Thursday, February 11, 2010

Local Flowers on Valentine’s Day

Black Ankle VineyardsThis past week I received an email from Melissa Schulte over at Black Ankle Vineyard. Melissa and I have met several times at CSBA and other events. As many of you probably know, Black Ankle wine is all the rage-especially for folks that are committed to buying local whenever possible. Black Ankle wine is fabulous and it’s the only estate vineyard (meaning they grow ALL of their own grapes) in the state of Maryland.

So, Melissa wanted to order long stem red roses for Black Ankle’s Valentine’s Day event. While excited that she had reached out to me, I felt bad that I had to give her my “no roses in Maryland” schpeal. If you haven’t heard it, here  it is in a nutshell. “There are no roses grown for commercial sale in the mid-Atlantic states. They are too expensive to grow (diseases, pests, deer) and the farmers can’t compete with foreign growers in Kenya and Central and South America. We do have one grower that experimented with old fashioned garden roses last year-but even in that case-we only had about 12 roses (short stemmed, super fragrant) to use in 1 wedding-for the whole year.”DSC_0501Kordes Roses grown in Northern Virginia last summer buy Wollam Gardens

After I gave her my schpeal, I offered her locally grown red tulips instead. Much to my surprise (and giddy excitement) Melissa said “local is more important than roses!”.  WHOO HOO!

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It’s a small order, 80 red tulips-but heck-it’s 80 red tulips! More importantly, people are becoming educated and they are choosing LOCAL! I wish I could be a fly on the wall as the Black Ankle guests are presented with a locally grown, seasonally appropriate, gorgeous, fire engine red tulip-rather than a jacked up, chemical covered, no scent, foreign grown rose!

Hooray for Black Ankle! If you haven’t been to Black Ankle yet, go! If you haven’t tired Black Ankle wine, try it!

Now let’s just hope the snow doesn’t sabotage our plans…

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