SLOW FLOWERS with Debra Prinzing

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

  Gretel and Steve Adams of Sunny Meadows Flower Farm in Columbus, Ohio, are young flower farmers whose creativity and determination to earn a living from their land is truly inspiring. This young couple didn't grow up in the agricultural world; so naturally, they consider themselves serendipitous farmers. A food-farming apprenticeship sparked Steve's passion for farming. And Gretel was blessed to inherit a 10-acre lot outside Columbus that her father bought in the 1980s. My friend Rich Pomerantz, a fellow member of the Garden Writers Association, has taken some beautiful photographs of Gretel and Steve for his series about Young Farmers. Enjoy his post here. As children, they both loved to be outside playing in the dirt and connecting with nature. As young adults, Steve and Gretel's farming skills continue to flourish with their involvement in the U.S. cut flower industry. They are trying to live life as sustainably as possible using organic practices, composting to make soil amendments, and heating their house with wood, growing their own food and making natural soaps, among other things.  Sunny Meadow Flower Farm is filled with fields of beautiful flowers and four greenhouse structures help Steve and Gretel extend the growing season in Ohio.   This farm-based business is established on a 10-acre parcel just inside the Columbus city limits.  They recently told me about the way their acreage is used:   "This coming season, our field space will include about 4 acres in production -- plus 1 acre for our perennial and greenhouse space, making for a total of 5 acres.  The remainder of the tillable land will be rotated with cover crop to maintain soil health." Sunny Meadows' flowers are sold at three seasonal farmers' markets in Columbus and through Whole Foods stores in the region. Gretel is also a talented floral designer and the farm has added wedding floral design services, which is one of the most successful sources of income for the farm.  Please enjoy our conversation - I know you will be impressed with Gretel and Steve, and you'll find their passion contagious. In the podcast, we discussed the upcoming Cut Flower Growers' School, a program of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers that is scheduled for March 3-4, 2014 in Ft. Worth, Texas. Steve and Gretel will be teaching a workshop called: "What to Grow and Why," addressing how to choose which perennials to grow & which annual varieties are the best producers?  And thanks to Sunny Meadows Flower Farm for providing these wonderful images that you can enjoy here:                     I'm so pleased to have been able to introduce you to Gretel and Steve. On their web site, they write: "Our mission is to educate the public about the quality and vase life of local flowers. Although you can get flowers for dirt cheap flown in from the Equator, the workers there do not have the same rights and protections and there are fewer restrictions on chemical use. So who knows what you are really buying? As a farm specializing in all naturally-grown fresh cut flowers, we are trying to show people just how important supporting your local flower farm really is." Follow SUNNY MEADOWS FLOWER FARM on Facebook here To add your name to the Sunny Meadows Flower Farm, email Gretel & Steve at: SunnyMeadowsFlowerFarm@gmail.com Because of your support as a listener, listeners have downloaded this podcast nearly 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.    

