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.

Local Love for Valentine’s Day!

Love is the flower that is never out of season.

-Anonymous

Valentine’s Day! The day to say I LOVE YOU to the people that mean the most to you! One way to say I LOVE  YOU is with flowers…beautiful, locally grown, flowers!

At Local Color Flowers, 100% of our flowers, foliage, and branches are grown on farms within 110 miles of Baltimore. We don’t offer roses shipped from South America, or orchids flown in from the tropics. We offer the best of what our region has to offer on the date you order!

Despite the cold weather this year, we’re so excited to be offering Valentine’s Day arrangements filled with tulips, paperwhites, anemones, snapdragons, stock, lilies, pussy willows, curly willows, quince, succulents, foliage and lots of other surprises!

Check our order page for details. We’re offering single arrangements, wrapped bouquets, local gift baskets, subscriptions, our local flower CSA and gift certificates for upcoming design classes.

Delivery is available in Baltimore City and pick-ups at our studio in Charles Village will be available from 8am-7pm! Order early!

Email us at ellen@locoflo.com with any questions!

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!

Make Tribe’s Make It Merry

By Carling A.W. Elder

By Almost exactly one month ago, I had the pleasure of attending perhaps one of my most favorite holiday events of 2013. Make it Merry, hosted by the lovely ladies of Make Tribe, was an incredible night of crafting, chatting, friending, and learning at Artifact Coffee in Clipper Mill. The event was a collective effort of Make Tribe and eight other talented vendors including Priya Means Love, Almanac Industries, C. Connor Rasmussen and the Bar at Woodberry Kitchen, Karson Butler Events, Laura Hooper Calligraphy, Esther & Harper, Hex Ferments, and yours truly, Local Color Flowers.

As Christmas tunes wafted through the beautifully decorated Artifact Coffee, guests were split into groups of ten. The groups of ten then circled the room and completed a holiday craft at each vendor’s station. While they crafted, guests sipped seasonal cocktails and chatted with each other, happily making new friends, or reacquainting with old ones.  By the end of the night, each guest had made many different crafts including cocktail bitters, a leather bracelet, a coffee body scrub, paper bows, and a holiday swag. Needless to say, the wire baskets holding each guest’s creations were overflowing!

I’m always finding myself in awe of how we can all be given the exact same materials, and yet create something so unique, and so undisputably, ours. Swags are a perfect example of this. Ellen and I came to the event loaded with all varieties of evergreens, including cedar, white pine, juniper, and holly. We also brought tons of decorations such as shiny jingle bells, bright Christmas ornaments, gold and silver pinecones, and sparkly and natural colored ribbons for everyone to use. 

Once a group of ten guests had gathered around our station, I began instruction. Swags are fairly easy to make, but can still be a bit intimidating. After basic instructions, I was more than happy to see each guest attack making a swag with excitement and creativity! As a result, each swag turned out beautiful and unique as a gorgeous decoration for a front door, or a lovely gift to give.

 

At the end of the night, each guest left Make it Merry with a brimming basket of completed crafts. These crafts were a beautiful reflection of each guest’s own taste and personality; as well as a mini reflection of the vendor who dreamt of the project.

This combination of camaraderie, crafts, and collaboration made Make it Merry a wonderful event, and the perfect way to kickoff the holiday season! Many thanks to Make Tribe for including Local Color Flowers!  Check out more photos and video of the Make it Merry Event!

Be sure to stay tuned Make Tribe’s social media sites (Facebook and integral), and maketribe.com to be in the know when they announce their events for 2014!

Makers Alley 2013

By Carling A.W. Elder

On December 14th, 2013, Local Color Flowers hosted the first ever Makers Alley - A Pop-Up Gift Market at our studio, and it was a great success!

Waaay back in the summer, as we began planning for the holiday season, the LoCoFlo crew started daydreaming about hosting a small, intimate, fun, & friendly holiday market in our studio. As we brainstormed, we grew more and more excited about the idea of a holiday market where it would be really easy (and fun) for our friends, families, and communities to purchase locally made gifts for the holidays. We decided there really was a need for a gift market where you could buy handmade food and crafts before the holidays, and so, Makers Alley was born!

