“. . . an impassioned advocate for a more sustainable flower industry.”
— Bellamy Pailthorp, KPLU-FM (NPR affiliate)
“The mother of the ‘Slow Flower’ movement, Prinzing is making a personal crusade to encourage people to think about floral purchases the same way they may approach what they eat: Buy locally grown flowers or grow them yourself.”
— Debbie Arrington, The Sacramento Bee
"Debra Prinzing . . . has done more to celebrate and explain ethical + eco-friendly flowers than I could ever hope to."
-- Grace Bonney, founder of Design*Sponge
Debra Prinzing is a Seattle and Los Angeles-based Outdoor Living Expert. As a writer and lecturer, she specializes in interiors, architecture and landscapes.
Debra is author of seven books, including
Slow Flowers: Four Seasons of Locally Grown Bouquets from the Garden, Meadow and Farm (St. Lynn's Press, 2013);
The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers (St. Lynn's Press, 2012) and
Stylish Sheds And Elegant Hideaways (Random House/Clarkson Potter, 2008).
Her articles have appeared in the
Los Angeles Times, the
San Diego Union-Tribune, Country Gardens, Garden Design, Metropolitan Home, Sunset, Better Homes & Gardens and many other fine publications.
June 17th, 2013
A Certain Vintage
Ruffly ‘Green Spice’ heuchera foliage pulls together the mocha-colored vintage vase and the deep burgundy sweet William flowers
Ingredients:
25 stems heuchera foliage (Heuchera ‘Green Spice’), harvested from my garden
7 stems sweet William (Dianthus barbatus var. nigrescens ‘Sooty’), grown by J. Foss Garden Flowers
5 stems mock orange (Philadelphus coronarius), harvested from my garden
Vase:
6-inch tall 1940s vase with a 7-inch x 3-inch oval opening
Eco-technique
Just add foliage: Thanks to the eco-conscious designers I’ve met and interviewed, I am quite wary of using florist’s foam, a formaldehyde-based product, to stabilize arrangements. Designing around a base of foliage offers a greener way to keep flower stems upright in a vase. Choose leaves that are large, fluffy or textured. Then, insert your other floral ingredients through this vegetation. For example, in this bouquet I placed the heuchera leaves first; then I added the sweet William and mock orange stems. Everything stays just where I want it.
Posted in American Grown, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Plants, Slow Flowers: 52 Weeks, Writing | No Comments »
June 11th, 2013
I never thought I would be such a proponent of the American Grown-American Made movement, but after writing The 50 Mile Bouquet and Slow Flowers, I have gained newfound appreciation for companies that provide jobs to American workers. We should all make an effort to both value and promote domestic farms and domestic manufacturers. Hey – even my books are printed in North American (not Asia!), on FSC certified paper with soy-based inks. I have my publisher to thank for making the choice to not print overseas.
Here, for you, I have compiled a list of my must-have floral design tools and accessories. Sadly, it has been a challenge to find all the Made-in-the-USA products I want. For example, I can’t find any women’s gardening gloves that weren’t made in Asia (yes, there are some leather glove makers still around in the US, but those products are intended for a more rugged gardening activity than floral design!)
And then there are those companies that label their packaging with phrases such as: Designed in the USA; Assembled in China. That’s not really what I’m looking for either. Nevertheless, I am here to share some glimmers of hope that American manufacturing is alive and well in the specialized world of floral design.
Here are my favorite floral design products. I recommend you check them out and make a conscious choice with your dollars! When you read a sentence like this one: “. . . carefully manufactured in Seattle by skilled craftsmen paid a living wage,” from apron designer Janna Lufkin (Raw Materials Designs), you really want to support her spirit and her faith in her company’s lifeblood, the workers who turn her ideas into tangible products!
The best USA-made floral snips around! I love this tool – I have two of them!
Florian’s rachet pruner, also USA-made.
Florian floral snips (for herbaceous and woody stems), $25.95 plus tax & shipping. This fine point scissor shear is made in the USA and is an excellent hand pruner. It is ideal for flower arranging, Ikebana, Bonsai and other precise hand pruning activities. This hand pruner shear features precision ground stainless blades and comfortable polypropylene ribbed grips with a brass thumb lock. Size: 7 1/4″ long. Florian also makes a fine rachet pruner, which you’ll find useful for cutting thicker branches of trees and shrubs. *Rachet Pruner is $36.95 plus tax & shipping.
Easy to use! Made in the USA, too!
Love that this tool was designed by a woman florist with her product-designer husband – and they have it manufactured by a woman-owned company.
