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Jennifer Haf (left) and Larissa Flynn (right) of BLOOM Floral Design, collaborating on a floral headpiece at a recent Francoise Weeks workshop in Michigan
We are in the middle of celebrating the inaugural American Flowers Week, June 29th through July 4th. We created American Flowers Week as a grass roots education, promotion and advocacy campaign to highlight our nation’s farms, florists, flowers and foliage — and to raise awareness among consumers, the media and policymakers about supporting domestic flowers!
If you haven’t joined in, there is plenty of time to get involved.
The easiest thing you can do is to make a red-white-and-blue bouquet using all American-grown, local and seasonal blooms. Please post that photo on your social sites and tag #americanflowersweek. I believe this effort will grow from a small idea into a significant annual event – and by adding your voice (and creativity) to American Flowers Week, you’re helping sing the praises of our homegrown blooms.
I’m so pleased today to introduce you to Jennifer Haf and Larissa Flynn of BLOOM Floral Design based on the beautiful North Michigan shore, in the communities of Petoskey/Charlevoix.
Jennifer founded BLOOM floral design in 2008 in response to her love for sharing cut garden flowers from her Northern Michigan backyard.
Having since studied under some of the most celebrated designers and with her team executed hundreds of regional and destination events, Jennifer radiates her love for all things natural into the designs BLOOM creates.
With a talented design team, BLOOM offers exclusive services to Northern Michigan and destination wedding clients — in fact, for 65 ceremonies this year alone.
Jennifer Haf, founder of BLOOM Floral Design.
Along with Jennifer, you’ll also meet Larissa Flynn, the creative director for BLOOM.
Trained as a graphic designer and fine artist, with extensive gallery and arts management experience, Larissa joined the floral business several years ago after meeting Jennifer and realizing they were creative kindred spirits.
I love the philosophy of BLOOM, as described on the studio’s web site:
We believe that flowers are most beautiful in their natural state. When combined with other blooms in a customized palette, color and texture create a distinctive design that exudes the feeling you wish to create. BLOOM sources flowers from only the finest growers, sourcing as much as we can locally and domestically. Hand selected from tried and true varieties of the highest standards, our blooms will be sure to please.
Behind the scenes our creative team works meticulously at our production design studio where all of the magic happens the week leading up to your event. Hand processing all of our flowers and prepping and designing each arrangement per event, our designs will charm and delight you and your guests.
Larissa Flynn, BLOOM’s creative director.
As you will hear in our conversation, I recorded the interview with Jennifer and Larissa rather spontaneously – at a gathering hosted by Lisa Waud of pot and box and Detroit’s The Flower House, a prior guest of this podcast.
I had flown to Detroit for a 24-hour visit to attend the preview for this amazing art installation, which will be held over the weekend of October 16-18.
Jennifer and Larissa will create the florals for one of the rooms at The Flower House and I can’t wait to see what kind of botanical magic they conjure up.
Please follow links to all of BLOOM’s social sites, shared below. These are talented Slow Flowers floristas you will want to follow:
Here’s a gallery of the beautiful design work from BLOOM Floral Design, used with their permission. These gorgeous images give me a keen sense of place and an appreciation for the character of their region’s landscape, climate and flora. A large percentage of their floral elements are local, Michigan-grown flowers. You’ll want to visit Northern Michigan at the peak of the season to see these lovelies yourself!
Listeners like you have downloaded this podcast more than 54,000 times. THANK YOU to each and every one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.
Please join the American Flowers Week excitement and check out these resources to help your efforts. With your involvement, I believe this public awareness campaign will gain momentum and become an established annual event in the floral industry.
Until next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. And If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review.
The content and opinions expressed here are either mine alone or those of my guests alone, independent of any podcast sponsor or other person, company or organization.
The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Andrew Wheatley and Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.