Flower Farming in Baltimore City with Hillen Homestead

A few Sundays ago, when we had no weddings on the schedule, Eric and I spent some time over at Hillen Homestead helping our friend Maya do some planting. The phrase “many hands make light work” was so true on this beautiful afternoon in Baltimore.

Here's Eric planting dusty miller! 

New friends and neighbors came out to lend a hand! 

Gardener and past LoCoFlo bride Jen came to plant and water the new perennials.

It was great to chat about all the new offerings Hillen Homestead is going to have this year! 

We're so lucky to be able to work with Maya and Max and their little ones. Since the farm is just 1 mile from our studio, we get to see them often. We're grateful for their hard work, dedication to Baltimore, beautiful flowers and friends. 

Fun With Local Color Flowers at Butterbee Farm this Season

We’re so excited to be partnering with our friends at Butterbee Farm again this season to offer some really cool, unique classes for families, farmers and designers alike.

Our first class at the farm will be a Family Floral Crown Class on Monday, June 29th from 11-12:30. This class is perfect for teams of one adult and one child working together.  Adults and kids will have an opportunity to tour the farm, cut their own flowers, make beautiful floral crowns with their cuttings and have their photos taken in their creations.  How fun to spend the morning with your favorite young person at a beautiful flower farm just minutes from the city.

Our next class is going to be a highlight of our summer for sure! Butterbee Farm and Local Color Flowers are teaming up to offer Blooms and Bouquets on Monday, July 13th.  This is a perfect, one-day class for farmer florists and folks that are interested learning more about flower farming and design. Students will start the day at Butterbee Farm learning all about cultivation, favorite varieties and harvesting. The amazing Dave Dowling will be on hand for a Q and A about all things flowers! After lunch, students will travel to Local Color Flowers studio to learn to make a hand tied bridal bouquet as well as see demonstrations by Team LoCoFlo making boutonnieres, corsages, head crowns and more. The day will end with a discussion of marketing and sales of locally grown flowers.

On Saturday, July 25th we’ll be offering an Adult version of our floral head crown class at the farm. Last year’s class was so much fun we can’t wait to do it again!

Our final class of the season at the farm will be our hugely popular Pressed Flower class on Saturday, September 19th. Students will tour the farm, pick flowers for pressing, make their own flower press and learn how to use their pressed flowers for arts and crafts projects.

Space in all of these classes are limited, so if you’re interested in joining, please sign up soon. We can’t wait to see you!

For questions about any of our classes, please email Ellen at ellen@locoflo.com

When Winter Won’t Be Stopped

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of winter days that our growers spend wrapped up in quilts in front of the fire (or space heater) pouring over seed catalogs and crop plans and farm video games. (sorry, I had to out you Butterbee Farm!).

But not this week. In order to have early Spring flowers, growers have been working around the clock in SUB ZERO temps to keep their tender plants warm. Ranunculus, stock, tulips, anemones and more are some of the many early Spring flowers we depend on for weddings and events now through peony season in mid-May.

Extreme wind and bitter cold temps are wreaking havoc on hoop houses and greenhouses across our region.

Here’s a look at one of the end walls of one of Wollam Gardens hoop houses yesterday.

Here’s a shot of tiny ranunculus plants getting a little extra warmth from these twinkle lights at Greenstone Fields.

Our growers have been hard at work to ensure all of our Spring clients have beautiful, locally sourced flowers. Keeping all the cracks filled is key! Our friend Barb Lamborne, Flower Farmer at Greenstone Fields, is seen below working in negative double digit wind chills trying to reinforce the hoop house.

Using locally grown flowers is a super personal, extremely special way of doing business. Each flower is grown with so much love and care. There are no more dedicated folks than our flower farmers! THANK YOU to all of the hard working farmers in our region. We’re so grateful for you!

Experimenting with Flowers: The November 2015 Maryland Cut Flower Growers Meeting

by Carling Adele Wyncoll Elder

Brrr! It’s really getting cold here in Maryland (and everywhere else in the USA), which means that flower-growing season is starting to slow down for many of our flower growers. Or, at least it’s slowed down enough for them to get together and start strategizing for next year!

