on how to manage so many acres with little or no additional labor – and how to plan for the future by diversifying. 

Here is a link to their book, Local Color: Growing Specialty Cut Flowers. It’s a compilation of 10 years of their columns for Growing for Market, a periodical published by Lynn Byczynski. 

Pam and Frank will be featured speakers at the upcoming Cut Flower Growers’ School, hosted by the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers in Ft. Worth, Texas, on March 3-4, 2014.

Rita Anders of Cuts of Color, in Weimar, Texas.

Rita Anders of Cuts of Color in Weimar, Texas, is another fabulous Texas flower farmer who will be presenting at the upcoming Growers’ School.

In January 2013, I visited Rita and spent a wonderful day at her farm – which is located halfway between Austin and Houston. Later, I wrote a story about that visit, which you can read here on Cuts of Color’s web site.

When I was in Austin, Rita joined me in the studio of Central Texas Gardener, a wonderful, long-running show on KLRU, the Austin PBS station.

Producer Linda Lehmusvirta and host Tom Spencer couldn’t have been more welcoming – and our TV segment on locally grown flowers appeared last summer, after the filming crew visited and shot footage at Cuts of Color’s fields and greenhouses.

Rita is the regional VP for ASCFG and is planning next week’s Growers’ School along with cohorts Cynthia Alexander of The Quarry Flower Farm (Frisco, Texas) and Paula Rice of BeeHaven Farm (Bonners Ferry, Idaho).

After I chatted with Frank and Pam Arnosky, I tracked down Rita for more details about the Growers’ School, just in case I could entice any listeners to attend at the last minute. From our conversation, it sounds like walk-ins and last minute registrants are welcome. So consider participating!

In addition to the Arnoskys and Rita Anders, you can hear past Slow Flowers Podcast interviews with several other speakers, including Cynthia Alexander and Gretel and Steve Adams. Anyone who has yet to appear on this show is slated for a future episode — I promise!

The Growers’ School promises to be a fantastic educational experience where flower farmers both new and established will hear from some very gifted folks. Here is the schedule and topics:

Monday, March 3

Marketing Session One

1:00 p.m. 
Selling to Florists
Cynthia Alexander, Quarry Flower Farm, Celina, Texas
Cynthia will explain her process of preparing flowers for her florist route, and how to best develop relationships with, and sell to florists.
Floral demonstration: flowers bunched for florist delivery.

1:30 p.m. 
Selling at Farmers’ Markets
Rita Anders, Cuts of Color, Weimar, Texas
Stand out at your farmers’ market! Increase sales with tips from a longtime grower.
Floral demonstration: farmers’ market wrapped bouquet.

2:00 p.m. 
Selling to Supermarkets
Pamela Arnosky, Texas Specialty Cut Flowers, Blanco, Texas
Learn how to streamline your bouquet-making process while increasing productivity.
Floral demonstration: sleeved bouquets for supermarket sales.

2:30 p.m.
Workshop One
Create your own wrapped or sleeved bouquet for farmers’ market or grocery outlet.   
Experienced grower/designers will provide personal assistance.

Marketing Session Two

3:00 p.m.
Increase Your Bottom Line with Top Wedding Sales
Rita Anders, Cuts of Color, Weimar, Texas
Rita will share her methods of contacting and engaging brides.
Floral demonstration: hand-tied wedding bouquet.

3:30 p.m. 
Tapping into Wedding Sales
Gretel Adams, Sunny Meadows Flower Farm, Columbus, Ohio
Sunny Meadows’ wedding business has grown exponentially in the last few years. 
How does this fit into the rest of their farm business?
Floral demonstration: hand-tied wedding bouquet.

4:00 p.m. 
Workshop Two
Reassemble your original bouquet into a hand-tied bridal bouquet. 
Experienced grower/designers will provide personal assistance.

4:30 p.m. 
Closing
      
6:30 p.m. 
Join the speakers and other attendees for dinner at Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant, a Fort Worth tradition since 1935. 
Not included in registration.

Tuesday, March 4 

8:00 a.m. 

Office to Field Business Planning and Record Keeping    
Paula Rice, Beehaven Flower Farm, Bonners Ferry, Idaho
Plan for an organized and smooth growing year with useful record-keeping strategies. Learn to set up an efficient flower grower’s office using QuickBooks to create charts of accounts. Use Paula’s groundworks to plan seeding and field planting schedules, while keeping track of basic cost accounting.

9:00 a.m. 
What to Grow and Why       
Steve and Gretel Adams, Sunny Meadows Flower Farm, Columbus, Ohio
How do you choose which perennials to grow? Which annual varieties are the best producers? Steve and Gretel grow a wide variety of both, as well as woodies and bulbs, and will explain their selection process.