  Something really exciting happened last week - my friends at the San Francisco Flower Mart, the premiere flower market in the U.S., came onboard as presenting sponsors of the Slowflowers.com directory. This is my other passionate project, and it dovetails nicely with the Slowflowers Podcast. In the works right now, Slowflowers.com is a free online directory to help you find florists, studio designers, wedding and event planners, supermarket flower departments and flower farmers who are committed to American grown flowers. I'm currently raising funds to complete this project via Indiegogo.  To date, supporters of American Grown flowers have contributed $11,045 to the campaign, with SF Flower Mart's $1,000 contribution giving us a huge boost earlier in the week. I happened to be working in SF this past Monday, so I stopped by the management office and grabbed General Manager Bob Otsuka and Jeanne Bose, the SFFM's marketing/promotions director and social media strategist, for a quick conversation, recorded as a Bonus to the Slow Flowers Podcast. Listen to what Bob and Jeanne say about the Market's decision to bring their support to the Slowflowers.com launch. It's fascinating to learn about the history of this amazing center for locally grown flowers - and inspiring to know that we're on the same path to promote more American Grown Flowers to the floral industry and consumers alike.    Here is a little slice of history, as told on the Market's web site: With beginnings paralleling the growth and development of the San Francisco Bay Area, the origins of the San Francisco Flower Mart go back to the late 1800’s when land was plentiful. Local flower growers could bring their product to Lotta’s fountain in downtown San Francisco three days a week, selling their product to local flower shops. [Note: Lotta's fountain is located at the intersection of Market, Geary and Kearny streets in downtown San Francisco.]  A need for a centrally located market bringing together the three ethnically diverse groups of flower growers was fulfilled with the opening of a market located at 5th and Howard Streets in 1924. As flower growers expanded production areas outside of the Bay Area and as product from other parts of United States came in, the need for a larger more modern permanent facility led to the design and construction of our current market at Sixth and Brannan Streets in the South of Market area of San Francisco. The grand opening of the San Francisco Flower Terminal in September 1956 marked the establishment of an industry icon. Today, officially known as the San Francisco Flower Mart, we now have over 60 vendors, purveyors of cut flowers, potted plants, blooming plants and floral supplies. We have evolved from being a “growers” market to being a marketplace for floral wholesalers. Product, which at one time was only from the immediate Bay Area, now comes from the far reaches of the world. As you will hear in this podcast interview, more than a century after it was established, the San Francisco Flower Mart continues to reflects the character of locally-grown flowers and the farmers who grow those blooms. In addition to family flower farms selling direct to the floral industry and consumers, you will also find wholesalers who stock flowers from growers in other parts of California, as well as Oregon and Washington. And while people in "the flower biz" are served here as wholesale customers six days a week, some days as early as 2:00 a.m., the DIY flower lover/designer is also welcome to shop - after 10 a.m.  This is truly a flower mecca and you must add it to your flower bucket list if you haven't been to visit. I'm thrilled to feature the San Francisco Flower Mart and doubly thrilled that this important center for local flowers will be a Presenting Sponsor on the Slowflowers.com site for the year to come, connecting More American Flowers with Customers, One Vase at a Time.  All photographs used here,

  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.  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.                      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: The Accidental Flower Farmer A patch of urban asphalt surrounded by chain link fencing and loops of barbed wire may seem unwelcoming. That is, until you peer inside to discover a designer’s bountiful cutting garden in San Francisco’s Dog Patch District.   Increasingly, there are designers who, by necessity, harvest floral ingredients from their own gardens. As well, there are growers who assume the role of floral designer, satisfying a bridal customer’s request for unique, straight-from-the-farm bouquets. That these two worlds are happily intersecting is due to curiosity, innovation and experimentation on the part of designer and grower alike.    San Francisco-based Baylor Chapman, owner of Lila B. Design, is both designer and flower farmer. She is 

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. I met Patrick in 2010 at the regional Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers conference in Eugene, Oregon. That was the very first occasion when he and other farmers dreamed of launching a cooperative Farmer-to-Florist venture in Seattle. One year later, that little market began: the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. Full disclosure: I now serve with Patrick as an industry liason on the Co-op board. That experience has allowed me to get to know this creative farmer better - and watch him at work. It's impressive!   Patrick is competitive by nature, bringing the intense energy that he once devoted to a college track and field career to his professional life. In the early days of the SWGMC, he told me, “I knew there would be demand if we committed to the [warehouse] lease and took the risk. When you sell face-to-face, when you have a quality product, you have something that’s so much better than what you see on paper or online.” By opening their own market and direct-selling to florists, “we’re cutting out the middleman,” he explains. His story is revealing because he so generously explains how he has weathered the highs and lows of his business. If you have any romantic notion that being a flower farmer is a dreamy way to commune with nature, I know Patrick's story will be both inspiring and sobering. It is not an idyllic existence. It is incredibly hard, endless work. It is a choice, but it is not an easy choice. 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. 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.  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.

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 we...

Greetings and Happy New Year! This is the first Slow Flowers Podcast episode of 2014 and I have devoted it to an essay about the state of the American floral industry and the critical changes that need to take place in order to save it.   Here are som...