This morning, I had the pleasure of attending the meeting of the Maryland Cut Flower Growers. Walker Marsh, a brand new flower grower and friend, accompanied me from Baltimore, and I loved hearing about his plans for his farm The Flower Factory that he’ll start this coming year as we drove. I was also excited for Walker to meet many of the seasoned growers at the meeting and for him to pick their brains! The pool of flower farming knowledge that these Maryland flower growers possess is wide and deep, and an amazing resource for anyone who wants to learn about flowers. These growers are also friendly and extremely giving of their expertise, so I knew Walker was in for a treat!

As Walker commented on the ride home, the meeting was very “chill” and “actually useful”, a statement that I completely agree with! During the course of the meeting, we went around the room, and each flower grower shared useful tips and techniques that had worked, or hadn’t worked for them during 2014. Dave Dowling of Ednie Flower Bulbs explained how to use Limelight Hydrangea stems instead of Rebar to stake down a hoop house cover (they won’t destroy your tiller!). Eileen Stoner of Stoney Acres, demonstrated how to soak and split Norway spruce pinecones in half for use in Christmas wreaths.

Laura Beth Resnick of Butterbee Farm told of her success using a solar powered fence baited with peanut butter to keep deer out of her flowerbeds. All this information, and much more, was shared via a relaxed and natural conversation, with many interruptions for questions and comments, and of course laughter!

As Leon Carrier of Plant Masters stated, “we are constantly experimenting with cut flowers.” As all these flower growers have experienced, and I myself as a designer have experienced, there’s always more to learn about flowers, and more ways to improve growing, or designing with them. That’s why there is such a value in these meetings where we all get together, and help each other out by sharing what we know. Because when your life revolves around “experimenting with flowers” it’s nice to know there’s a bunch of smart and awesome flower growers out there who’ve got your back!

Beyond Buying Local! Social Entrepreneurship the Local Color Flowers Way!

For those of you who don’t know us, I’ll tell you a little about Local Color Flowers.  We’re a floral design studio based in Baltimore Md. We’re in our 7th year of business and since we began the company, we’ve been sourcing flowers locally from farmers within 100 miles from Baltimore. We do mostly wedding work but also have a flower CSA, weekly orders and a subscription program.
While we’re in the business of being floral designers, we see ourselves as much more than that. We’re really social entrepreneurs and we take our job seriously. As leaders in the local flower movement, we believe that our little business has the ability to change the industry one order at a time. Wonder how we’re doing it? We’ll tell you because we think that this is a model that other florists can and should adopt.
First, we’re buying local. In 2013, we spent close to $100,000 on flowers from our local growers. These are not just faceless suppliers. These are folks we know, and visit, and collaborate with, and commiserate with and do favors for, and are indebted to and love. Our growers live close by, support local businesses and eat at local restaurants. Our client’s money, which becomes their money gets recirculated making our community stronger.
In addition to buying from our local growers,  we have a Microfinance Lending Program. Farming is hard work. Many times it feels like it’s feast or famine.  We understand the challenge of seasonal work and are proud to offer small, short-term microfinance loans to our farmers. In 2013, the program's first year, we lent $5,00o to help our farmers buy seeds and plants in the winter before their farmer’s markets began.
We are also keenly aware that our success as a business is dependent on the success of our local farmers. We work hard to nurture, mentor and support new flower farmers in our region. Last year, we started the Flower Farmer Start-Up Buying Promise. New farmers have a lot to figure out. How to grow flowers is first. Then who to sell them too and how to market them. Last year,   we committed to buying the majority of the seasonal harvest from start-up farms including Butterbee Farm and The Hillen Homestead. This allowed them to focus on learning to be the best growers they can be. We continue to buy the majority of available flowers from these farms. We look forward to making this promise to other new start-up farms in the future.
Local Farm Promotion is an important way we let people know where their flowers are coming from. All of our wrapped bouquets are tagged with grower credits. Our farmers also participate in our classes and book club here at the studio. One of the things we love most introducing clients and growers. There is always mutual excitement at those meetings.

