2012 Wedding Flowers Trends: Fragrant Garden Roses

by Casey Schwartz

Stop and Smell the Roses … and Check Out Those Petals

We are in full swing of the wed­ding sea­son and more brides than ever are dream­ing of fluffy, lay­ered AND fra­grant gar­den ros­es. These flo­ral beau­ties are in high demand and hap­pi­ly, the demand is being met by our whole­sale flower ven­dors and the qual­i­ty and vari­ety of choic­es con­tin­ue to exceed our expectations.

Over 10 years ago, there was only one whole­sale ven­dor who spe­cial­ized in gar­den ros­es at the Los Ange­les Flower Mar­ket. How­ev­er gor­geous and fra­grant they were, they were also short-stemmed and had a very short season.

Variety of Choice Expands

If you just want to enjoy the glo­ry of them, head down to Mayesh at the LA Mart and grab a bunch. Be aware, that while the tra­di­tion­al long-stem cut ros­es grown for the flo­ral trade come in bunch­es of 25 stems, gar­den ros­es are sold in bunch­es of 12 stems and sub­se­quent­ly, cost a bit more per stem.

All of these images were tak­en since our last newslet­ter on four dif­fer­ent vis­its to the mart with brides and stu­dents. We lin­gered around all the buck­ets full of these beauties.

They are called Yves Piaget, Aphrodite, and Piano and their col­ors range from creamy white to deep purples.

We just could not pull our­selves away from the entic­ing petals and the sweet smell.

About David Austin Roses

How to Make Cut Garden Roses Last in a Vase

Accord­ing to David Austin Rose web­site: “The green coloura­tion on the out­er petals is a nat­ur­al char­ac­ter­is­tic of our beau­ti­ful Eng­lish Ros­es. These thick­er out­er petals help to pro­tect the del­i­cate­ly-furled inner petals. The green colour will grad­u­al­ly become hid­den as the flower opens out into its full old rose shape.” These ros­es should last at least five days in a vase, but you should han­dle them care­ful­ly as these petals are soft­er than tra­di­tion­al cut ros­es and can dam­age easily.As with all cut flow­ers, make sure the vase is real­ly clean, using bleach if nec­es­sary and rins­ing well. Avoid met­al con­tain­ers which may short­en vase life.

• Dis­solve the flower food in luke­warm water accord­ing to the pack­age instructions.
• Remove the bot­tom 1‑inch of the stem, mak­ing a slant­ed cut with a clean sharp flo­ral knife or cut­ters. When you do this, cut under water to ensure that no air bub­ble remains in the stem.
• Remove all foliage that will be below the vase water line.
• Eng­lish cut ros­es take up lots of water quick­ly. Add more water as needed.
• Every sec­ond day, rinse the stems clean and change the water. Be sure to recut the stems and always use flo­ral food in the water.
• The warmer the room, the short­er the vase life. For long life, keep away from drafts, fresh fruit and direct sunlight.
• To help the gar­den ros­es open up quick­ly for a spe­cial event, place them spaced well apart in plen­ty of water in a warm, bright­ly-lit room. Always add flower food to the water. The short­er you cut the stems, the wider the blooms will open.

Where to Find Garden Roses

Garden Roses … By the Bucket? You Bet!!!

While a bowl full of deep red cher­ries con­jures sum­mer joy, we imag­ine a buck­et of 120 stems of cut gar­den ros­es can real­ly get a flower girl excit­ed!! Right now at a ven­dor in down­town LA, you can get a buck­et full of ros­es for just about 16 cents per stem! This is amazing!

Dis­guised in plain brown paper, once you take a peek inside the paper, it takes your breath away. Ros­es, tons of ros­es, cut fresh, in water, and rang­ing $20–30.00 a buck­et. Col­ors range from most­ly pinks and reds to a few orange and white gar­den roses.

Cut and buck­et­ed local­ly the price is $30.00 on Thurs­day and drops to $20.00 on Sat­ur­day as the mar­ket is closed on Sunday.

Once again, these ros­es are a bar­gain at 16 cents a stem. Get ’em while they’re hot. Find them at Eliseo’s (213–627-4898) on the Orig­i­nal Los Ange­les Flower Mart Side.
Con­tact us for direc­tions, where to park and how to find these and Mayesh’s bins of roses.

July 4th Decoration and Floral Ideas on Flower Duet’s Pinterest Board

by Kit Wertz

What is Pinterest and Social Bookmarking?

As I am an Inter­net Mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant when I am not being a florist, I am often absorbed into the geeky world of social media mar­ket­ing sites.

Social book­mark­ing is a method for Inter­net users to orga­nize, store, man­age and search for book­marks of resources online. Some orig­i­nal ser­vices include DIGG or Stum­ble­Upon which can be used to cat­e­go­rize the pages and web­sites you like on the Web and then share your favorites with oth­er peo­ple. This is a handy way to find out what is trend­ing for cer­tain top­ics and whether a cer­tain arti­cle might be wor­thy of check­ing out online based on how many peo­ple have book­marked it.

One of the newest social book­mark­ing sites that is total­ly cool for crafty peo­ple like you is Pin­ter­est. The best way to describe it is a vir­tu­al bul­letin board for your favorite ideas you find online. So, you can “pin” images of flo­ral designs, recipes or the glass tile for your kitchen remod­el on your own Pin­ter­est board and then share it with others.

The best thing about shar­ing with oth­ers is that you can find oth­er things you like by fol­low­ing oth­er “pin­ners.” You can “repin” pho­tos from oth­er boards onto your boards and you can “like” or com­ment on oth­er people’s pins.

I’ve seen some great ideas for recipes, cloth­ing, kids toys, gar­dens and more!

How To Join and Use Pinterest

Flower Duet has embraced Pin­ter­est and has five boards. To join, just go to the site, Pinterest.com and sign up. You’ll get your con­fir­ma­tion in a few days to a week that you’re all ready to start pinning.

When you are brows­ing the Web on sites like Sunset.com or BHG.com, look for the PinIt! But­ton. When you get to an image you like, just click the but­ton and you’ll be prompt­ed to add it to one of your boards. It’s super sim­ple and very fun!

You don’t have to have an account to see our July 4th Board on Pin­ter­est. Just click the image below. WARNING, Pin­ter­est can be addict­ing like so many things online.

FREE Video: How to Create a Tropical High-Style Floral Design

Check out the latest video on our YouTube channel

We con­tin­ue to add more free videos to our YouTube chan­nel. Casey appeared on behalf of Flower Duet for the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 sea­sons of Cre­ative Liv­ing, which air on PBS sta­tions across the coun­try. We are able to air these seg­ments with the per­mis­sion of Cre­ative Liv­ing via our chan­nel on YouTube!

This month, Casey shows Sheryl Bor­den from Cre­ative Liv­ing How to cre­ate a Tall High-Style Flo­ral Design Using Trop­i­cal Flow­ers includ­ing Ti leaves and Gin­ger flowers.

Sub­scribe to our YouTube chan­nel: fash­ion­ingflow­ers so you’ll know when we’ve uploaded a new show!

Book Review: Ribbon Crafts

The Com­plete Pho­to Guide to Rib­bon Crafts by Elaine Schmidt

In addi­tion to show­ing you how to cre­ate the clas­sic floristry bows, this book pro­vides a ref­er­ence for all kinds of crafts that involve ribbon.
The Com­plete Pho­to Guide to Rib­bon Crafts: *All You Need to Know to Craft with Rib­bon *The Essen­tial Ref­er­ence for Novice and Expert Rib­bon Crafters *Instruc­tions for Over 100 Projects includes step-by-step pho­tographed instruc­tions for a wide range of tech­niques as well as projects to accom­pa­ny each area of rib­bon crafting.

This is a com­pre­hen­sive guide as com­pared to most books on rib­bon crafts that are spe­cif­ic by tech­nique or end result (rib­bon flow­ers, silk rib­bon embroi­dery, mak­ing bows). This book explores a wide range of tech­niques and end prod­ucts, using all kinds of rib­bon, mak­ing it an essen­tial ref­er­ence for all craft enthu­si­asts. It includes ideas and projects for scrap­book­ing, home décor, gen­er­al craft­ing, and fashion.

Floral Design Tool: Ribbon Organizer

Don’t let your Rib­bon Col­lec­tion look like this!

We love flo­ral rib­bon, but it’s one flo­ral sup­ply that seems to mul­ti­ply overnight! We nev­er throw away good rib­bon, but find­ing an orga­nized home for all those var­i­ous sized spools, and the odd extra lengths has been a challenge.

The ivory and white rib­bons are replaced on a reg­u­lar basis, but it seems like the odd orange, hot pink and turquoise linger until that unusu­al col­or presents itself once again for a new spe­cial order.

After a few failed attempts at try­ing to rig some­thing from scratch, we final­ly searched online and found a great tool to orga­nize our rib­bon collection.

Sim­ply Renee Clip It Up Rib­bon Orga­niz­er makes an 18” and 36” rib­bon orga­niz­er with 40 clips to gath­er your loose lengths so you can use them when you need them. Geared towards scrap­book­ers, we had not seen this tool in any flo­ral trade mag­a­zine, but thanks to Google & Ama­zon, we have one place for our rib­bon in the studio.