Today's guest is my friend and fellow Local Flowers Advocate Kelly Sullivan. Based in Seattle, in fact, just a few blocks from where I live, Kelly is an up-and-coming studio floral designer, small-scale flower farmer and owner of Botanique.  We met a few years ago at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, just as Kelly was developing her business model for Botanique. I have to tell you, her venture has really taken off -- and Kelly has lived up to her tag-line: Overwhelmingly Beautiful Flowers.  There are so many things that impress me about this young woman. She brings a garden design and landscaping background to her floral creations; her horticultural knowledge has greatly influenced the plantings in The Botanique Cutting Garden - the backyard "urban flower farm" where Kelly grows many of the flowers she uses in her designs.  While she’s still young, Kelly is actually already on her second career. She trained and performed as a modern dancer after college. Dance plays a special role in her designs. “When people ask what defines my style, I’ve realized recently that it’s ‘movement,’” she says. “Movement is like choreography. When I compose a bouquet, it always has movement – and you see it in everything from the vines to the stems.” Movement adds energy to her otherwise lush design style. Kelly isn’t interested in producing perfect, symmetrical arrangements. “When I design, that’s when the gardener in me shows up,” she says. “I love foliage, berries, wild elements. I love interlocking stems, unusual edibles and even seed pods.” What you see in her vases looks and feels alive (I guess that’s the dancer showing up, right?). Our conversation took place in Kelly's brand new studio, a converted one-car garage that will soon be a bustling center of creativity and design. "I’m obsessed with flowers,” she confides. To Kelly, when you grow your own ingredients you can’t help but notice the seasonality of each flower. “If it’s growing right there in your garden, it’s impossible not to want to pick it and arrange it,” she points out. Of course, I feel the same way. And as more floral designers follow Kelly's example - either by growing some of their own botanical elements or connecting with local flower farmers - the floral community will only improve. Designs that are seasonal and local have a special character, a vibrancy and authenticity not found in distantly grown or out-of-season choices. Here are some more flowers, gathered together by this gifted and inspired designer.    So happy holidays to the flower-obsessed. 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 4,500 downloads in 2013 – 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.  The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net. 

Lynn Fosbender is a Chicago-based owner of Pollen Inc., a sustainable floral design studio for weddings and events. This talented young woman is a leader in the sustainable floral and green wedding industry. And to me, she's a true Slow Flowers hero! ...

Today's guests are two of the most influential US growers of Protea. Owner of Resendiz Brothers Protea Growers, based in Fallbrook, California (in northern San Diego County), Mel Resendiz has been growing protea for 35 years. He's joined by colleague Diana Roy, an equally passionate protea fan who handles marketing and promotion for Resendiz Proteas.  You'll hear us refer to this lovely flower a few ways. It's spelled P-R-O-T-E-A, but pronounced: Pro-tee-ay-AH . . . Pro-tee-Ah . . . or . . . pro-Tay_AH  Whichever way you pronounce it, Protea is a luscious native South African flower, said to have been named after the Greek God Proteus, who was able to change into many different forms. The Proteaceae family of plants is comprised of more than 1,400 species. Ranging from 2 to 12 inches in size, Proteas typically blooms in fall, winter and spring, although the folks at Resendiz are able to harvest and ship the flower year-round to customers in the U.S., Canada & Japan, due to their growing practices and attention to detail.    Why are these South African plants now considered a valuable California flower crop? It's because coastal California is one of five Mediterranean regions of the globe, similar to South Africa, Australia/New Zealand, Chile and Greece. Full sun, well-drained soil, good air circulation, mild winters and acid soil ensure that proteas thrive as if they were in their native environment.   Established in 1999 and today one of California's largest supplier of South African and Australian floral products and plants, Resendiz produces more than 200 varieties of these unique native plants.  Known for their exceptional value and long vase life, the protea and other blooms like Pincushions, Banksia, Kangaroo Paws and  Leucadendron, create dramatic impact when incorporated in arrangements and bouquets. Many varieties are hybrids - grown only by Resendiz Brothers. Rich in color, texture and form, the protea is both dramatic and exotic. The spectrum ranges from warm to cool colored blooms -- Rich reds, deep pinks, and fresh greens. Together, these blooms make stunning arrangements - and they are long-lasting - a huge bonus for the florist and DIY designer alike. If  you want an American-grown flower that will dazzle in the bouquet or the vase, look no further than the Protea. Thank you  for joining me in this episode of the SLOW FLOWERS Podcast with Debra Prinzing. Because of your support as a listener, there have been nearly 4,000 downloads since July – 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.  The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net. 

