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It’s great to be here today to share our 8th consecutive floral forecast for the Slow Flowers community. The audio you’ll hear was recorded during our Monthly Member Meet up on January 14th and those who attended got an early, sneak peek at the report. We recorded the session and I’m sharing the edited version with you today. 

This report has become an important gauge for our members, as well as for the greater floral marketplace and business media, as we evaluate prevailing cultural shifts, notable changes, and breakout ideas influencing flower farming, floral design and consumer attitudes about flowers.

The Slow Flowers Floral Insights and Industry Forecast debuted in December 2014 when I first compiled my top predictions for 2015 and shared them with the media and the floral profession. The Forecast continued through 2021, as I gathered intelligence over the course of each year, conducting hundreds of magazine and podcast interviews, and soliciting feedback through the annual Slow Flowers member survey.

For 2022, I’m so pleased to be joined in this endeavor by Bloom Imprint’s creative director Robin Avni. Robin has contributed her unique point of view and expertise in developing this year’s forecast with Slow Flowers — and much of what I’ve learned about forecasting has come from past collaborations with Robin. Robin has successfully managed innovative, award-winning teams and high-profile projects as well as receiving numerous national design awards. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies, national advertising agencies and award-winning media properties, applying timely lifestyle insights to their businesses. 

I want to get right to the juicy parts of our presentation, so let’s jump right in and learn about 2022’s Floral Reawakening. Download a recap of this REPORT: Slow Flowers Floral Insights & Industry Forecast for 2022.

There is so much to unpack in the nine insights we’ve discussed today and so you can expect to hear more as I dig deeper into these themes and the people in the Slow Flowers Community who are leading these major shifts and who can speak to us for extended stories and interviews. And please reach out to let me know what you think about them! You can always write to debra@slowflowers.com.

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I can’t believe we’re already at the end of January — it has been an insanely rapid start to a New Year, one with continued uncertainty about our health, our communities and our planet. I believe we are stronger together when we can draw inspiration and comfort from one another.

I hope to see many of you in the coming weeks, as I host six of our  members who will be teaching at the upcoming Northwest Flower & Garden Festival, February 9-13, in Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center. Slow Flowers Society is again producing the Blooms & Bubbles Workshops with some fantastic presenters — all Slow Flowers members, including Bethany Little of Charles Little & Co., Beth Syphers of Crowley House, Kiara Hancock of K. Hancock Events, Kim Gruetter & Tonneli Gruetter of Salty Acres Farm and Tobey Nelson of Tobey Nelson Events.

Head’s up because Next Week, we’ll have our ticket giveaway for five sets of two tickets to attend the flower show as my guest. You can also find the details starting February 1st at @slowflowerssociety on IG.

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Thank you to our Sponsors!

This show is brought to you by Slowflowers.com, the free, online directory to more than 880 florists, shops, and studios who design with local, seasonal and sustainable flowers and to the farms that grow those blooms.  It’s the conscious choice for buying and sending flowers.

Thank you to our lead sponsor, returning for 2022, Farmgirl Flowers. Farmgirl Flowers delivers iconic burlap-wrapped bouquets and lush, abundant arrangements to customers across the U.S., supporting U.S. flower farms by purchasing more than $10 million dollars of U.S.-grown fresh and seasonal flowers and foliage annually. Discover more at farmgirlflowers.com.

Thank you to 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. Find the full catalog of flower seeds and bulbs at johnnysseeds.com.

Thank you to Mayesh Wholesale Florist. Family-owned since 1978, Mayesh is the premier wedding and event supplier in the U.S. and we’re thrilled to partner with Mayesh to promote local and domestic flowers, which they source from farms large and small around the U.S. Learn more at mayesh.com.

Thank you to The Gardener’s Workshop, which offers a full curriculum of online education for flower farmers and farmer-florists. Online education is more important than ever, and you’ll want to check out the course offerings at thegardenersworkshop.com.

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Thanks so much for joining us today! The Slow Flowers Podcast is a member-supported endeavor, downloaded more than 808,000 times by listeners like you. Thank you for listening, commenting and sharing – it means so much. As our movement gains more supporters and more passionate participants who believe in the importance of our domestic cut flower industry, the momentum is contagious. I know you feel it, too.

If you’re new to our weekly Show and our long-running Podcast, check out all of our resources at Slow Flowers Society.com and consider making a donation to sustain Slow Flowers’ ongoing advocacy, education and outreach activities. You can find the donate button in the column to the right at debraprinzing.com

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I’m Debra Prinzing, host and producer of the Slow Flowers Show & Podcast. Next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more Slow Flowers on the table, one stem, one vase at a time. 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. You can learn more about Andrew’s work at soundbodymovement.com. 

