Coming Soon! Slowflowers.com: A Resource for All Lovers of Local Flowers

Several times a week we get emails or calls asking: “is there someone like Local Color Flowers in ____________ (insert the name of any city in the country)?” It’s clear that people love the idea of sending locally grown, beautiful flowers to their loved ones but don’t know how to do it if they are out of town!

Soon, there will be a solution! Debra Prinzing, famous for her writing (the 50 Mile Bouquet and many more books and articles) her advocacy and her Slow Flowers Podcast is taking on the challenge with gusto.

Slowflowers.com will be an 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. You’ll be able to search by City State or Zip code to find a florist that fits your needs.

The first step to getting the site up and running is a crowd sourcing campaign. Local Color Flowers is proud to support this effort and hope you will too! Check out the campaign today!

We’re keep you posted on Debra’s efforts!

Local Color Flowers On Debra Prinzing’s Slow Flowers Podcast!

Debra Prinzing, for those you don’t know, is one of my flower idols! She has an amazing career as a garden writer and recently published two AWESOME books called  the 50 Mile Bouquet and Slow Flowers.

             

I don’t know Debra, not in person, not yet…but I  KNOW her. We share a passion for local flowers and local flower farmers. The work that she is doing to bring attention to American Grown flowers and the people that grown them and the people that design with them is truly inspiring.

Recently, Debra started this really cool podcast called Slow Flowers which you can subscribe to/download on Itunes.  It’s a wonderful look at the American flower industry including farmers, designers and enthusiasts. Listening to these interviews is definitely a treat and makes me feel part of extended community of amazing flower folks.

This week’s podcast features none other than Local Color Flowers! It was such a treat to talk with Debra and share the story of LoCoFlo with her listeners. If you want to give a listen, you can go to Debra’s website or you can find it on Itunes!

Thanks for listening!

2013: The Year Local Color Flowers Gives Up Floral Foam

You know when you set a goal for yourself (run a marathon, loose 20 lbs.) but you don’t want to tell people, because you’re afraid you’ll fail? That’s a little bit how I felt about giving up floral foam. After reading Debra Prinzing’s book the 50 Mile Bouquet, I was inspired to make the change. I loved reading about west coast designers that rejected floral foam because of poor environmental and health impacts. But I felt nervous…committed for sure…but nervous.

It’s not like we even use floral foam a lot. We don’t. But we have used it. We used it for floral wreaths, pomanders, centerpieces in shallow vessels and more.  Floral foam is great at what it does, keep stems in place and hydrated.

When I’ve mentioned to people in the past few months that we’re going to give up floral foam, they inevitably ask WHY? (and give me a kind of crazy look) There are two main reasons we’re doing this:

• Floral foam contains formaldehyde and other carcinogens
• Floral foam is not biodegradable, recyclable or compostable
• Floral foam is expensive and not reusable.

As a company, we want to use LESS harmful materials, generate LESS waste and spend LESS money on “stuff”.

I knew there were alternatives to foam, especially for centerpieces, but I didn’t really understand all of them and still don’t, but I’m ready to learn.

Our first lesson came from Carol Caggiano when she came to do a training for us back in February. Carol showed us how to use curly willow and soft aluminum wire as a base to hold our stems in place.

Just crumple it up…and voilà!  the wire is reusable and the curly willow is compostable.

Since then, we’ve used it a few times in situations where we would have used foam.  It worked great, including in this large arrangement with a very wide opening and a very shallow base.

It also worked great with this tiny crystal, footed bowl.

Over the next year, we’ll do a series of blog posts any time we’re faced with a design challenge where we would normally use foam. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and our creative solutions to eliminate floral foam. Write or comment and tell us about your green practices!

Book Review: The 50 Mile Bouquet

I have not been this inspired by a book since Amy Stewart’s Flower Confidential in 2007. Flower Confidential inspired me to start Local Color Flowers back in 2008 and the 50 Mile Bouquet is going to inspire me to grow LoCoFlo into the business I always envisioned.

The 50 Mile Bouquet is a beautifully written and photographed book about local flower farmers, designers that specialize in using locally grown flowers and clients that choose to buy local for their weddings and special events.

The grower section was great to read because I ACTUALLY KNEW some of the growers! How cool is that to see people you know in a book?

Much of the book focuses on the progressive growers in California, Oregon and Washington State. I loved learning about a urban LA flower farm called Silver Lakes Farm that grows beautiful flowers in the middle of Los Angeles! I’ve already referred two west coast friends to them! I was super excited to read about Flora Grubb and the Cutting Garden, an amazing spot that my dear friend Susannah took us to the last time we were in San Francisco.

While I LOVED reading about the growers, I was truly inspired reading about so many amazing designers that value local flowers…many of whom, like me, have built their business on buying local. I suddenly felt less alone when I read about designers with untraditional spaces like Lila B. Design, that works out of a loading dock in the Mission in San Francisco. (made me feel better about our garage studio). I felt less like a freak when I read about the ladies at Artis and Greene who have totally rejected floral foam and chemical preservation of flowers. I knew I was on the right track when I read about Max Gill, the floral designer from Chez Panisse that forages in his Berkeley neighborhood for interesting design ingredients.

I actually cried several times while reading the book because I felt so…included! I was so proud of these growers and designers I was reading about and I was proud of the community we are building at Local Color Flowers. I was proud that we are building a business on beautiful local products and inspired relationships with our growers and clients.

If you get the chance, read the 50 Mile Bouquet! You won’t be disappointed!