Garden Party’s Thorn strippers (for stripping rose stems), designed by a floral designer and made in the USA, $11.95 plus tax & shipping. This colorful and lightweight tool has a spring-action handle to protect your hands from thorns, while the finger supports ensure a non-slip grip. Durable metal blades are honed to reduce tearing or peeling of the rose stem. Size: 6 inches long.
READ MORE…
Posted in American Grown, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General | No Comments »
June 9th, 2013
A Bit of Purple Heaven
A wistful arrangement of blue, purple and plum flowers looks awesome in a chartreuse vase.
Ingredients:
The little “dancing” bottlebrushes are called burnet, or Sanguisorba menziesii.
5 stems dark purple lilacs (Syringa vulgaris), grown by Sunshine Crafts and Flowers
7 stems blue perennial bachelor buttons (Centaurea cyanus), grown by Sunshine Crafts and Flowers
7 stems reddish-pink ‘Nora Barlow’ columbine (Aquilegia hybrid), grown by Sunshine Crafts and Flowers
5 stems purple ornamental alliums, grown by Jello Mold Farm
20 stems burnet (Sanguisorba menziesii), grown by Jello Mold Farm
Vase:
11-inch tall x 5½-inch citron-green crackle glaze vase
Eco-technique
Traveling with flowers: I can’t resist taking flowers with me or bringing them home. If it’s a car trip, place flowers in a stable bucket with just a few inches of water to hydrate the stems (but avoid splashing). Store on the shady side of the car. If you’re traveling by air, wrap the stems in wet paper, cover with a plastic bag and then wrap the entire bunch in kraft paper that extends above the blooms. As soon as you arrive at your destination, re-cut all the
stems, place in fresh water and possibly a refrigerator. I’ve been known to use a hotel wastebasket and mini-bar fridge for this step!
Posted in Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Plants, Slow Flowers: 52 Weeks, Writing | No Comments »
June 2nd, 2013
Joyeux Anniversaire
I created this bouquet as a birthday gift for my friend Carrie Krueger. The soft and feminine
gathering of blooms, paired with a vintage butter-yellow Wedgwood Jasperware trumpet vase, makes a complete package.
Ingredients:
Top view: so sweet~
5 stems hot-pink peonies (variety unknown), harvested from my garden
5 stems late-blooming lilac (Syringa x prestoniae), harvested from my garden
5 stems bachelor’s buttons (Centaurea cyanus), harvested from my garden
3 stems ‘Supergreen’ hybrid tea roses, grown by Peterkort Roses
6 stems each Dusty Miller (Centaurea cineraria) and lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantina), grown by Charles Little & Co.
6 stems variegated Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum nutans), grown by Choice Bulb Farms
Vase:
9½ inch tall x 57/8 inch diameter Wedgwood Jasperware trumpet vase
Design 101
Unity and variety: In design theory, “unity” and “variety” are interrelated principles. Unifying features tie a composition together; in this arrangement the silvery-green foliage suggests a sparkly embroidery thread embellishing a shawl. Variety lends interest to a design, eliminating the ordinary. Here, the pleasing mix of ingredients from the cooler side of the color wheel does the trick, with a range of floral hues from pale green and lavender to deep fuchsia and indigo.
Posted in American Grown, Creativity, floral design, General, Slow Flowers: 52 Weeks, Writing | No Comments »
May 29th, 2013
There’s a lot of wisdom to be found in the Dining pages of today’s New York Times. Mark Bittman’s “The Flexitarian” column focuses on changing our relationship with meat, learning to eat less and re-thinking our food dollar.
American-grown tulips grown by a farmer I know and trust.
You can basically take the term MEAT and replace it with FLOWERS to come up with a very credible explanation about what America’s flower farmers are up against. You know, that notion recently shared by none other than our nation’s Vice President Joe Biden about how cheap, imported flowers are “good for U.S. consumers.” No, Mr. Vice President, they are not. Cheap anything has a huge price. In the case of flowers, if you believe that cheap flowers are good, that means you aren’t concerned about living wage farm jobs in the U.S., about preserving farm land or about encouraging rural economic development. So there is a price to pay. For food writer Mark Bittman, the story of meat gives me a great analogy for flowers. I’ve taken the liberty of changing his story so you can see what I mean. Read on. . .