Music Credits:

Lissa; Turning on the Lights; Gaena
by Blue Dot Sessions
http://www.sessions.blue

Lovely
by Tryad 
http://tryad.bandcamp.com/album/instrumentals
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In The Field
audionautix.com

 

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Happy New Year 2020! Last week’s podcast commemorated the close of 2019 with an extensive Year in Review episode. And while I couldn’t highlight and thank every single person who made last year a special one, I touched on many of the bright spots in our full year of Slow Flowers. Please go back and have a listen if you missed it.

I’m excited to share highlights from the sixth annual Slow Flowers’ Floral Insights and Industry Forecast — the 2020 edition, but before I do so, we have a special guest to welcome, Teresa Tibbets of Dandelion Floral, based in Lander, Wyoming.

All during 2019, our Fifty States of Slow Flowers series brought you a diverse range of voices and experiences from Slow Flowers members across the U.S. This ambitious series doubled the number of Slow Flowers Podcast guests we brought to you during the course of the year. Thank you to each of our state guests for their willingness to share their personal floral narrative with listeners. Together their stories amplified the thriving message that our Slow Flowers Movement is taking place everywhere and anywhere that people, gardens, soil and sunshine exist.

Click here to find the full list of our Fifty States of Slow Flowers guests, with links to the episode in which each appeared.

Today, that series comes to a close today. Even though it’s January 1st 2020, due to a few scheduling hiccups, I couldn’t quite fit our final state – Wyoming – into 2019,  so today, please meet Teresa Tibbets of Dandelion Floral.

Teresa is a flower farmer and studio-based wedding and event florist who specializes in growing heirloom and ephemeral flowers. She also raises “xeric natives,” such as yarrow, coneflower and rudbeckia; and she forages locally for Aspen, juniper and sage.

Teresa says: “My designs are inspired by nature’s form and structure, embracing the whimsical and wild. The aesthetic of the Rocky Mountains is loose and light, balancing the soft with prickly; the fine with bold. We take our cues from the deserts and the mountains. An arrangement full of lush, shiny, deep green foliage looks artificial and contrived here, in my opinion. Instead, we embrace the blue-grays of sage and juniper; the delicate texture of golden grasses and twinkling yellow-green of Aspen.”

Find and follow Dandelion Floral at these social places:

Dandelion Floral on Facebook

Dandelion Floral on Instagram

It has been a privilege to feature this important series and I thank you for joining me. As I mentioned last week, we missed a few — namely Hawaii and Delaware — but I’ll do my best to add voices from those states in the coming months.

Next up: I’m excited to share highlights from the annual Slow Flowers’ Floral Insights and Industry Forecast.

This Forecast began six years ago and I’m more inspired than ever about the focus of this project. Since 2013, I have tracked and documented the shifts and changes in the Slow Flowers Movement, devoting considerable much time and resources during the past several years while also educating about and advocating for locally grown, seasonal and sustainable flowers. As a result, the awareness of our Movement has also increased. More farms are producing more domestic flowers; more designers are selecting domestic flowers as artistic elements of their work; and more consumers are asking for local flowers.

Traction, momentum and change can be measured incrementally, so you will notice that in this year’s 2020 Forecast some of the topics and key insights represent subtle rather than seismic shifts from past year’s themes, or at the very least, an expansion of them. 

I’ve titled the forecast Green Horizons.

To develop this report, I began by surveying Slow Flowers members and social media followers last fall, asking questions about their floral businesses, including emerging themes and topics important to them.

I drew further insights from my 2019 storytelling — first-person interviews for print and digital Slow Flowers Journal stories, interviews with more than one-hundred Slow Flowers Podcast guests, and attitudes gathered from conversations with thought-leaders in floral design, flower farming and related creative professions.

I hope you find these forward-thinking resources important and valuable. I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions about topics missed.

Download a PDF of the 2020 Forecast from Florists’ Review

Download a PDF of the 2020 Forecast from Canadian Florist

A sentence jumped out to me a few months ago as I read a Time magazine profile of Rose Marcario, CEO of Patagonia. It went like this: “Today’s customers want their dollars to go to companies that will use their money to make the world a better place.”

A fitting statement, given that Patagonia, which recently surpassed $1 billion in annual sales, donates 1% of its sales to environmental groups. To me, that story about Patagonia underscores a theme that resonates with that of our 2020 Slow Flowers’ Floral Insights and Industry Forecast:

“Belief-driven buyers choose a brand on the basis of its position on social issues.”

Time interview with Rose Marcario, CEO of Patagonia

If you think this is a fringe topic, you’re wrong. According to market consultancy Edelman, nearly 2 in 3 consumers are belief-driven buyers.

READ MORE…

For the second year, Florists’ Review magazine published my annual forecast (aka Trend Report) for all things Slow Flowers in the January issue. In my presentations about the report, I have shared 10 Insights and 2 Bonus Insights that shine a light on the prevailing shifts in sustainable flower farming and floral design.