10:15 a.m. 
Break

10:30 a.m.
Seeds or Plugs? Both?       
Frank Arnosky, Texas Specialty Cut Flowers, Blanco
Frank will cover all factors of growing cut flowers, including variety selection, seed types, germination  for plugs, and environmental controls. He’ll discuss tricks of the trade, as well as what to grow yourself and what to buy in as plugs.

11:30 a.m. 
Lunch (included with registration)

12:30 a.m. 
Making the Most of Every Square Foot on a Small Farm  
Lisa Ziegler, Gardener’s Workshop Farm, Newport News, Virginia
Make the most of the high-demand season by providing your buyers a steady stream of flowers. Even better, learn how to get it all done by 5:00 by using the best practices and equipment.

1:30 p.m. 
Harvest and Postharvest     
Pamela Arnosky
Pamela will cover all the steps of handling cut flowers, beginning in the field and going through to the final customer. Topics will include harvest practices, preservatives and hydrators, coolers and storage, packing, shipping and extending vase life for the customer. She’ll show you the tools, sleeves, and equipment she uses, and provide sources for materials.

2:30 p.m. 
Creating and Finding Markets for Your Flowers
Steve and Gretel Adams, Sunny Meadows Flower Farm, Columbus, Ohio 
Are you crazy to offer wedding flowers? What’s the best way to approach local florists? Are flower subscriptions profitable? Learn from these dynamic growers what to do – and what not to do.

3:00 p.m. 
Breaking into Business: Getting Florists and Supermarkets on Board  
Lisa Ziegler, Gardener’s Workshop Farm, Newport News, Virginia
You may not be too small! Lisa gave up her farmers’ markets to turn her attention to florists and supermarkets. Learn how to build your business to get those dreamy orders and keep happy customers.

3:30 p.m. 
Break
 
3:45 p.m. 
Season Extension       
Mimo Davis, Urban Buds, St. Louis, Missouri   
Don’t limit your production to a “typical” growing season! Hoophouses, tunnels, and succession planting can stretch your cut flower offerings on both ends of the season.

4:30 p.m. 
Closing

It has been my pleasure to share with you today’s podcast conversations. 

Because of the support from you and others, listeners have downloaded episodes of the Slow Flowers Podcast more than 7,000 times! I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net.  

Last summer I created a fun video with my awesome AV expert Hannah Holtgeerts of HHCreates. When I found out she had planned a visit to Seattle and would be staying with us for a few days, I asked if I could commission her to film and edit a floral how-to video. Lucky for me, Hannah said “yes.” 

We came up with the idea of a Floral Color Wheel and created this fun piece below. The inspiration for this video originated with Nicole Cordier Walquist of Cordier Botanical Art, an award-winning floral designer and artist whose color-themed bouquets appear in Slow Flowers. You can see her primary- and secondary-inspired bouquets in the video’s cute animated color wheel.

So we created the video last summer and then I asked Lola Honeybone of Media Workshop Nashville (the world’s best publicist) to help me promote the video.

Lola and her colleague Marla  spread the word and many media outlets picked it up and posted it on their web sites.

One of the publications that noticed was Sunset magazine, where garden editor Kathleen Brenzel and associate garden editor Johanna Silver were inspired to pursue the floral color wheel as a potential article.

By November, Johanna emailed to say: “Flower wheel got bumped into its OWN story (rather than just a blurb) for March. I might need to interview you for some more tidbits!”

I’m so grateful that they gave me the credit for the idea and featured me as the “floral pro” in the new article – out today in Sunset’s March 2014 issue. Sunset’s garden design assistant Lauren Dunec did a great job styling the floral elements for the story you see below.

ALL ABOUT THE (FLORAL) COLOR WHEEL (adapted from Slow Flowers)

 

Yellow & Purple – a perfect complement.

Thank You For the Complement (above)

Analogous color palette of pinks, mauves and purples!

 

Three types of coral flowers – a Monochromatic bouquet.

Another way to express a singular color.

A beautiful American rose, grown in Oregon by the Peterkort family.

In the grand scheme of things, Whole Foods is supposed to be one of the “good guys,” right? From the point of view of the American flower farming community, I know that many of my farmer-friends sell beautiful, seasonal and local blooms from their fields to Whole Foods stores in their specific regions. This “local sourcing” is done on a region-by-region basis with kudos going to passionate store and floral department managers who develop strong ties to their local farmers.

But at the corporate level, and especially during Valentine’s Day, something else is going on altogether. And I’m not alone in being bothered by it.

Labeled “Whole Trade,” which is the proprietary corporate branding that Whole Foods puts on imported roses, these blooms are as far from local as you can find. They’re shockingly similar in appearance to the bunches of roses being marketed by all the wire services, 1-800 marketers and big boxes.

So the local, sustainable and seasonal banner that the Whole Foods brand is waving above its front doors has some serious flaws when it comes to the flowers they are selling. 