The first step was to invite some of Local Color Flowers’ talented friends and partners to participate. Luckily, Rat Czar, Priya Means Love, Charm City Cook, Kinderhook Snacks, Snark Machine, Two Back Flats, and Highway to Hill responded to our invite and said they would love to join our vendor list. Needless to say, we were thrilled to have each of these amazing people and their products at Makers Alley!

The weather for the day of Makers Alley was predicted to be snow and “ice pellets.” Luckily, the snow held off and the “ice pellets” were remarkably absent. Precisely at 10 AM,  guests started streaming into our studio to shop at Makers Alley. The guests sampled Charm City Cook’s silky caramel sauce, pinned Two Back Flats’ fascinators to their heads, chose a Locoflo wreath for their door, grabbed Rat Czar’s BALT bumper stickers for their friends, munched on Kinderhook Snacks' savory cheese stamps, spritzed Priya Means Love’s fragrant perfume on their wrists, modeled Snark Machine’s colorful rubber band necklaces, delighted at Highway to Hill’s witty graphic prints, and shopped and visited!

One of the best things about Makers Alley was the feeling of support for all the vendors from everyone who chose to shop at Makers Alley. Deciding to spend your money locally isn’t always an easy choice, but it’s an incredibly impactful one. It was humbling to see so many impactful and conscious choices being made at Makers Alley by both guests and vendors alike.

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!

(Cool) Projects

(Cool) Projects: by Carling A.W. Elder

Back in August, Ellen and I had the pleasure of meeting with Heather Weisse Walsh, Editor of (cool) progeny, to hear all about this fun, family-friendly publication, and to see why Local Color Flowers might want a dose of (cool).

Started by Heather and her husband a few years ago, (cool) progeny is an online resource for parents that is dedicated to “putting (cool) back in to the crazy, upside down world of modern parenting.” Heather told us that when she and her husband became new parents, they kept striking out while searching for information about family-friendly events and activities in Baltimore. So they took matters into their own hands, and (cool) progeny was born!

(cool) progeny is bursting with good stuff! The website is divided into seven main categories of: eat, play, learn & create, style, parents, party, and out & about. Each category features articles from guest contributors who are all experts in different fields. When Heather asked if Local Color Flowers would like to partner with (cool) progeny as “Floral Experts,” we thought it might be fun to come up with some kid appropriate floral projects. So we began brainstorming…

The first project was Halloween Terrariums.  It was easy to get the kids involved in building a terrarium. They could layer the ingredients of their terrariums (rocks, charcoal, and dirt), plant the succulents, and then have a blast decorating their terrarium vessels! The Halloween Terrariums gave the kids some of their first experiences caring for plants, and they turned out so fun! 

Our second project with (cool) progeny was a “Thankful Tablescape”  For this project, the kids got to forage for natural elements such as mini pumpkins, seed pods, and Indian corn to place on their family Thanksgiving table. They also got to write what they were thankful for on the gourds and pumpkins. At the same time, the adults could design a seasonal arrangement in a large pumpkin as a centerpiece. The kids had a great time picking out their favorite natural elements for this project, and it was an easy way to include children in Thanksgiving decorating.

The third project was Holiday Swags.  A swag (a bundle of greenery that hangs on your door) is perhaps the easiest holiday floral project you can make! I loved working with Lila (Heather’s beautiful daughter) on this project. It was so fun to show her the different evergreen and berry varieties as we made her swag, and to see which decorations she chose. I wasn’t too surprised when she chose a sparkly silver ribbon and shiny Christmas ornaments :).

In the floral industry, we don’t often get to work with children. We mostly work with Brides, Wedding Planners, and well, other adults. As is necessary, conversations are often centered around details, time-lines, and requirements. There’s not much opportunity to just play with all of our amazing plants and flowers and see what comes out of unbridled creativity.  Working with the kids and seeing the flowers through their eyes was so much fun!

What I loved most about our projects with (cool) progeny was the chance to create and have pure fun with flowers and these cool kids. I’ve worked with evergreens a million times, but I don’t know if Lila ever had. I could see her curiosity as she felt the different branches and sniffed their spicy scents. Making these floral projects was a first-time experience for these kids, and it was exciting for them. Their excitement was exciting to me.

It makes me so happy to have had a small part in these kids’ first exposure to the floral world. I’m grateful to (cool) progeny for recognizing the value in teaching children early about the world of flowers, and for creating the online space to share these teachings with others. More (cool) progeny and Local Color Flowers collaborations are in the future, and I can’t wait to play some more!