June 2013 Newsletter

Send Flowers for 46 Cents

by Casey Schwartz

Buy your U.S. Postal Ser­vice (USPS) seed pack­et stamps now and send flow­ers for­ev­er and ever to all you love. You can bright­en every­one’s day with these beau­ti­ful stamps and send more let­ters and cards to all whom you love.

The cur­rent For­ev­er Stamps are a vari­ety of beau­ti­ful flow­ers. These images on the stamps are vin­tage seed pack­et designs that rep­re­sent the ide­al flow­ers to grow in sum­mer in your great cut­ting gar­den or cut­ting containers.

Many of these flow­ers are also avail­able as cut flow­ers at whole­sale marts around the world. All but three of them have been spied at the Los Ange­les Flower Mart. Our great grand­par­ents were plant­i­ng these flow­ers in their gar­dens over a hun­dred years ago, which is inspi­ra­tion enough to buy the stamps and go and buy the seeds and start planting!!!

Flow­ers fea­tured on the stamps:

Cal­en­du­la – Known also for med­i­c­i­nal properties

Pinks – Relat­ed to Carnations

Cos­mos – Smell good and last a long time

Aster – Clas­sic old flower

Phlox – Lots of flow­ers on each stem

Zin­nias – Get a ton of col­or in your garden

Dig­i­tal­is – AKA: Foxglove

Linum – Also called Flax

Alyssum – This is a great bor­der plant

Prim­rose – Grows well in South­ern California

You can pur­chase these seeds at your local nurs­ery or online through Amazon.com

or Burpee.com.

Monochromatic Flower Arranging

by Kit Wertz

Last month we fea­tured a green mono­chro­mat­ic flo­ral design for our sold out May flo­ral design class. Here are some of the design ideas and tips we shared if you could not make it to the class.

A mono­chro­mat­ic design uses one hue of col­or but should vary in tints, shades, and tones to make it inter­est­ing. The visu­al effect should be uni­fied and har­mo­nious and make use of dif­fer­ent types of flow­ers and green­ery to real­ly make it appealing.

Here are some more ideas on what type of flow­ers and green­ery you can com­bine to cre­ate some love­ly mono­chro­mat­ic designs. Keep in mind that the green, red, orange, yel­low and white ideas make great Father’s Day flow­ers. While most Dads pre­fer some­thing to plant in the gar­den for a flow­ery Father’s Day gift, we have not had many men upset over receiv­ing flow­ers that are thought­ful­ly picked out and arranged just for them. Here are some mono­chro­mat­ic flower recipe ideas (see image inspi­ra­tion at Pinterest.com/flowerduetla)

• Green: Ker­mit Mums, Green Trick Dianthus, Ruscus
• Red: Free­dom Ros­es, Red Hyper­icum Berries, Red Cockscomb Celosia
• Orange: Orange Unique Ros­es, Orange Cockscomb Celosia, Orange Tulips
• Yel­low: Gold Strike Ros­es, Bil­ly Balls, Yel­low Ranunculus
• Pur­ple: Pur­ple Hydrangea, Pur­ple Tra­chili­um, Pur­ple Arti­choke, Dahlias
• Pink: Pink Peonies, Pink Astilbe, Mini Pink Calla Lilies
• White:White Hydrangea, Veron­i­ca, Orchids, Dusty Miller, Bru­nia Berries

Flower Duet’s Own Green Flower Design Recipe

See this month’s book rec­om­men­da­tion, “The Flower Recipe Book,” for a col­lec­tion of flower recipes that are get­ting a lot of buzz in the flo­ral design pub­lish­ing world. Here is our ver­sion of that — see pho­to above for details on which flower is which just like in the book!

• 4 Mini Green Hydrangea
• 4 Green Trick Dianthus
• 3 Green Hyper­icum Berries
• 5 Super Green roses
• 7 Green Jade cuttings
• 2 large stems of Lemon Gera­ni­um leaves
• Con­tain­er: Wood 7.5 inch­es square by 3.5 inch­es high
• Lin­er: 7 inch diam­e­ter by 3 inch high plas­tic round bowl
• Foam: ½ brick Oasis Flo­ral Foam

Con­tain­er and Lin­er for Green Mono­chro­mat­ic design.

How to Choose, Care For and Revive Flowers

by Kit Wertz

Flow­ers in buck­ets at the flower market.

It’s hap­pened to all of us. We pur­chase or receive a love­ly bou­quet of flow­ers for a spe­cial occa­sion and the next day, some of the flow­ers in the vase look a bit wilt­ed. It’s very dis­ap­point­ing when this hap­pens, so here are a few tips on how to first avoid flow­ers that will wilt quick­ly and also on how to revive a few dif­fer­ent types of flowers.

How to Pick Fresh Flowers

Ros­es packed in bunch­es of 25 stems at the whole­saler are ready for inspection.