If you're at all active in the online universe, and if you're a florist or simply passionate about good design, you probably already know about today's talented guest, Alicia Schwede, creator of the popular FLIRTY FLEURS blog.  Alicia has more than a decade of floral design to her credit, beginning with her first wedding clients in the Bay Area, and later, her Denver-based studio Bella Fiori.   In the past year, Alicia migrated from Colorado back to Northern California's wine country, where she created the florals for many happy bridal parties this past wedding season. And now, due to life's unexpected turns, she is here in the Pacific Northwest.  The life of a studio designer is a lot like the life of a writer. You are pretty mobile, and you can take your talents with you when you relocate. That's exactly what happened this fall, when Alicia followed her husband Chad for a work-related move. We met in person when she surprised me by showing up in a workshop I taught last month.   Since then, we've had several great discussions about floral design and the state of the business. I'm excited to share our most recent conversation with you in today's podcast. Learn more about Alicia, about her career as a floral designer, and what inspired her to launch FlirtyFleurs.com, an online community for floral designers to gain ideas and inspiration from each other.   In this podcast, we also discuss her beautiful book, Bella Bouquets, which is a compendium of more than 100 wedding bouquets, arranged by color theme, which is quite the perfect way to organize flowers.  I was struck by this passage from the foreword to Bella Bouquets: " . . . I still stop dead in my tracks when I spy a perfect peony, a gorgeous garden rose or the sweetest sweet pea at the market," Alicia writes.  "I find great pleasure in sharing my love and affection toward flowers. This book, and the blog Flirtyfleurs.com are just a few ways for me to share and connect with others while exploring the flower path ahead."   To me, that flower path is right here, under our noses. It's not on another continent, especially when locally-grown and seasonal botanicals are available to designers and flower lovers. A big believer in locally-grown blooms -- and it's no wonder, since she has many ties to California floral sources -- Alicia shared four of her favorite American-grown arrangements for you to see here. "How funny is that?" she wrote in her email message accompanying these images. "Four bouquets representing three different states!"          If you're interested in learning more about Alicia and Flirtyfleurs, be sure to subscribe to her free newsletter. You'll also find details and registration information on Alicia's "Bridal Bouquet Workshop," which I'm hosting at my event space in Seattle's Pioneer Square on Feb. 1, 2014.  Thank you  for joining me in this episode of the SLOW FLOWERS Podcast with Debra Prinzing. Because of your support as a listener, there have been more than 3,500 downloads since July – 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. Thank you, Alicia, for such inspiration! 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. 

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Think about seeing a vivid purple-tinged field of lavender. Now imagine yourself walking through it, brushing your fingertips on the scented flowers dancing tall on their wand-like stems. Don't you wish you could be transported to that place right now?   There is something so evocative about Lavandula, the plant that is the basis for all of Susan Harrington's growing, writing and teaching activities. The owner with her husband Jack Harrington of Labyrinth Hill Lavender, Susan is today's guest on the Slow Flowers Podcast. We met up recently after I attended one of Susan's inspiring (and intoxicatingly fragrant) workshops at a local garden center. Susan and I discussed her decade-long adventure growing lavender on her "backyard farm" and how that led to a vibrant cottage industry selling fresh-cut lavender and dried lavender buds, first at the farmers' market and later via mail order. Susan has expanded Labyrinth Hill Lavender into online training for others who want to get into the lavender-growing business and now, a regional conference for lavender farming. Here is her famous lavender labyrinth, planted with 150 Lavandula x intermedia 'Fred Boutin' plants. The labyrinth measures 40-feet in diameter and produces about 700 fresh-cut bundles of lavender per season.  Susan mentioned her YouTube video in which she demonstrates her Lavender Bud De-Nuding Process. It's a little tongue-in-cheek, but clearly a huge success as a method for anyone harvesting lavender buds for aromatherapy or crafting: More details discussed in our conversation: Information about Susan's online lavender growing course, and her FREE mini-course on growing lavender Information about the October 2014 Northwest Regional Lavender Conference, which Susan and Jack are producing with the Oregon Lavender Association.   