Somehow, Whole Foods has decided to market its practice of importing South American roses as a kind of missionary endeavor. Personally, I find it so disingenuous. Last year, the company posted a pro-rose Valentine’s Day story on its blog, featuring a video of children at an afterschool program for the workers at a Colombian rose plantation. The post generated 100 responses, many from frustrated customers and American flower farmers who wondered why Whole Foods had skipped doing business with rose farms here and devoted 100% of their Valentine’s Day marketing budget to feature and promote imports from Colombia and Ecuador?

In response to the customer outcry, Whole Foods’ “Global Floral Buyer” Amanda Rainey made a statement and offered this explanation: “Americans bought more than $189 million stems last year! – domestic rose production is very limited and they’re frequently shipped from overseas.” 

So does that makes it right Amanda? 

Is it the $189 million you’re interested in or are you justifying importing your roses because everyone else is doing it?  Is that right, Whole Foods?

I was one of those 100 people who left a comment last year, urging Whole Foods to reconsider their strategy with the flowers they are buying.  I truly expected more from this market leader this year.  I can tell you if a company like Whole Foods made a commitment to nurturing relationships with American rose farms, things would change. Sure, Whole Foods might have to take a little less profit, but if Whole Trade is designed to give 1% back from every purchase, apparently they have some margin to work with.

More importantly, so many good, healthy and sustainable benefits would come from that endeavor.  In my opinion, there is no good reason more than 97% of the roses sold on Valentine’s Day should be flown in from Colombia and Ecuador.  I also don’t believe a company like Whole Foods should be party to it.

So, I ask that if you’re a Whole Foods customer, please join me in letting Whole Foods know that we want a “Whole American” campaign that supports and cultivates relationships with our American flower farmers.  With the millions they’ve spent developing the Whole Trade program, I don’t expect it to go away. But if Whole Foods can give 1% back to Colombia, they can also give 1% here at home.  If they can give more money to Ecuadorian producers, they can certainly give more money to our American flower farmers.  If they can work to ensure better wages and working conditions on Colombian plantations, then they can support flower farming communities’ schools and non-profits here at home. If Whole Food really cares about the environment, then they can limit their need to source flowers that have to be flown into the United States.    

So, Please make a comment here on Whole Foods’ current blog post about their Whole Trade roses.  Let’s encourage them to do the right thing here and support “Whole American” flowers! 

I see quite a profound parallel between the Whole Trade campaign and a brand new Whole American campaign for flowers. I don’t believe that America’s flower farmers expect imports to go away. But they do want a level playing field. They do want a chance to sell more of their irises, sunflowers, lilies and roses to the largest “green” branded supermarket in the U.S.

So to help them get started, here is a list I’ve compiled of the top domestic U.S. rose farms that I’m aware of. It’s simply not fair to say the American flower supply is limited. The supply is only limited by our vision to see the opportunity.  Whole Foods should launch a campaign that guarantees that they will source from American rose farms by next Valentine’s Day. That promise will give the flower farmers the ability to increase their production and invest in expanding their volume of beautiful, homegrown American roses.

“Whole American” is a beautiful concept that should be a reality. Wouldn’t be amazing if consumer demand could help Whole Foods do the right thing? Wouldn’t it be amazing to see Whole American roses offered when Valentine’s Day 2015 rolls around? 

CALIFORNIA

California Pajarosa – www.pajarosa.com

Dramm & Echter – www.drammechter.com

Eufloria Flowers – www.eufloriaflowers.com

Green Valley Floral – www.greenvalleyfloral.com

Koch California – Koch California 

Myriad Flowers – www.myriadflowers.com

Neve Brothers – www.nevebros.net

Rose Story Farm – www.rosestoryfarm.com

MINNESOTA

Len Busch Roses – www.lenbuschroses.com 

OREGON

Peterkort Roses – www.peterkortroses.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

Hello again and thank you for listening to the newest episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast with Debra Prinzing. 

Breathtakingly beautiful roses from Rose Story Farm. American Grown and more fragrant and lovely than anything imported.

It’s February and that means Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. So I am devoting the next two weeks to talking about American-grown roses. Most people do not realize that of the 233 million rose stems sold during the Valentine’s season, only 3 to 6 percent are domestic. There is something truly wrong with this picture. American roses are being grown in Oregon and California! Next week I will introduce you to Peterkort Roses, located outside Portland . . . a fabulous source for domestic Valentine’s Day roses.

Great Rosarian of the World, and American cut rose grower, Danielle Hahn.

Today, though, we are celebrating Danielle Hahn, owner of Rose Story Farm in Carpinteria, California. Located just south of Santa Barbara, where truly magical growing conditions for all types of flowers seem to exist, Rose Story Farm is a family endeavor specializing in old English, heirloom and garden roses for the specialty cut flower trade.