In our class­es and on our tours of the LA Flo­ral Dis­trict, we teach you how to select fresh flow­ers from the whole­sale ven­dors. Here are a few of those tips so you can pass them on to the per­son who buys you flowers.

Here is Casey inspect­ing flow­ers at the mart with a bride, groom, moth­er-of-the-bride, and wed­ding plan­ner. We offer group tours of the LA Flower Mart each month for $20 per per­son. As part of our wed­ding pack­age, we offer a free option­al tour of the LA Flower Mart to our brides and grooms.

Buy­ing Tip 1 – Don’t buy late in the day at the mart unless you want a good bar­gain and only need the flow­ers for that night. This is because the ven­dors are push­ing the prod­uct out to make room for the fresh arrivals. Best bar­gains are had on Sat­ur­day morn­ings, but beware, most of it is old­er than what you’ll see on a Mon­day after the trucks arrive with the week’s first delivery.

Buy­ing Tip 2 – Look for any wet drips on flow­ers in the buck­ets. This hap­pens when some­one else takes out flow­ers in a care­less way and drips onto the flow­ers below. When this occurs, the flow­ers which were dripped on will most like­ly devel­op brown spots. They may look okay that day, but in a few days, you’ll see the problems.

Buy­ing Tip 3 – Know your ven­dors. Devel­op a good rela­tion­ship with your ven­dors and they will give you the best product.

Buy­ing Tip 4 – Inspect green­ery below the water line of a whole­sale buck­et and make sure it’s fresh and green and does not have any moldy or mildew spots.

Buy­ing Tip 5 – Shake out blooms like Chrysan­the­mums to see if any petals fall off. If so, move on to anoth­er ven­dor or bunch.

These open Stargaz­er Lilies would be great for an evening event the same day as pur­chased. Note that even the pollen has been removed. These have been on the floor for over a week.

Buy­ing Tip 6 – In gen­er­al, buy flow­ers that are bud­ding and just bare­ly open­ing. These sig­ni­fy the fresh­est flow­ers. In the case of flow­ers like Ger­ber Daisies that are already open, give a gen­tle tug at a petal to make sure it’s hang­ing on tight. If you dam­age any flow­ers dur­ing your inspec­tion, please buy them anyway.

It’s all about Conditioning

In our class­es and tours, we talk about lots of dif­fer­ent tech­niques for con­di­tion­ing spe­cif­ic types flow­ers. For exam­ple, some flow­ers do real­ly well with a treat­ment of Quick Dip (Hydrangeas). Oth­er flow­ers need to be con­di­tioned in boil­ing water before arrang­ing them (Dahlias).
Here are the gen­er­al guide­lines for con­di­tion­ing flow­ers you buy at the whole­saler, farm­ers’ mar­ket or gro­cery store.

Dahlias need spe­cial treat­ment for con­di­tion­ing to help them drink water.

Re-Cut — When you first receive flow­ers, re-cut the stems at a 45-degree angle under water if pos­si­ble. Set the flow­ers in water treat­ed with flo­ral preser­v­a­tive for an hour before arrang­ing into your design.

Remove — Remove excess foliage that would fall below the vase water-line. Decay­ing leaves and foliage left on stems con­tribute to bac­te­ria build-up in the water.

Use real flower food. It has a food for the flower and an anti-bac­te­r­i­al agent to help flow­ers last in a vase.

• Feed — Use a com­mer­cial­ly-pre­pared flo­ral preser­v­a­tive to ensure long-last­ing flowers.
• Dis­play — Dis­play your arrange­ments in cool spots in your home. Avoid drafts, hot spots, and tele­vi­sion sets. Nev­er store ripen­ing fruit and flow­ers together.
• Clean — Use a clean vase or con­tain­er and check the water lev­el dai­ly. Every 2 or 3 days, re-cut the stems and change the water for max­i­mum flower life.
• Extend — As some flow­ers fade in the arrange­ment, don’t throw out all of the flow­ers! Take apart your arrange­ment and toss out the old flow­ers. Rinse and re-cut the stems of the fresh­er flow­ers and put them in a clean vase.

NOTE: A florist has done the con­di­tion­ing steps for you. The only thing you would need to do when you get home is if the bou­quet is out of the water, cut off the bot­tom two inch­es of the stems before quick­ly plac­ing them in your vase of water and flower food at home.

Five Flower Reviver Tips for Problematic Flowers

Wilt­ed Hydrangea Fix – Just after a Hydrangea head starts to de-hydrate and looks slight­ly limp, place the entire head upside down in a buck­et of plain cool water. Leave until the head is full again, which can take up to 24 hours. Gen­tly remove the head from the water and shake it off. Re-cut the stem and replace in the vase.