Meet Pilar Zuniga, owner of Gorgeous and Green, a Berkeley-based boutique and eco-floral design studio. She's my guest in this week's Slow Flowers Podcast with Debra Prinzing. Pilar started Gorgeous and Green nearly six years ago after she discovered how hard it was to plan her own sustainably-minded wedding. Since then, her venture has expanded from a floral studio designing for weddings and special events to a charming storefront on College Avenue in Berkeley. There, you can find a full-service floral and gift shop that carries uncommon goods, curated by Pilar, including vintage jewelry, locally-made goods, recycled-paper stationary,  organic bath and beauty products -- and of course, local and sustainably-grown flowers. Gorgeous and Green recently won the Best of Berkeley 2013 award in the florist category. For anyone interested in learning how a brick-and-mortar retail flower shop can make it in today's era of mass merchandising and big boxes, you'll want to join my conversation with Pilar. She is blazing a new trail and is the TRUE definition of a LOCAL FLORIST....a hometown, Main Street flower shop that goes the full distance to source from local flower farms in her own backyard.  Here's her answer to the "Why Sustainable"? question: A Native American proverb suggests that all that we do today must be done with the next 7 generations in mind. The mainstream floral and gift industries have many byproducts like pesticide pollution, dependence on plastics, underpaid labor, hazardous working conditions and excessive CO2 Emissions. Additionally, events are the producers of more waste and CO2 emissions. The average wedding emits 12-14 tons of CO2, more than a person emits in a full year.   We can minimize these negative effects by amending our practices to become sustainable ones.  For Gorgeous and Green, sustainability means using methods that we can afford to duplicate without negatively affecting the environment and people around us. With a lot of creativity and research, we have been able to develop floral practices and offer gift products that allow us to do just that. Gorgeous and Green wants to be mindful of not just how we leave our world for the next generation, but how we touch those people and places that were involved in the beauty we created today.  Take a look at our Services section or visit our On-Line Boutique page to see just what we have come up with so far. We’re always creating new ways to save the earth and stay gorgeous. In the second half of our interview, Pilar and I scratched the surface on a MAJOR topic that's going on right now in the floral world. It regards the concern she and I -- and so many others -- have about that green florists' foam, the crumbly, brick-shaped chunk that you often find stuck inside a vase delivered from a floral wire-service. It is a conventional product that has been around since the Postwar 1950s, developed, so it seems, to make arrangements look fuller using fewer stems of flowers and foliage. The simple economics have (sadly) led many florists down the rabbit hole of same-old, same-old, unimaginative designs based around the foam. I believe it's a crutch that limits creativity and certainly hurts the people and environment who encounter it.  Every single week I hear from florists and designers who tell me they are weaning themselves off the product, which is made by a small group of manufacturers in the US and abroad. Those designers are eager to find alternative ways to stabilize stems, such as some that Pilar and I discussed. I will devote a future episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast to more extensive information on this topic.  Pilar was one of the first to speak out and warn florists about the risks of using chemically-based foam. As I mentioned in our interview, every time I did a web search about this topic, her blog posts popped up, as early as 2009. Here are some links you'll want to read:  (March 4, 2009) Floral Foam: Not so Green 

