A Trip to the National Arboretum

On Tuesday, while my dad was in town visiting, we decided to take a ride to the National Arboretum. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the ride down the BW Parkway was just gorgeous.  I’ve ridden by the entrance to the National Arboretum on New York Avenue almost once a week for 2 or 3 years on my way into DC to pick up flowers. You’d think I would have stopped…just once even…to check it out.  But nope…I just kept driving right on by.

What was I thinking??? The National Arboretum is awesome! It is a truly beautiful space that would be enjoyable for anyone to visit. You can walk, run, picnic, explore and more!

The first thing we went to see was the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. I don’t know anything about Bonsai (I cant wait for the winter to read books about Bonsai!) or Penjing (which I think is the Chinese version on Bonsai). Right now, the Autumn Bonsai Exhibit called “Beautiful Transitions” is in full “bloom”. It was incredible to see dozens of miniature trees and landscapes, some over 100 years old,  in full Fall color!

Next, we walked around the perennial gardens and herb gardens. Even though it was late in the season, there were so many things blooming-I could have spent hours just touching and smelling things…and writing down things I want our growers to grow!

As we were touring around, from a distance we could see a huge field of purple and gold flowers with large …columns.

The National Capitol Columns were the original columns from the East Portico of the Capitol building in Washington DC. When the Capitol was renovated in 1958, the columns were removed and put in storage. In the 1980’s, the columns found their permanent home on 20 acres of open meadow inside the arboretum. The view was stunning.

We finished our visit by driving around and looking at some of the other permanent collections (dogwoods, boxwoods, ferns) and making plans for a many more return visits!

Night Time Progress Meeting in Charles Village

So…at the end of July, we bought a super awesome building in Charles Village that will eventually become LoCoFlo’s permanent home.  Luckily, I used to work in construction so we have some amazing folks working with us to this little warehouse into a “home”.  Tonight, Eric and I stopped over to meet with the project manager to see how things were going. Of course, as we were driving over there, we remembered… there are no lights yet.

So here’s what I could see in the dark.

New skylights!!

The future location of the cooler…

And the new soffit! (bordering the new roof!!)

While it may not look like much, to us it’s progress!

Coming this week…a little “kitchenette” and a fabulous new cooler/coolbot!

Stay tuned!

Howdy Neighbors!

Even though we are still several weeks away from moving into our new home in Charles Village, we got to meet some of our new neighbors at the Abell Street Fair last week. We set up a table to spread the news of Baltimore's best florist moving in to the 'hood.

2012 Abell Street Fair Fun!

We gave away boutonnieres to some lucky and high-stylin' fair goers, we sold some beautiful bouquets of locally grown flowers and had a generally awesome time. We loved the children's parade, Jazz Lunch grooved hard, and The Black Marks rocked our faces off. Thanks to Drew Walker and the Abell Improvement Association for a great day!

Baltimore’s Best Florist!

The City Paper’s Best of Baltimore came out today and guess who was named Baltimore’s Best Florist…Local Color Flowers! 

This has been such an exciting year for LoCoFlo! We brought on a great new designer, Carling Elder. We bought a permanent home in Charles Village which we’ll move into in a few months.  We’ve taken on new, creative projects and worked with more and more amazing clients and….Eric is going to be working full time on LoCoFlo starting next month! Woo Hoo!

One thing that hasn’t changed though, is our commitment to buying the most gorgeous, locally grown flowers from Maryland and Virginia’s most awesome flower farmers and using them to create beautiful, natural designs for our clients.

Thank you to the City Paper for naming us “Best Florist! We couldn’t be more excited!

Thanks to all of our growers that work in the fields every single day growing flowers, foliage, herbs succulents and more for us to work with! We are so, so grateful to you for your hard work!

Thanks to all of our partners who refer us, who are kind and wonderful to work with, who give us advice and promote our work.

Finally, thanks to each and everyone of our amazing clients. Whether you’ve bought one arrangement from us or you’re our biggest wedding client. Thank you for buying local! Thanks for proving that doing the right thing is important…and beautiful. Thanks for making LoCoFlo Baltimore’s Best Florist!