You can read the Florists’ Review report here and download a PDF of “Tracking Floral Futures.” FinalForecast2019

Above is a video of my 2019 Forecast Report, presented at the annual Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers’ conference last September. It runs for a full hour, but I wanted to post it here for anyone interested in learning more about the incredibly powerful shifts taking place in domestic floral agriculture and progressive floral design.

You can also download a PDF of the slide show here. Slow Flowers Presentation

Future Focus

I’ve already begun to compile my impressions for the 2020 Forecast and I’m eager to get your input. If you have thoughts or suggestions, please send my way: debraprinzing@gmail.com.

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Today you will hear from Emily Calhoun of Floriography Floral based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an early Slow Flowers member whose news we’re sharing with you today.

In my 2017 Floral Insights & Industry Forecast, released at the beginning of this year, I noted Shift #3 — “Return of Brick and Mortar.” I wrote: “There’s a lot of flower power going on as independent and progressive florists are signing leases and opening retail spaces in the same markets that have witnessed mainstream mom-and-pop floral storefronts being shuttered.”

This insight continues to play out with reports of flower shops around the country hitting my radar.

The newest twist on this story isn’t just florists setting up retail spaces, but also FLOWER FARMERS adding brick and mortar to the mix.

This is intriguing and recently, when I learned that the owners of flower farms that featured on the Slow Flowers Podcast in the past are opening their retail ventures in their markets, I wanted to hear more.

This is a continuing story. Since we recorded this show, I’ve learned of others who fall into the flower farmer-turned-floral retailer narrative.

I’ll be reporting on this shift in our 2018 Floral Insights report, which will be released in Episode 330 on January 3, 2018. Not to get ahead of myself, but please reach out if you have any suggestions to share on that front!

I’m eager to bring you my recent conversation with Emily Calhoun of Floriography, NM. Nearly three years ago, I traveled to New Mexico to meet my friend Paula Panich for a writing retreat in Santa Fe. I knew I would have to fly into Albuquerque so I reached out to our lone New Mexico Slow Flowers member, and asked her if we could have dinner together and record a report for this podcast while I was “passing through.”  It all worked according to plan and you’ll want to go back and listen to that conversation, Episode 176, aired in January 2015.

A lot has happened since then and as Floriography has evolved and changed, Emily has been at the center of a mini-explosion in cut flower farming in the state of New Mexico. We now have four Slowflowers members in the state and I’ve promised them I’ll visit sometime in the coming year to document more of what’s happening there. Let’s learn more from Emily and the new Floriography retail space at Spur Line Supply Co. in Albuquerque, which she calls her “shopette.”

And here’s an introduction from the “about” page at the Floriography Floral web site:

We began this beautiful journey in 2011 with some canning jars and a tiny piece of dirt in between pecan orchards. From this tiny parcel and with cuttings from the yards of friends and neighbors, Floriography began selling flower bouquets at small farmer’s markets and through weekly seasonal subscriptions to businesses in El Paso, TX and Las Cruces, NM. Customers and subscribers loved Emily’s (Floriography’s founder) designs so much that wedding inquiries started rolling in.  

What started out as a dream to make local flowers accessible to our little community has since blossomed into a thriving event design business that reaches across state lines.

Floriography’s designs and farm flowers have been internationally published in wedding and style bogs and in print via Martha Stewart Weddings and Rocky Mountain Bride. Our team travels across the country designing for high-end weddings and events. We are based in Albuquerque, New Mexico but seriously delight in travel!  

Coming up, By the time you hear this, I’ll be heading to the east coast where you can find me first at the October 7th Slow Flowers Connecticut Meet-up hosted by Michael Russo of Trout Lily Farm in Guilford. There’s still time to join us, so check out debraprinzing.com in the Events calendar for details — or find them in today’s show notes.

I’m continuing on immediately after my time in New England to Holly and Evan Chapple’s Hope Flower Farm in Waterford, Virginia,  where I’ll be a guest at the Field to Vase Dinner they’re hosting on Sunday, and then I’ll join Holly and several amazing instructors at the second FLOWERSTOCK, taking place Monday, October 9th and Tuesday, October 10th. I can’t wait to lead a series of creative writing exercises for the participants — and it’s not too late to register.

Holly is offering a special $200 discount for the Slow Flowers community. Use this promocode for a discount off of the one-day or two-day registration: FSSLOWFLOWER. This discount can also be used for Flowerstock’s “#treattheteam” offer to buy 2 tickets get the 3rd for free. Get in touch with me or write flowers@hollychappleflowers.com to request the promo code for the free ticket if you bring a third member of your staff or team.

The Slow Flowers Podcast has been downloaded more than 239,000 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 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

I’m Debra Prinzing, host and producer of the Slow Flowers Podcast. 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 Brenlan. Learn more about his work at KineticTreeFitness.com.