These roses are field-grown and you’ll notice that many of the varieties listed on the farm’s web site are types of roses found in the home garden. Because of this, they do not bloom all that prolifically in February. That’s okay with Dani and her crew. Their core business serves wedding parties that take place between May and October. 

Situated on a former avocado and lemon farm, this visually enticing venue offers many useful lessons in the viability of old-fashioned farming practices in today’s modern agri-business world (the kind of practices that were natural to our great-grandparents, for example.). Yes, this is an organic flower farm where hundreds of varieties of old garden and English roses thrive. It’s also a beautiful agritourism destination that attracts rose lovers from around the world as it educates and inspires everyone who visits to grow and enjoy roses in their own environment.

The setting in this little valley near the Pacific Ocean is quite benign – and so perfect for roses.

There are no fussy hybrid teas here, although there are varieties bred with ancient parentage for cherished traits like their long-lasting perfume. You will find row upon beautiful row of floribundas and climbers, chosen for bloom color, petal arrangement, and most of all — FRAGRANCE (scents like anise, clove, spice, honey, baby powder, a juicy peach, citrus…fill one’s nostrils).

The rose shrubs are planted on gently sloping hills, arranged like a technicolor vineyard. Organic mulch from a nearby mushroom farm cushions and nourishes the soil over their roots.

Tens of thousands of luscious roses are lovingly cared for by a small crew of farmers who know exactly when to harvest them. Can you imagine an east coast bride who simply MUST have a romantic, voluptuous rose bouquet of say ‘Fair Bianca’? It’s possible for her floral designer to order armloads of this vintage rose from Rose Story Farm.

Stunning. Nothing more to say. Drink it in and imagine the awesome fragrance!  Rosa ‘Singin’ in the Rain’

Say her wedding is on a Saturday. On Thursday, the roses are picked, hydrated and conditioned, de-thorned and carefully gathered into bundles of 10 stems. The cut ends are packed in wet moss to keep the roses hydrated; the flower heads are gently nestled in tissue paper; each bunch is packed in an ice-filled box and shipped overnight (Fed-Ex; next morning delivery) to wedding and event florists coast to coast. Around the country, on Friday mornings, the boxes of these Carpinteria-grown roses show up at floral studios and flower shops, serving as an enduring gift of romance, nostalgia and sensory delight.

This is the famed ‘Julia Child’ rose, which Dani’s family friend Julia Child selected from plant trials at Rose Story Farm.

Last weekend, on February 1st, Dani was honored with the coveted “Great Rosarians of the World” award in a ceremony at the Huntington Botanical Garden in San Marino, near Pasadena.

This award recognizes major figures in the world of roses and honors their work in creating and promoting the flower. In the past 11 years, the Great Rosarians program has become a famous event in the world of rose growing, breeding, education and beyond. Dani is in excellent company, with past recipients including David Austin himself, Stephen Scanniello, Wilhelm Kordes III, Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix, and many others. The GROW award will also bring Dani to New York City in June, where she will be hosted by the Manhattan Rose Society for a series of events and lectures. 

Click here to learn more about the American Garden Rose Selections, the organization of trial gardens and experts who evaluate new plant introductions for their superior qualities. 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0npPBezQOBg

Here is Dani’s full bio as it appeared in the Great Rosarians of the World’s press material:

The old horse stables at Rose Story Farm are now the headquarters for this thriving specialty cut flower business.

Danielle Hahn is the owner of Rose Story Farms in Carpinteria, California, a boutique rose farm for cut roses. Because of her skills and dedication to the rose, she has been able to develop a business model that combines growing roses and education. 

Danielle has maintained a hands-on approach to satisfy her market and has given this segment of the rose industry a successful working model, which encompasses the small boutique rose nursery and small organic farmer, for others to follow.  Her farm is a prime model for the future of small family farms to specialize into niche areas and succeed.  She has expanded her business to include the valuable component of educational tours which help inform and inspire her audience with the knowledge to grow healthy roses successfully. 

Growing from a lifelong love of flowers and gardening, Rose Story Farm has become the focal point of a wonderful mixture of business and life.  From the first day the mission was to produce beautiful, fragrant, romantic garden roses in exquisite shapes and colors. Now more than 120 varieties are scattered over the 15-acre farm. 

A gathering of blooms during one of the personalized rose farm tours.

Tours are led by Danielle twice weekly, and a variety of seminars focused on garden design, rose cultivation and flower arranging are given throughout the year.  A major theme of the educational effort is to demystify the process of growing and caring for roses.  “Roses are magical and forgiving–they repay any effort on their behalf ten-fold,” says Dani. “We named the farm ‘Rose Story Farm’ because the roses are central to some of our most enchanting and memorable experiences. We encourage clients, visitors, and friends to exchange their rose stories with us, and in this way to share what we find romantic, passionate, joyful and sustaining.”  