I feel best when buying from a farmer or farmer’s representative I know, or think I know. But even assuming this is possible, it has what at first appears to be a decided drawback: cost. It’s difficult to nail down averages, but if commodity meat (FLOWERS) — I’m talking about red meat (ROSES) here, but most of what follows could be argued about almost any product — costs something under $10 a pound (PER DOZEN) in most cases, and national brands from humanely treated animals like that from Niman Ranch or Coleman Natural (DOMESTICALLY PRODUCED FLOWERS) cost maybe twice as much, meat GARDEN ROSES from local farmers costs considerably more. It’s not uncommon to spend $25 or more a pound (A DOZEN) on beef (FLOWERS LIKE ROSES) from a trustworthy DOMESTIC source.
The immediate response that we as consumers have to this is “ouch.” Counterintuitive as it may seem, this is good for everyone.
Relatively large-scale sustainable and “natural” or “organic” or “humane” farmers might raise 500 pigs (UNDER 10 ACRES OF FLOWERS) in a year— they are not getting rich. We want these farmers to earn a living; they are stewarding the land in a manner we appreciate and they are providing us with the kind of food (FLOWERS) we want to eat (ENJOY, GIVE TO LOVED ONES, BRING INTO OUR HOMES); they are not using antibiotics (CHEMICALS) routinely or torturing animals (DAMAGING THE ENVIRONMENT). Nor are they likely to be receiving, directly or indirectly, federal subsidies. And they are providing us with meat (FLOWERS) that tastes better (ARE HEALTHIER, FRESHER, LOCAL AND SUSTAINABLE).
All of which may not make up for spending $30 instead of $15. But there are other reasons you can live with these higher prices.
It’s widely accepted that large quantities of red meat may be problematic, health-wise , and
We know that many people have made it a goal to eat less meat (CONSUME DOMESTIC FLOWERS) because large-scale industrial FACTORY FLOWER production is damaging to the environment. This is to a great extent what flexitarianism BEING A LOCAFLOR is about, after all.
Here’s a way to think about it: The price of food in general is what economists call “inelastic” — you’re going to eat something no matter the cost. But The price of any particular food like meat (FLOWER) is elastic — you will buy less as it becomes more expensive. Though it may at first seem paradoxical, this is a good thing from nearly every perspective.
I am saying this: Spend the same $30, or $50 or $100 or $300 on meat FLOWERS that you now spend each week or month, but buy less and buy better. You might compare this to an annual purchase of 20 $5 T-shirts made bychild labor (CHEAP, IMPORTED FLOWERS GROWN BY LOW-COST LABOR) versus one of five $20 T-shirts (BOUQUETS) made by better-paid and better-treated workers from organic cotton AMERICAN FLOWER FARMS. Expensive meat from real farms is a more extreme example of this less-is-better policy.
I hope you can follow where I’m going with this word-play. The takeaway message to me is that American Grown flowers might cost more, but they are higher quality, they will last longer, AND, they are sustaining American flower farms.
Posted in American Grown, Creativity, floral design, General | No Comments »
May 26th, 2013
Pitchers of Poppies
Why do we love poppies so much? Perhaps it’s because of their pure, vibrant petal colors with the charming button-like centers.
Ingredients:
(Green pitcher)
10 stems coral-red Icelandic poppies (Papaver nudicaule), grown by Jello Mold Farm
6 stems Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’, grown by Jello Mold Farm
7 stems rattlesnake grass (Briza media), grown by Jello Mold Farm
(Glass pitcher)
10 stems bright yellow Icelandic poppies (Papaver nudicaule), grown by Jello Mold Farm
10 stems Astrantia major ‘Sunningdale Variegated’ foliage, harvested from my garden
7 stems golden apple mint (Mentha x gracilis), grown by Charles Little & Co.
Vase:
8-inch tall x 5½-inch wide glazed ceramic pitcher
9-inch tall x 5½-inch wide Mexican glass pitcher
This arrangement, in a clear glass vase, showcases yellow Icelandic poppies, paired with variegated Astrantia and apple mint foliage.
From the Farmer
Poppy care: Many garden books recommend that you sear the cut tips of these poppies in a flame or submerge them in a beaker of boiling water in order to extend their vase life. It has been thought that the extreme heat
will soften the tougher outer stem and increase the surface area for absorbing moisture in the vase. But in fact, according to
Diane Szukovathy of
Jello Mold Farm, the poppy’s hairy stem collects more foreign matter that
contributes to bacterial build-up in the vase than with smoother-stemmed flowers. Because of this, she says, “heating the stems ‘cooks’ them, making the flower more susceptible to colonization by bacteria.” Diane’s best
tip: “Every few days, re-cut the stems and change the water.”
Posted in Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Plants, Slow Flowers: 52 Weeks, Writing | 1 Comment »
© Debra Prinzing, all written and photographic content. Website design/development by Willo Bellwood/Metric Media
Ingredients:
