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. 

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:

 

 

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!

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SLOW FLOWERS Podcast: American Grown flowers from a California Point of View (Episode 107)

 

I’m so pleased to introduce you to Kasey Cronquist. I truly value Kasey’s leadership, counsel and friendship. He is the CEO and Ambassador of the California Cut Flower Commission, the largest organization of its kind promoting American Flowers.

And he is a kindred spirit who is supremely passionate about saving our homegrown flower farms and preserving the agricultural way of life as a part of our country’s vibrant landscape.

Kasey and I first met by phone in 2010 when I called him for a quote to include in an article for the Los Angeles Times. I was writing about organic flowers for Valentine’s Day and Kasey sure set me straight, changing the focus from organic (and possibly imported flowers) to a locally grown priority.  He pointed out: “We believe California flowers are the green alternative, whether we stick a label on them or not.”

It was the beginning of my own evolution as an American flower advocate.

Since joining the CCFC in 2007, Kasey has spearheaded an aggressive public affairs program targeting lawmakers at the state and federal level. He is a dynamic spokesman for flower farming both among his home state constituents and nationally and is a master at social media communications. Kasey understands the power of blogging, tweeting, posting and using visual social media platforms and he has brought flower farming into the modern era in that regard. More than all his talents, though, I’ve mostly been impressed with Kasey’s community-building gestures to bring together small and large flower growers across America with a united voice. 

In March 2012, I wrote a post called “Meet the Ambassador of Local Flowers,” profiling Kasey for The 50 Mile Bouquet blog. You can read this extensive interview here in which Kasey shares many inspiring ideas about the American cut flower industry.

One quote of his particularly impressed me:

“We can’t move that ball, but we can create market demand for local flowers. We leaned into the CA Grown campaign and now California’s flower farmers are the single largest licensee of that agricultural program — out of all the other commodity crops in the state. The future is in educating people to buy local, to buy U.S.-grown flowers.”

Read Kasey Cronquist’s Field Position blog at Americasflowers.org

FB page: https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaGrownFlowers

Twitter: @kaseycronquist and @cagrown

 

 

Last month I joined with the California Cut Flower Commission to host a “Slow Flowers” dinner as part of the 2013 Monterey Bay Greenhouse Growers Open House & Tour.

We called it “Farm-to-Table; Field-to-Vase” and held the dinner in the gerbera-filled greenhouse at Kitayama Bros. Farms in Watsonville, California. The event was a gathering of like-minded persons. Each of us — farmer, florist, media, community advocate — cares deeply about the role of American  flowers in the greater agricultural environment. And everyone in attendance contributed an important voice around the table, a table with locally-grown food and locally-harvested flowers.

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Here’s what I’ve been up to lately. I traveled to Southern California all of last week  – from Saturday, April 13th through Saturday, April 20th.  I experienced many great highlights; too many to mention. Here are some of them:

DAY One: Carpinteria Greenhouse & Nursery Tour, sponsored by the California Cut Flower Commission. I was hosted by Harry and Michele Van Wingerden, the great folks at Myriad Roses and Padaro Floral Design for a day of book-signings and eco-floral demonstrations. A special thanks to the Van Wingerden family, CCFC CEO/Ambassador Kasey Cronquist and Event Planner Anna Kalins for making it a successful and enjoyable day!

DAY Two: Book signing and flower demos at botanik in Summerland. Loved spending time with very talented owner Erin Taylor and her team. After several hours at botanik, I met up with Cristi Walden and we headed to Sea Crest Nursery, her father Jack Stevenson’s palm and cycad collection. It was so exciting to return to this beautiful place and hear how my talented friend is learning the business of growing and selling amazing landscaping plants (oh, and propagating, too!).

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