Bringing Locally Grown Flowers to AIWF’s Farm to Chef Culinary Competition at AVAM

Do you love local food, farmers and chefs? Do you care about community programs that teach Baltimore City kids about fresh food, where it comes from and how to prepare it? If you do…Farm to Chef is for you! Farm to Chef is taking place on Monday, September 24th at the American Visionary Arts Museum at 6:30. It’s an extravaganza of local food provided by local farms and cooked up by local chefs. It’s set up “top chef” style, so you can go around sampling all of the delicious offerings. Of course, there are judges (including Lucie Snodgrass – one of my favorite food writers EVER) and prizes and all sorts of cool surprises too.

While the Buy Local movement and Farm to Chef  is heavily focused on food, Local Color Flowers is excited to be donating locally grown flowers from some amazing local flower farmers including Farmhouse Flowers, Plantmasters, Seaberry Farm and more.  We’ll be showcasing the flowers, the farms and the super cool growers we work with everyday.  We’’re excited to share our designs with all the locavores that will be attending.

If you haven’t gotten a ticket yet, get one today! You don’t want to miss out!

My Little Room

I have a new theme song. It’s called “Little Room” by the White Stripes. It’s only 5o seconds long –but it hits home every time I listen to it.

Check it out…

Given the lyrics, you can probably guess what my focus has been these last few weeks. We bought our new building just over two weeks ago. Whenever someone asks me “what’s going on with the building?” my response is…nothing much yet.   Although that’s not exactly true.

We’ve been working on a layout for the space.  (in addition to getting pricing for a roof  and hvac and electrical and plumbing).

It’s just a rectangle and it’s twice as big as our current space…so why is it so hard to figure out where everything will go? I’m trying to balance the big dreams, with the logistics of our operations… not to mention cost, style and comfort and the fact that the space is big (but it’s not that big!).

Eric could see I was getting bogged down with so many things to consider. That’s when he told me about a (great) NPR story about a dude in Detroit and the White Stripes and the “little room” song.

The White Stripes advice is right on…

“Well you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it's really good
you're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started
sitting in your little room”.

I might not know exactly what to do with the space yet…but if I take a minute to focus on the great business we’ve built and the relationships we’re growing and the farmers we work with and the fabulous clients we get to meet…I know that THAT is what’s important and all of the details of our “bigger room” are going to come together…eventually!

LoCoFlo Presents: The “All-Local” Gift Basket!

This past week our good friend Chef Beej Flamholz asked if we could make up a small flower arrangement with some “Baltimore items” for a friend of his that was visiting Baltimore. Leave it to Beej to always be thinking how to incorporate local products into his personal AND professional life.

I was super excited to work on this project because for a while I  had been thinking about a “farmers market gift basket”.  This was  the perfect opportunity to try it out.

I first put together a great  quart sized mason jar of locally grown flowers in “Maryland” colors. I know, I was stretching it a little, but using the beautiful “red” hibiscus foliage from Lynnvale Studio was  a must. They looked great with false sunflowers, cosmos foliage and big, beautiful hydrangeas from Farmhouse Flowers.

Next I went down to one of my fave cupcakes places…Charm City Cupcakes in Mt Washington. I picked up two of their signature cupcakes-the Black Eyed Susan and the Pimlico.  They are both so good and a perfect addition to our basket.

Since it was Friday morning and there was no farmers market open close to me, I headed over to the Baltimore Food Co-Op in Remington. The co-op is open to the public  and is full of our favorite local products. For this gift basket we included Zeke’s coffee (Tell Tale Dark-of course), Old Bay Hummus from Wild Pea, delish cheddar from Trickling Springs Creamery, Basil vinegar from Infused Spreads, and more! Of course, we had to stick a City Paper in there to give the recipient a good taste of what Baltimore’s about!

Gift baskets like these perfect for gifts for any occasions. They are totally customizable depending what you love (baking, coffee, wine, bbq, gardening and more) and are a great way to show off where you live. Make your own or call us and we’ll create one for you!

Thanks Beej!