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| We're at 564 Members and GROWING! |
Dear Christina,
I hope this email finds you well and I am grateful for a quiet weekend morning that allows me to update you on all the activities of Slowflowers.com.
You haven't heard from me since the craziness of Valentine's Day and I definitely owe our community a status report. I'm not going to let the time pass like this again. Instead, I will endeavor to send you Slowflowers.com at the first of each month.
Please send your own news our way so that we can share it more widely. You can reach us at debra@slowflowers.com.
And first, the excellent news that Slowflowers.com has grown to include 564 members in 49 states. Our goal is to build this site to have 1,000 members listed - please share this valuable resource with colleagues, clients and friends. We'd be so honored if you would refer other flower farmers, floral designers, flower shops and studio florists to join!
Valentine's Day: As I have shared in the past, we invested $7,500 in public relations activities leading up to February 14, 2015, with the goal of raising awareness around the "Show Your Love with Local" campaign.
That took a huge bite out of my personal budget (in other words, current Slowflowers.comrevenue could not cover the investment), but I felt it was so very important for the first Valentine's Day since Slowflowers.com launched.
The payoff? Hundreds of Thouands of impressions in print and online media, including a national wire service story in Associated Press (news and radio).
March 2015:
The Slow Flowers Podcast featured interviews the following members:
Slow Flowers supported and promoted Flower Power: Growing and Designing With Flowers for All Seasons, a conference at Farmingdale State College's Urban Horticulture & Design Program on Long Island. We were asked to suggest speakers and the conference planners tapped Slowflowers.com member Lynn Mehl, owner of Good Old Days Ecoflorist in New Windsor, New York, to present on "Working with Local Cut Flowers - a Designer's Perspective."
 Slow Flowers co-hosted the first Field to Vase Dinner in Carpinteria, California, where our member Margaret Lloyd of Margaret Joan Florals was the guest designer. She was assisted by two other Slowflowers.commembers, Jill Redman of Forage Florals in Solvang, California, and Laura Cogan of Passion Flowers Design in Buellton, California, joined the design team - all as volunteers. *See below for more details on how you can get involved in the Field to Vase Dinner Series.
 Slow Flowers partnered with the Ethical Writers Coalition to present Bloom: A Sustainable Workshop on Sunday, March 29th at the Mode Marteau Studio in Brooklyn. Three Slowflowers.com members presented "Local Flowers 101," a design workshop using all local (within 200 miles) flowers. The team included Molly Culver and Deborah Greig of Molly Oliver Flowers and Rachel Gordon of Taproot Flowers.Our involvement with this event resulted in two great stories by members of the Ethical Writers Coalition, which you can read here:
April 2015:
The Slow Flowers Podcast featured the following members: Bonnie Doon Garden Co. (Santa Cruz, CA); Chloris Florals and B-Side Farms (Petaluma, CA); Tiny Hearts Farm (Copake, NY); Taproot Florals (Brooklyn, NY); Peterkort Roses (Hillsborough, OR) and Buckeye Blooms (Elida, OH). Click here for a link to the Podcast Archives.
 In the press, the Slow Flowers Movement was cited in Center for the Future of Museums' TrendsWatch 2015 , in an article titled "Slooow: better a tortoise than a hare," which highlights slower cultural experiences in all consumer categories.
Slow Flowers was the featured guest on "Plant Chat," a weekly tweet-up hosted by the American Horticultural Society and Corona Tools. The topic: American-grown flowers for Mother's Day. The Twitter engagement in just one hour: 952 total tweets - 120 Tweets, 534 Retweets, 201 Replies, 75 Links, 22 Pictures, 2.3M Impressions (Potential impact) and 220K Users (Potential reach).
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| The Design Team, with Bess Wyrick second from right (c) Jodee Debes Photograph |
Slow Flowers co-hosted the second Field to Vase Dinner in Carslbad, California, where our member Bess Wyrick of Celadon & Celery was the guest designer. Several local Slowflowers.com members volunteered their design talents, too, including Christa Lipinski of Floral Designs by Christa Rose and Tara Kolla of Silver Lake Farms.*See below for more details on how you can get involved in the Field to Vase Dinner Series.
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| Indiana grown and foraged for the Slow Flowers workshop at Indianapolis Museum of Art |
We brought the Slow Flowers message to audiences in Laguna Beach, CA and Indianapolis, IN, using only local flowers for sold-out design workshops that followed each presentation.
May 2015
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| Emily Thompson (left) and Debra Prinzing (right), along with some festive partygoers at the Minneapolis Institute of Art's "Art in Bloom" gala. |
The Slow Flowers message came to "Art in Bloom" at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where Debra Prinzing and Slow Flowers member Emily Thompson of New York-based Emily Thompson Flowers brought the message of seasonal and local flowers to audiences. It was wonderful to use Minnesota- and Wisconsin-grown florals, among other American grown varieties, for our demonstrations and the Slow Flowers workshop.
The Washington Post quoted Slow Flowers in a Mother's Day op-ed piece. While it's a relatively negative piece about floral consumption, the mention of Slow Flowers is a bright spot!
"There is also a movement to go local. Flowers with the American Grown and California Grown labels have a reduced carbon footprint, because they don't travel as far as their exotic counterparts, and are grown under more stringent standards. Some smaller supermarket chains, such as New Seasons Market in Portland, Ore., and SpartanNash in the Midwest, now source flowers from nearby growers, says Slow Flowers author Debra Prinzing, who provides a directory of U.S. growers on her Web site. Farmers markets also stock locally grown bouquets."
The piece quoted and/or featured the following Slowflowers.com members: Susan Studer King and Kay Studer of Buckeye Blooms; Gretel Adams and Kumiko Matsuura of Sunny Meadows Flower Farm; Thea Follsof Folls Flower Farm; Lori Eschler Frystak of Blossom Alliance; Margaret Lloyd of Margaret Joan Florals; Natasha Lisitska of Waterlily Pond Floral and EventDesign; Nikki Shenk of Linger Flowers; Susan Wright of Shady Grove Gardens and Nursery; and Emily Anderson of Lola Creative.
This type of piece takes hours of work and is only successful when you, members of the Slow Flowers Movement, are willing to share your time and talents! More of these types of stories will happen in the future, so I thank you in advance for your participation! It benefits everyone in our community.
 Slow Flowers members Gretel and Steve Adams of Sunny Meadows Flower Farm are featured in a Debra Prinzing story for Country Gardens magazine called "From Seed to Vase."
"Sunny Meadows Flower Farm owners Steve and Gretel Adams are champions for American-grown flowers. 'The more we educate people about where their flowers come from - and the difference between a local bouquet and an imported one - we see that awareness grow,' Steve says."
FUTURE PLANNING:
 We'd love to hear from you about your own promotional activities - and provide support for your public relations efforts.
And, you're invited to join an upcoming Field to Vase Dinner Tour. I hope to see you there!
Take advantage of a special promotional code - SLOWFLOWERS - to receive $35 off of your ticket price for an upcoming dinner.
Thank you for reading and for your involvement in the Slow Flowers Movement!
fondly,
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