Born in Santa Barbara, California, Dani attended local schools until she entered Stanford University.  She graduated three years later with honors with a BA in psychology and a minor in Italian.  Having played on the Stanford Tennis Team for three years, and being a ranked national junior tennis player, her first job out of college was managing an exclusive tennis club in Manhattan.  Returning to Santa Barbara in 1978, she opened a series of retail stores over the next 10 years in Southern California.  At the same time she was the founder and managing partner of an innovative gift business that designed, manufactured, packaged and ultimately delivered gifts for entertainment corporations.  With the birth of Geoffrey, her second son, in 1993, she backed away from the majority of her business responsibilities to focus on her family.       

Here’s a glimpse of the larger setting at Rose Story Farm. I took this photo last July when attending an industry luncheon in the garden.

Her extensive experiences proved invaluable in 1998 when Danielle and her husband, Bill decided to expand the family avocado farm into a boutique rose business with the addition of 1,000 bushes, all of them garden roses. 

The farm now has over 25,000 bushes and since that time Danielle has overseen the steady growth and development to the point where thousands of roses are cut each day and shipped throughout the United States. 

Currently she manages all employees and makes the day-to-day decisions for the business, markets the products, selects the roses for production, designs rose gardens for clients worldwide, designs and maintains the farm’s gardens used for weddings and special events, oversees the rose boutique and leads the way on product development–a rose based perfume and body care line are currently in the works. 

The display in front of the rose boutique. . . what can I say? It’s so enticing!

Dani is an active member of the Santa Barbara Rose Society, the American Rose Society, and the Garden Club of America in Santa Barbara. She is the founder and sustaining patron of the Carpinteria Community Service Toy Fund, a non-profit organization that raises money each year for the families of disadvantaged field workers in the Carpinteria Valley. 

The excitement and beauty of this enterprise and of Danielle herself has been featured in Santa Barbara Magazine, Wine Country Living, Sunset, Victoria Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Veranda, and the Wall Street Journal. 

She has had articles published in the 2012 American Rose Society Annual on both flower arranging and garden design.  Television coverage of Rose Story Farm has been presented on “California Heartland,” a PBS special, and on NBC’s Today show.  Most recently,  Martha Stewart Living media filmed a segment on the farm for their online American Made series (see above).  In addition to her weekly tours at the farm, Danielle is a frequent featured speaker at events that are focused on the beauty of the garden, and the special role of roses in our daily lives. 

The lemon rose cake. It is quite delicious!

Rose lovers are invited to visit to Rose Story Farm on a Wednesday or Saturday and spend $38-$45 for a small group tour, which is followed by a delicious garden luncheon.

A gift shop filled with rose-themed and garden-inspired ware from Europe and beyond (including a few antiques) is worth a visit.

To satisfy my current made-in-the-USA obsession, I picked up a cast-aluminum, rose-bloom-shaped bundt pan so I could bake the Rose Story Farm lemon cake. 

A small vignette of just-picked roses, spotted on my tour of the flower fields.

This rose caught my eye, dazzling against the blue Carpinteria sky.

Another beautiful floral arrangement at our summer luncheon.

It has been my pleasure to share my podcast conversation with Dani Hahn with you. All photos are (c) Debra Prinzing, except for the portrait of Dani Hahn, courtesy of Rose Story Farm.

Because of the support from you and others, listeners have downloaded episodes of the Slow Flowers Podcast more than 6,000 times! I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

 The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net.  

I’m watching and excitedly dancing in my seat from Austin, Texas as you and the other pioneers of sustainable floriculture change the face of the industry! Brava!!

Can’t wait for the directory project to come to fruition- my tiny donation did’t break the goal mark, but every little bit counts. Thanks from EcoChic Floral.

– Natasha Madison, EcoChic Floral, Austin, TX

Above is just one of the many supportive messages I’ve received in the past three weeks since launching the Indiegogo campaign to help me complete the launch of the Slowflowers.com site. 

So fun to see this project on the big screen at last night’s Indiegogo Seattle Event!

It has been so gratifying to run my crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, the amazing resource that has such an inspiring tagline: “Fund what Matters to You.” Truly, if you are planning on taking this path to help raise funds for your own passion and dreams, this is the company to work with. They’re amazing!

SO many people – friends, family, fellow advocates in the Renaissance of the American Grown Flower Farm – and more, have contributed funds large and small.

Even more people loyally promote this project on their own social networks, like my Facebook friend Annie Haven of Authentic Haven Brand Natural Brew who constantly gives me a thumb’s up or an encouraging comment or re-post. It means so much.

Or my number-one supporter Kasey Cronquist, CEO of the California Cut Flower Commission, who has been picking up the telephone to call and encourage someone else to get involved.

Or, like my friend Susan Appleget Hurst, some are sending an email to an entire networks of people, encouraging them to view flowers as part of agriculture. Thanks so much to you all! 