Throughout the winter months, we meet with most of our growers to help with their Crop Planning.  For new growers, we help them choose colors and varieties that will be appealing to designers. For more experienced growers, we help fill them in on color and style trends in the event world.
You might be thinking, WHY go through all the trouble? Wouldn’t it just be easier to to order flowers from the wholesaler and move on? The truth is, of course it’s easier. But who cares about easy. We care about a lot of things, but not about what’s easy.
We care about giving our clients the prettiest, freshest flowers available.

We care about supporting our local economy in a meaningful way. We care about the success and sustainability of the growers in our community. We care about the earth and the natural resources that are used to grow and transport flowers.

For all of these reasons, and more we do what we do…and we LOVE it!

CSA 2014: Week 1!

It’s our first week of the CSA and we’re so excited!

For those of you who are CSA members, this week’s CSA bouquet is filled with peonies, larkspur, snapdragons and bells of Ireland.

Your snaps were grown in Jarrettsville by our friend Matt Bauer of Flowers by Bauer's.

The larkspur and peonies were grown by our friends  Rick and Wenfei Uva from Seaberry Farm out on the eastern shore.

The Bells of Ireland were grown by Capital Flower Growers, a collaborative effort by Wollam Gardens and Greenstone Fields.

From left to right, the flowers are Bells of Ireland, larkspur, peonies, and snapdragons.

Since everything is TALL this week, if you’re going to display your bouquet as it’s currently arranged, choose a tall vase that will allow your flowers to show off all of their blooms!

Since this is our first week for flowers I thought I’d share some tips about how to keep your flowers looking fresh for as long as possible.

1. Replenish the water daily. Change the entire vase of water every 2 days.
2. Trim the ends of your stems before your put them in the vase and each time you change the water.
3. Keep your flowers out of heat and direct sunlight.
4. Be sure the vase you are using is CLEAN.

Each flower has a unique vase life (how long it will live in the vase). Your flowers will be happier and live longer if you follow these tips!

Hope you enjoy these early summer blooms! Don’t forget to use the hashtag #locoflocsa if you share photos on social media.

If you are reading this post and still want to sign up for the CSA, there is still time. Sign up on our website today! (the price will be prorated!)

See you next time!

For the First Time Ever…Locally Grown Carnations!

I am beyond excited to tell you about our first ever order of heirloom carnations from Hendrick’s Flowers in PA.

I know a lot of people are turned off by carnations since they are known as the cheap, grocery store flower. But I’m telling you, these heirloom varieties are TO DIE FOR!

Hendrick’s is one of only a handful of farms that still grow the heirloom, scented varieties of carnations. Before we met the great folks at Hendrick’s, we had never used carnations before because none of the growers in our region grow carnations as a cut flower.  But Hendrick’s does…and they have been for over 100 years.

If you haven’t smelled a carnation before, that’s not a surprise. Modern carnations, like many other flowers, have had their scent bred out of them extend their lives long enough to be successfully shipped from thousands of miles away. Carnations have a scent like cloves. It’s the most wonderful, spicy scent ever (and I cant get enough of it! If you want to come over and smell them…just call us!)

We are beyond excited to use these beauties this week! Watch for them in our weekly bunches and in our other arrangements this week. You’ll never look at a carnation the same way again!

THANK YOU Farmhouse Flowers

On Wednesday, we got a call from our friend Dave Dowling, from Farmhouse Flowers explaining to us, that after 20 years of growing flowers, he was closing his business. Dave’s nephew, who owned the land Dave farmed, had defaulted on a loan, and despite working hard to find a solution, the land was sold at auction this week. There was crying and…some more crying and sadness and worry and of course gratitude.

Farming is hard and often unpredictable-weather, land, money, staff. For many, the rewards are worth it. I’m reminded today, as I am most days, how important buying local is- not just as lip service to what some see as a trend—but as a way of building community-as a way of building a life.

