Arcata Field To Vase Kicks Tour Off With A Sold Out Crowd
Last week’s dinner at Sun Valley Floral Farms was a beautiful start to a tour that continues to help communicate the stories and value of our American flower farms.
A beautiful table of tulips, surrounded by 1.4M tulips growing in the greenhouse, awaited guests.
And this dinner was oversold!
In fact, we were going to have to add two chairs at either end to fit 152. By the day of the dinner there was a wait list of people and I was told that we had people asking us to call them and let us know if there were any no shows. Everybody showed.
Have you ever imagined what having a four-course meal prepared by an talented chef in the middle of a flower field might be like?
What started as a simple effort to draw people into the conversation about where flowers come from by inviting them to the flower farm, has now become a national tour in its second year.
In 2015, the tour crisscrossed the country, giving people a one-of-a-kind opportunity to attend a pop-up style dinner on an American flower farm. This, of course, is significant, not just because
It's more than a niche concept, it's a movement for more local American Grown Flowers
Sunday’s New York Times featured a great story on the success of Farmgirl Flowers of San Fransisco. The article does an outstanding job of sharing Christina’s passion and commitment to local. Stembel is quoted as saying, “I won’t use imports. I won’t offer an import line. I won’t test it out and see if people care. It’s not aligned with what the mission for our company is. Nor do I think it’s the right thing to do business-wise.“
The article by reporter Gloria Dawson also included perspectives from varying segments and people in the industry, including myself.
January issue of Society of American Florists’ Floral Management.
Tom Prince, president of Prince & Prince, discounted Farmgirl’s success, calling it a “niche concept.” He went on to say that Farmgirl’s model only works because the business is near the growers.
I don’t want to sound defensive, but Farmgirl’s example of commitment, passion and loyalty for locally grown flowers is on the rise throughout the country. She’s not the only designer seeking more local American Grown options for clients and customers, she’s just the one that
It Was The Best Year Ever For CA Grown Certified Rose Parade Floats
The CA Grown logo was displayed proudly on the award winning Miracle-Gro Float. Miracle-Gro’s float received the Governor’s Trophy for the best depiction of life in California. Very fitting.
I can remember vividly the conversation with flower farmer and CCFC Commissioner June VanWingerden over seven years ago about how the Commission needed to make an effort to be a part of the Rose Parade again. She felt that the Rose Parade was a natural place for us to raise the profile of our farms during the biggest one day floral focused event in the country, that just so happened to be in our own backyard.
So, with promotion committee’s blessing, we went to work.
CDFA Secretary Ross congratulates Miracle-Gro VP & General Manager, John Sass.
At the time it wasn’t clear what that might look like, but I think we can all be proud of what has taken place since the decisions were made. Last week’s support for CA Grown Flowers and our certification efforts at the Rose Parade was amazing. Let me just rattle off a few of the high points:
Secretary Karen Ross’ continued support and involvement with our certification efforts
Certificates of Recognition from Das Williams and Senator Connie Leyva
4 Certified CA Grown entries
Miracle-Gro
California Milk Advisory Board
CalPoly Universities
FTD Parade Vehicles
All 3 Certified floats were award winning
1 Certified American Grown entry (National Park Service)
2 Flower farmers on the Miracle-Gro Float
38 Farm Ambassadors (volunteers)
7,500 “CA Grown” stickers distributed
HGTV mention of CA Grown Certification
ABC mention of CA Grown Certification
Front Page Santa Barbara NewsPress
Ty Pennington support and endorsement of California Grown Flowers
Post Parade activation for California Grown
50,000+ stems of flowers donated to CalPoly
Hundreds of amazing photos on Flickr by photographer Linda Blue!
Our red shirt Ambassadors did an amazing job helping us spread the news about CA Grown flowers.
We are working on a full report of the coverage our efforts received on this year’s efforts, but I think if you were anywhere around the parade last week, you couldn’t help but appreciate how far we’ve come with bringing California Grown Flowers back to the Tournament of Roses Parade.
Keith White (center)with Secretary Karen Ross during the FTD CA Grown Certification Ceremony last week. Pictured left to right is CCFC Chair Mike A. Mellano, Chair-elect Diana Roy, Keith White, Secretary Karen Ross, Harry VanWingerden and Linda G.
Our organization could not accomplish all of this without the leadership and the support of our farms, volunteers and our staff.
Thank you to our farms who donated the 50k plus stems of flowers to CalPoly float.
Thank you to our Ambassadors for giving of their time.
Thank you to Growers Logistics for donating the transportation of all of our flowers for CalPoly
Thank you to Kathleen for her efforts during the busy Christmas holiday to make sure the flowers made it to Pasadena.
Thank you to Adrienne, Neisha and Linda for their efforts to manage our press relationships, post parade activation and our cool new t-shirt design.
Thank you to Carly at Kahn, Soares and Conway for helping to manage our elected officials’ support
Thank you to Diana Roy, Juan Carlos and Mike Mooney for helping with our volunteer managment
Thank you to Linda G. for being our lead Ambassador and helping to organize everyone to promote our cause to all of the consumers who came by during deco-week.
Thank you to Andrea for your support in connecting all of the dots, answering questions and making sure we all had rooms for the night.
Secretary Ross enthusiastically certifies the California Milk Advisory Board’s float CA Grown on Thursday.
We worked with Miracle-Gro and California Grown to have a presense at post parade where all of the floats are left on display for three days. We handed out over 7,500 CA Grown stickers to passersby.
American Grown Field to Vase Dinner Ends In Detroit
The 2015 Field to Vase Dinner Tour ended on Saturday, but on the highest of notes.
Lisa Waud unveils her plans to develop a future flower farm on the grounds of The Flower House.
Pairing the American Grown Flower House project in Detroit with our Field to Vase Dinner Tour was perfect.
As we prepared and procured flowers for Lisa Waud’s project, I spoke to many people who wanted to understand this project, the attention it was getting and the “why.”
We Found Portland Love For Local American Grown Flowers
Last week’s dinner at Oregon Flowers was a wonderful example of what the Certified American Grown tour represents. An authentic experience on a Certified American Grown flower farm, celebrating American Grown flowers.
Short film highlights the values and virtues of buying and supporting local American Grown Flowers
I hope everyone has had a chance to watch the film that was released on Friday that features one of our stops on the Field to Vase Dinner Tour that was held at California Pajarosa in June.
Haejung Kim and Hyunsoo Moon, a Los Angeles based husband and wife team, did an amazing job interpreting the “why” and telling the local American Grown Flowers story in such a compelling way, its nearly impossible not to feel moved by their work and the cause.
This video provides such an emotionally compelling piece that clearly communicates the value and virtues on buying and sourcing local American Grown Flowers.
We’re well over halfway through 2015. At this point, there’s is no denying that I’ve failed miserably in my goal to blog each week in 2015, but it certainly has not been due to lack of content to feature. This year has been the most intense year of
The event is a part of a nationwide tour of farm-to-table style dinners developed to challenge the status quo of flower buying in our country and to encourage
Mother’s Day is Sunday (May 10th) and represents the largest floral holiday for our California flower farmers. In fact, for America’s flower farmers, it’s much bigger than Valentine’s Day.
Mother’s Day is the Super Bowl of holidays for our California farms, the past two weeks have been a highly focused effort to bring in the crops in time for distribution locally, regionally and nationally.