Here are some stats:

Funding goal: $12,000 (by February 19th)

Funds contributed to date: $10,050 – that’s 84% of the goal!

Number of people who’ve contributed: 145

Number of states represented: 29

Number of countries represented: 3 (U.S., Russia and the Netherlands)

There is one opinion that occasionally bubbles up in our industry that the idea of supporting local and seasonal flowers is “something that happens on both coasts” and that it is nonexistant in the central part of our country.

Let’s debunk that misperception right now. The Slowflowers.com supporters in Texas, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Michigan, Tennessee and New Mexico believe in the importance of American Grown flowers. They’ve joined supporters from East Coast and West Coast states — Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Florida, Washington, D.C., Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Maine and Massachusetts! That’s seriously impressive and such a wonderful representation of flower farming, floral design and demand for local flowers.

Thanks to the San Francisco Flower Mart for coming onboard this week with a $1,000 PRESENTING SPONSOR contribution! 

Thanks to the Los Angeles Times (reporter Lisa Boone) for blogging about this project last week – that was a great show of media attention.

Thanks to Rochelle Greayer of the Studio G Blog for this wonderful post. I love that she describes Slowflowers.com as “an online farmers’ market for flowers.”

Thanks to Indiegogo’s Bret Harris and Amanda Hat for inviting me to be part of their Seattle Event last night. It was pretty fun to be with other fans of Indiegogo, including Joya Iverson who successfully raised $29,525 for her new venture Tin Umbrella Coffee Roasters – a whopping 160% of her original goal of $18,500.  

Here are some more fun photos from last night’s event:

I brought a bouquet of local flowers – from farms in Washington, Oregon & California – to illustrate my passion for American Grown. . . it was a perfect “show-and-tell” and this guy won the bouuqet as a giveaway (his birthday is this weekend). Real men love local flowers!

From left: Amanda Hat from Indiegogo, me, Joya Iverson of Tin Umbrella Coffee, and Bret Harris from Indiegogo.

Thanks Indiegogo!

That’s it for now~ I’ve got lots more to do before this campaign ends . . . AND before we launch Slowflowers.com. Hoping to have a *beta* (soft launch) to share in the coming weeks. That’s the plan and my design and programming team is working tirelessly to finish. Stay tuned!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

(c) Paige Green

I’m so pleased to introduce listeners to Baylor Chapman, creator and owner of Lila B. Design, a San Francisco-based floral and plant studio. Baylor’s story is well documented in The 50 Mile Bouquet and in many newspaper, magazine and blog articles.

I first met Baylor in the fall of 2010, on a trip to SF where I was scheduled to give a lecture for the Garden Conservancy.

Serendipitously, Susan Morrison, a friend who I’d known through the Garden Writers Association, learned I was coming to her backyard and called to say, “You need to meet my friend Baylor when you’re in town. She’s into locally-grown flowers just like you are.”

That led to a wonderful visit to tour Baylor’s former “loading dock” studio in San Francisco’s Mission District. Susan and Rebecca Sweet, another fellow garden designer and blogger, met me at Baylor’s. The three of us had lots of fun drooling over Baylor’s floral creations and learning more about her design philosophy based on seasonal and locally-grown floral elements. Here’s a blog post about that adventure. 

How cool is this? Coffee, brunch or lunch at Stable Cafe, amidst the lovely living garden created by Lila B. Design. (c) Sophie de Lignerolles photo

Today you can find Baylor and her team working in the welcoming open-air courtyard that’s part of Stable Cafe, the community-minded restaurant owned by her friend Thomas Lackey.

Thomas and Baylor have both been operating businesses on Folsom Street, and when Baylor lost her loading-dock studio this past June, it was Thomas who said: “Move over to our courtyard.”

He “gets” the idea of creating connections with neighbors, artists, fellow small-business owners and others who want to keep jobs and culture alive and well in San Francisco’s vibrant neighborhoods.

Plus, Stable Cafe’s kitchen makes delicious, healthy, seasonal & organic food! Now if you’re in SF, you can visit Lila B. Design, shop for flowers, plants and beautiful garden products, while also eating scrumptious food at the Stable Cafe! What’s not to love?

Baylor graciously shared these photos of her recent work for you to enjoy. Please notice the specific photo credit with each.