Today, everyone at Local Color Flowers would like to thank Dave Dowling for the amazing contributions he has made to our industry, to our community and to our lives.

THANK YOU for supporting the idea of Local Color Flowers from the beginning. Back in 2008, it might have seemed crazy to think that a small floral design shop in Baltimore could sell 100% local flowers. But you listened, you encouraged, you taught, you believed.

THANK YOU for being a leader in the cut flower industry for the past 20 years. Your passion, commitment and expertise is evident in everything you do. From lobbying congress, sharing resources at the Maryland Cut Flower Growers meeting, leading tours of the farm, and being a true icon within the ASCFG.

THANK YOU  for growing our flowers. For the past 6 years we have been so fortunate to go to the farm, week after week after week to pick the most beautiful flowers four our clients. Flowers that got saved and cut just for us. Thank you for helping to start Capital Flower Growers, which, after many years of lobbying, finally brought Montgomery County and Virginia flowers right into Baltimore. Thank you for all the beauty you brought to so many people.

  

THANK YOU for texting, calling, emailing when we have problems, questions, sad news, exciting news, broken coolers,  some variety of flower we can’t identify and flower orders…always flower orders.

Most importantly, THANK YOU for the positive impact you’ve had on our lives so far. Your friendship and mentorship has helped to mold who we are as a business.

  

We love you Dave! We know that this is the beginning of a new chapter and we can’t wait to see what’s to come.

Making Holiday Centerpieces Easy and Fun!

Our last design class of 2013 was a Holiday Centerpiece class just a few days before Christmas! The class was filled with both beginners who were designing with flowers for the first time and some more experienced students who had come to our classes in the past. We were also thrilled to have Balance Photography at the class taking pictures of all of our student’s work!

Everyone was excited about the amazing local flowers and foliage we had to use for the class. I know a lot of folks think that there aren’t flowers available in the winter in our region. Not so! We had tulips, calla lilies, lilies, snap dragons and ageratum.

We also had lots evergreen foliage, berries, branches and pinecones.

Each student’s arrangement was unique and reflected their style and personalities!

 

Thanks to all our growers for such a wonderful selection of goodies to work with! Farmhouse Flowers, Flowers by Bauers, Locust Point Flowers, LynnVale Studios and Seaberry Farm!

Thanks to Balance Photography for all the amazing photos! to see all the photos from our class, click HERE! You can also check out some of our student photos on Instagram  and twitter using #locofloclass

Thanks to everyone who came out to our class! Hope you had wonderful holiday!

Our 2014 class schedule will be out soon! Be sure to follow us on Facebook for an update!

Learning with Love ’n Fresh Flowers

On Sunday, I took a drive up to Philadelphia to visit my friend Jennie of Love ’n Fresh Flowers and attend a class at her farm. Despite the heat, I couldn’t wait to walk around and see everything. Some flowers were familiar, others I coveted (I cant lie) especially a bright red scabiosa that was to die for! What a beautiful farm Jennie has. You can tell that it was planted and is maintained with love and passion.

The class was called “Mastering the Wildflower Look”. After everyone arrived, Jennie took us on a tour of the farm explaining what it’s like to be a flower farmer/designer. I’m always inspired by farmers because I know how hard farming can be (heat, rain, bugs, wind, unpredictable circumstances) and that many people take for granted all of what farmers provide for us.

After the tour, Jennie demonstrated her design technique and then sent us off to make our own creations.

I enjoyed practicing my hand at a very wild style since we don’t use this style that often. My design included baptisia foliage, feverfew, coreopsis and those gorgeous red scabiosa in a little pizza sauce can.

I was happy to meet so many great people all of whom were excited about using locally grown flowers in their designs. I was also so happy to sit in the shade after the class and talk with my friend about business and strategy and technique and plans…it’s these talks that make me so grateful to be part of an amazing community of local growers and designers. I couldn’t do what  I do without them.

To see some more photos from the trip, check out our flickr page and Jennie’s blog about the day.

Looking forward to being able to return to Love ’n Fresh Flowers real soon!