"Enter a rare world of beauty and intricacy," promises the press release for "Seeing Flowers,"  a remarkable new book featuring the highly detailed, almost transparent flower photographs of Robert Llewellyn. Using a unique photo process that includes stitching together large macro photographs, the visual artist reveals floral details that few of us have ever noticed: The amazing architecture of stamens and pistils; the subtle shadings on a petal; the secret recesses of nectar tubes. I learned much more about the secret life of flowers in today's podcast interview with Teri Dunn Chace, the writer with whom Robert Llewellyn collaborated. A longtime horticultural writer and formerly on the staff of Horticulture magazine, Teri blends literary and scientific sources for her essays about 343 popular flowers. These are blooms beloved by gardeners and floral designers alike and together Robert and Teri portray flowers as you have never before seen them. They gave me a deeper appreciation of how and why flowers have become so embedded in human culture. In preparing for my podcast interview with Teri, I went back and spent some time with Robert's earlier book, Seeing Trees, with writer Nancy Ross Hugo. When that book was released in 2011, I was blown away by the detailed process he goes through to capture the essence of leaves, seeds, pods and other tree parts. Each subject is photographed up to 50 times at various distances and the final work is a composite of the sharpest areas of each individual image. The resulting photographs are of stunning hyper-real clarity, as if Robert has found a way to circumvent the limitations of the human eye through his lens. When Seeing Trees was released, publisher Timber Books created a video of the process. Please enjoy this conversation with author Teri Chace, and add Seeing Flowers to your library reference shelf. Our conversation is a whirlwind tour of flowers, literature and garden writing. You'll enjoy the ride. During my interview with Teri, we read aloud three literary pieces from Seeing Flowers. Here they are for you to read again, interspersed with a few of Robert's images: "The rose is a rose, And always was a rose. But now the theory goes That the apple's a rose And the pear is, and so's The plum, I suppose. The dear only knows What will next prove a rose. You, of course, are a rose -- But were always a rose." Robert Frost, "The Rose Family," 1928  "Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint." Pablo Picasso, Arts de Frances, 1946  "Ice cream on green cones white hydrangeas in full bloom cool the summer day" Haiku by CDSinex, 2011    ENTER TO WIN: Timber Press is celebrating the publication of Seeing Flowers with an online promotion offering a one-of-a-kind prize. You can enter to win a fine gallery quality print of a photograph from this book. Take a peek at the gorgeous print and the contest details here.  NOTE: the Contest Entry Deadline is this Friday, November 15th. Thanks for joining me in this episode of the SLOW FLOWERS Podcast with Debra Prinzing. Because of your support as a listener, we’ve had more than 2,650 downloads since July – 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.  The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net.     

  For the past few years, I've been interviewing and writing about a category of designer who I dub the "farmer-florist." These include a rare group of individuals in the flower world who are equally talented in the science of growing flowers and the art of designing them.  You'll meet two of those talented people on today's podcast, Jennie Love of Love 'N Fresh Flowers in the Philadelphia area and Erin Benzakein of floret flowers in Washington's Skagit Valley.  Both Erin and Jennie have been in the business of creating stunning floral art with locally grown materials for several years now. Their west coast/east coast friendship prompted these flower friends to create THE SEASONAL BOUQUET PROJECT in early 2013. Their first post featured yummy, early spring flowers, posted on March 5th. The Seasonal Bouquet Project emerged from a winter brainstorming session about "how to feed our souls' fires during the hectic months of the growing season and how to further demonstrate the beauty of locally grown flowers to a wider audience.  And, to be completely candid, it’s a bit of a competitive double dog dare between two people who like to have some fun," according to their website.  All the materials used in the bouquets were grown within a 25 mile radius of the respective designer, the vast majority coming straight from their own flower fields.   As they wrote on their website: "Since  we’re on opposite coasts growing in very different climates, this project is a showcase for what’s available through the seasons across the country." People all across the country and around the globe, for that matter, followed along on the gorgeous journey. Erin and Jennie also invited readers to post photos of their own bouquets, as long as the ingredients were within that 25-mile radius.  As you will hear in this interview with Jennie and Erin, which took place on October 25th via Skype, the friends cooked up a 2-day workshop to celebrate the "end" of their season. They planned "The Seasonal Bouquet Project LIVE" and scheduled the event to take place on Jennie's flower farm in Philadelphia. Listen along to hear what happened next - and gain inspiration and insights into the life of a farmer-florist. Photos to enjoy from Jennie Love and her farm:     Photos to enjoy from Erin Benzakein and her farm:   Thanks for joining me in this episode of SLOW FLOWERS. Because of your support as a listener, we've had more than 2,200 downloads since July – 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.  The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about her work at hhcreates.net.