The new Lila B. Design studio at Stable Cafe, a plant-centric place for garden and flower lovers alike. (c) Sophie de Lignerolles photo 

One of the event, classroom and workshop spaces at Stable Cafe, featuring a wood-burning pizza oven, a massive trestle table, and Lila B.’s garland of local flowers. (c) Sophie de Lignerolles photo

Pitcher plants (Sarracenia sp.) in a glass vessel.  (c) Holly Stewart photo 

A Lila B. Design tablescape, featuring living plants. (c) Milou + Olin photo 

One of Baylor’s lovely arrangements that combines locally-grown flowers, including Cafe au Lait dahlias, from Lila B.’s garden. (c) Page Bertelson photo 

Another arrangement with begonia foliage, clipped from a living plant. (c) Page Bertelson photo 

Stunning! (c) Page Bertelson photo 

Lila B. Design’s new plant hanger – a SF-designed and fabricated product. (c) Sophie de Lignerolles photo 

Details, details. . . a garland in the making. (c) Sophie de Lignerolles photo 

A stunning centerpiece featuring living plants in a date palm frond, created by Lila B. Design. (c) Milou + Olin photo 

The Plant Recipe Book, out in April 2014.

 Baylor has so many good things going on in her career, but the newest is The Plant Recipe Book: 100 Living Arrangements for Any Home in Any Season (Artisan Books, 2014), which will be published on April 8, 2014. This idea-filled book was photographed by Paige Green. 

It contains detailed planting instructions for centerpieces and arrangements that give living plants a “starring role” in all sorts of creative vessels. A follow up to last year’s title by Jill Rizzo and Alethea Harampolis, “The Flower Recpie Book,” this new inspiring book offers more than 100 projects will blow your mind and prompt you to bring more living plants into your own design work. 

If you live in or will be visiting the Bay Area, you can get a sneak peek and first dibs on a signed copy of this lovely tome. Come and hear Baylor speak at the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, where she will demonstrate some of the book’s fun projects using living plants as floral design elements. Details here.

As I mentioned above, as soon as we met, I knew that Baylor needed to be featured in The 50 Mile Bouquet. Please enjoy the entire story:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

The Zweifel Family enjoys the nearby Oregon Coast, From left, daughter Nina, and Monika and Patrick Zweifel.

In the fall, there’s a pretty fun Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze at Oregon Coastal. Here, Patrick poses with his daughter Nina.

Patrick Zweifel’s Oregon Coastal Flowers – his 64-acre, Tillamook, Oregon-based farm – has been well received by florists who shop at the Portland Flower Market, the Los Angeles Flower Market District and the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market where you can find permanent stalls filled with his gorgeous hydrangeas, calla lilies and Oregon forest products.

Feast your eyes on the Hydrangea Fields at Oregon Coastal Flowers. Field-grown, true-blue hydrangeas! You can’t get it any better!

Here’s that awesome new Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Pistachio’ that Patrick talked about in our interview. 

Here’s an arial view of Oregon Coastal Flowers where you can spot the full-size competitive race track amidst the fields. 

Check out the Crocosmia borders! 

Patrick’s message is that if you can find your niche and be the very best in that niche, you *might* succeed. Being the best means producing excellent, high-quality botanical and floral elements. It also means the type of customer service you provide and the relationships you build with customers.

But no matter how beautiful or fresh the bloom, domestic farmers face competition on price, especially from importers who buy from low-wage countries, Patrick says. “I was the first person in the U.S. to sell colored calla lilies in a big way. I couldn’t have bought my farm without them. Then the South Americans started selling callas for 30-cents-per-stem against my $1-per-stem product. And they had added incentives, like buy one box, get a second one for free.  I just can’t compete with South America on callas, even if my quality is great.” Patrick describes how cheap imports nearly ruined his core business – colored calla lilies. By 2008, he was faced with devastating losses of 85% of his total revenue and Patrick was driven to save his company.

He didn’t give up. He didn’t see that he had a choice. With a mortgage on his farm and family and employees to support, Patrick searched for a way to diversify Oregon Coastal Flowers.

The wedding pavilion at Hydrangea Ranch, a gorgeous event space at Oregon Coastal Flowers.

The romantic Alder arbors created at Oregon Coastal Farms from alder poles harvested on local forest land.

Hear the optimistic story of how he’s survived and moved beyond that episode to become even more solid in knowing his niche. This is a story of never giving up – and being smart and resourceful enough to find a solution that satisfies your customers, to provide products that meet a need in the floral marketplace, and to find new marketplaces for those products. 

Mossy branches – a signature product offering.

Here are those little log “cake plates” that Patrick has popularized among the floral, wedding & event world.

Oh, wow, those Alder logs!

All kinds of goodies from the Oregon forest: mosses, ferns, gnarly surprises!

Patrick credits his ability to quickly change direction for saving his business. He noticed a few years ago that floral designers were snatching up his offerings of Northwest forest products, such as lichen-clad branches, soft green mosses, cone-laden conifer boughs and other woodland items, infusing their bouquets with a naturalistic feel. In the past three years, Oregon Coastal Flowers has increased the variety of specialty forest items, while at the same time shrinking its acreage devoted to calla lily production. With forest service permits that allow him to legally harvest everything from birch saplings to decaying tree trunks, Patrick has seen his sales double from 2010 to 2011.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

Holly Heider Chapple, in one of her favorite places on earth: Her own backyard flower garden. “The Answer is in the Garden,” she says.

We’re getting the New Year off to a fabulous start with today’s guest, floral designer, social media maven, educator and mentor to studio and wedding florists around the globe, Holly Heider Chapple.  Based in Leesburg, Virginia, she is active in the wedding and event industry serving customers in the Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland areas. 

Like many people who know and follow this talented and engaging woman, I met Holly “virtually” through Facebook or some other social media channel. As soon as she “friended” me, I wrote to Holly and said: let’s have a phone date. We realized our mutual connection is Alicia Schwede of Flirty Fleurs and Bella Fiore, a past guest on this podcast and a new transplant to the Pacific Northwest.  

Well that phone date with Holly morphed into today’s podcast – a whirlwind conversation that follows Holly’s life from a childhood helping her parents grow, tend to and sell plants to an amazing family of her own. 

Holly shared several of her designs featuring mostly ingredients from her own garden. Here is one yummy creation.

And a garden-inspired wedding dinner, bride and groom included!

We all need a jolt of optimism for the seasons ahead. Whether you’re a floral designer seeking inspiration or an American flower farmer who wonders if the floral industry really cares about all the attention you give to the botanicals you produce . . . I think you’ll find it here. 

Holly has a totally fresh take on the world of flowers and I think that’s why she is so successful with some of her new ventures, including the Chapel Designers conference and forum, now in its 4th year. Plus, by her own admission, she is a sharer. She is one of those people who isn’t afraid that sharing her expertise and knowledge with YOU will somehow diminish HER. I subscribe to this approach to my own life and work, which made it so easy to converse, long-distance, with Holly.

Garden flowers in an urn; all the elements grown in Heidi’s garden.

Another luscious bridal bouquet. Everything but the roses come from Holly’s Garden.

Here is her bio:

A dedicated mother, wife and entrepreneur, Holly is the creative visionary behind Holly Heider Chapple Flowers. A longtime resident of Loudoun County Virginia, Holly is a highly recognized and sought after floral designer who’s work has been published in a number of prestigious publications and can regularly be found in top industry blogs. With 21 years of successful business experience behind her, Holly now serves as a teacher, speaker and mentor for other professionals in the wedding industry. Having raised 7 children, and recognizing her most important life role as a mother, Holly appreciates also being known as “Flower Mamma” among her network of industry professionals. Additionally, based on her incredible and unique sense of style, the term “Hollyish” emerged in 2011 as a way of describing designs that possess the elegance, beauty and creativity of those that leave Holly’s studio.

Armed with a strong desire to help other floral designers and event professionals be successful, Holly established the Chapel Designers (a division of Holly Heider Chapple Flowers) in 2011, as an international network of florists and event designers who gather together every year in New York City to collaborate, learn, and create.

What started as a desire to network with other like minded business owners, has blossomed into an incredible group of professionals comprised of longtime designers, up and coming designers, and people just starting their design journey. The Chapel Designers is growing every day and is proud to have members from all over the world.

Remaining dedicated to quality of design and service has allowed Holly Heider Chapple Flowers to be recognized over and over again for exceptional products and client experiences while maintaining an unrelenting desire to drive industry trends. Holly describes her business in her own words: “I have had the privilege of training with great designers across the country and in Europe. One of my most favorite and unique experiences recently was volunteering with the installation of the White House Christmas decorations. All of these experiences combined with running a business from my home, where I can spend quality time with my husband and children has made me into the business owner I am today. I take each of my roles as a mother, mentor and designer seriously and continue to grow every day. My studio has been blessed to have our work published in Martha Stewart, Southern Living Weddings, Weddings Unveiled, Brides, The Knot, Washingtonian, Southern Weddings, Virginia Living, In Touch Weekly Magazine, Elegant Bride, Engaged Magazine, and many local publications, and I can’t wait to see what the next few years will bring. I know there are still big things to come.”

My conversation with Holly was super inspiring and I will thoroughly enjoy2014 as I watch all that she achieves. Please be sure to add her to your “follow” list if you haven’t done so yet.

A lovely tabletop of home-grown florals.

And a seasonal zinnia bouquet that’s inspired by a vivid color palette.

Here are Holly’s platforms to follow:

Her Blog: The Full Bouquet

Twitter: @chappleflowers @chapeldesigners

Facebook: HollyHeiderChappleFlowers

Instagram: Holly Chapple

And thank you  for joining me in this episode of the SLOW FLOWERS Podcast with Debra Prinzing.

Because of your support as a listener, we have had nearly 5000 downloads in six months’ time – and I thank you for taking the time to join to my conversations with flower farmers, florists and other notable floral experts.

If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.

Until next week please join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. 

As we heard from Holly,

The Answer’s in the Garden.

I couldn’t agree more.

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net. All photographs shared here,courtesy of Holly Heider Chapple.