Spring Tulips are always cheer­ful but will grow after they are placed in a vase. This caus­es the blooms to droop. Here is a tip on how to get them to stand tall again.

Droopy Tulip Pick­up – Tulips nat­u­ral­ly droop in a vase after they’ve been arranged and this is because they con­tin­ue to grow up to three inch­es! We like that effect, but if you don’t you can perk up a Tulip’s head by slight­ly prick­ing the neck with a pin just below the bloom. This will cause the flower to try and repair the dam­age, thus send­ing ener­gy to the injury and as a result, should make it stand tall again.

Drunk­en Ger­ber Daisies – Ger­ber Daisies are water hogs and they droop because they don’t know how to stop drink­ing when placed in a vase full of water. The best bet is to lim­it how much water is in the vase with Ger­bers, but keep adding water as need­ed. When they are mixed with oth­er flow­ers, hope­ful­ly, the oth­er ones can give them the sup­port they need!

Mopey Dusty Miller – Dusty Miller is gor­geous when it stands up, but can real­ly ben­e­fit from a treat­ment with Quick Dip. If you need it to last out of the vase in a bou­quet, this is an essen­tial step. Cut two inch­es of the stem off, dip in Quick Dip for 3 sec­onds and then place in a vase with flower food for 24 hours.

Hang­ing Rose Heads – Rose heads droop because they were not con­di­tioned prop­er­ly after receiv­ing them from the whole­saler. The stem got blocked before it could fill up with enough water to sup­port the heavy head. In order to rem­e­dy this prob­lem, fill up a sink of water so you can sub­merge the stems length­wise. You may have to cut off some of the lengths of the stem to fit into your sink. Weigh down the stems with a pot of water (as shown here) and leave in the sink until they perk up again. Some of these ros­es were ready to go back into the vase after an hour and oth­ers need­ed to stay in the sink for four hours.

These were ros­es my hus­band gave to me for Moth­er’s Day. Out of the dozen, eight of the ros­es need­ed to be revived using this method. I am hap­py to report, I was able to enjoy them for a week instead of just a few days by using this sub­merg­ing tech­nique. Above left: The rose head is droop­ing due to lack of water. Above right, sub­merge entire stem in water to help the rose revive.

Video: Quick Dip Flowers to Prevent Wilted Blooms

Each month we like to fea­ture a video how-to that we have cre­at­ed. You can sub­scribe to our YouTube chan­nel: fash­ion­ingflow­ers so you’ll know when we’ve uploaded a new show of our own!

We are behind in video pro­duc­tion, so here is a video from the Japan­ese branch of the Smithers-Oasis Flo­ral­ife com­pa­ny. It shows how quick­ly that wilt­ed Dusty Miller can be revived with the prod­uct Quick Dip. Check it out. I first saw this video about a year ago and think it real­ly demon­strates the qual­i­ties of this florist tool. You don’t need to read the Japan­ese to under­stand how the prod­uct works. Click image below to watch video

Book Recommendation: The Flower Recipe Book

The Flower Recipe Book

We are always on the look­out for a flower design book that gives away all its secrets and this one fits our require­ments and then some! The founders of Stu­dio Choo, a San Fran­cis­co-based flo­ral design stu­dio, cre­at­ed this new hand­book for flo­ral design and it’s worth a spot on your bookshelf.

This book will not col­lect dust as you will be refer­ring to it for fresh ideas each sea­son. As ref­er­enced by the book’s title, each design fea­tured in the book is paired with a visu­al flower recipe. This allows you to be able to iden­ti­fy the hard to rec­og­nize and less com­mon flo­ral design materials.

The require­ments of being a suc­cess­ful flo­ral design­er is real­ly know­ing your mate­ri­als and this book helps you with that task by includ­ing many of the new and non-tra­di­tion­al flow­ers and green­ery we see in our whole­sale market.

Floral Design Tool: Chive.com Vases

From Chive.com’s Hud­son 2 collection

We always love a new vase and we just found out about this col­lec­tion of love­ly designs that you just won’t find at your local design chain store.
Chive’s ele­gant vas­es are a com­ple­ment to any set­ting and add whim­sy and ele­gance to any home, busi­ness, wed­ding or event.

From Chive.com’s Kos­ki collection

Using a ver­sa­tile array of media, includ­ing glass, plas­tic, alu­minum, porce­lain and ceram­ic, Chive’s col­lec­tions debut biannually.

From Chive.com’s Poo­ley collection

Based in Ontario, Cana­da, they ship to the US and Cana­da and soon to the UK. Here is a lit­tle about their phi­los­o­phy from their own Web site:
“Our fresh, new-school designs cou­pled with our unpre­ten­tious, old-school approach to cus­tomer ser­vice are what sets Chive apart. We are real peo­ple with mild phone addic­tions and an unpar­al­leled appetite for din­ers, dives and bar­be­cued anything.”