Richly Hued Summer Flowers

Floral Colors Evoke a Warm Sunset

By Kit Wertz

We’ve cre­at­ed flow­ers for recent wed­dings and events that mim­ic­ked the sun­set and thought how beau­ti­ful they looked. What bet­ter way to cel­e­brate sum­mer heat than through flow­ers and their colors!

While many of our recent events were still most­ly pop­u­lat­ed with blush, peach, white and creams, we are now see a turn toward rich­er hues includ­ing oranges, reds and the Pan­tone Col­or of the Year, Marsala.

American Flowers Week

By Flower Duet

It’s the week before our Inde­pen­dence day and a week to cel­e­brate the flower farm­ers of Amer­i­ca! We join Debra Prinz­ing of SlowFlowers.com to hon­or and sup­port our local growers.

This is her first cel­e­bra­tion of Amer­cian Flow­ers Week and she hopes to make it an annu­al event. Here is a lit­tle bit about this from her website:

We are in the mid­dle of cel­e­brat­ing the inau­gur­al Amer­i­can Flow­ers Week, June 29th through July 4th. We cre­at­ed Amer­i­can Flow­ers Week as a grass roots edu­ca­tion, pro­mo­tion and advo­ca­cy cam­paign to high­light our nation’s farms, florists, flow­ers and foliage — and to raise aware­ness among con­sumers, the media and pol­i­cy­mak­ers about sup­port­ing domes­tic flowers!

If you haven’t joined in, there is plen­ty of time to get involved.

The eas­i­est thing you can do is to make a red-white-and-blue bou­quet using all Amer­i­can-grown, local and sea­son­al blooms. Please post that pho­to on your social sites and tag #amer­i­can­flow­er­sweek. I believe this effort will grow from a small idea into a sig­nif­i­cant annu­al event – and by adding your voice (and cre­ativ­i­ty) to Amer­i­can Flow­ers Week, you’re help­ing sing the prais­es of our home­grown blooms.

So, seek out your local grow­ers at your local farm­ers mar­ket or Whole Foods or find a “Pick Your Own” farm where you can pick a bou­quet with your fam­i­ly and cre­ate a gor­geous home grown bouquet!

Western Drought and Flower Farmers News

by Casey Schwartz

It’s in the news every day about the need to con­serve water in Cal­i­for­nia and some of our clients ask us what we are doing in our thirsty busi­ness to help con­serve. Here are some facts about water and flower farm­ers as well as what we are doing to use less water and recy­cle more.

Hav­ing to rely on water to lit­er­al­ly keep our busi­ness alive, can be con­cern­ing when there is a drought in our state.  Flower Duet does all we can to con­serve water by using less and by doing as they do in the flower fields through­out California…we recy­cle water.  When we fin­ish with flow­ers in bins, we use it to water our out­door plant­i­ngs or we pour the water into the Coun­ty of Los Ange­les treat­ment sys­tem (into our inter­nal drains and into the sew­er) where it goes through a process and part of it will show up again ready to use to water golf cours­es and oth­er munic­i­pal landscapes.

Accord­ing to the LA San­i­ta­tion Dis­tricts, urban waste water, after treat­ment, is a good sub­sti­tute for ground­wa­ter or import­ed sur­face water for irri­ga­tion and oth­er on-farm uses. The Cal­i­for­nia Water Recy­cling Cri­te­ria allow over 40 spec­i­fied uses of recy­cled water—including irri­ga­tion of all types of food and flower crops. In Cal­i­for­nia, grow­ers have used recy­cled water for the last 50 years, and have proven that this prac­tice is safe and eco­nom­i­cal. Recy­cled water is also sus­tain­able, con­serves ener­gy and pro­vides a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the nutri­ents need­ed by the crops—nitrogen, phos­pho­rus and micro nutrients.

Cal­i­for­nia farm­ers grow 80% of the cut flow­ers grown in the USA, so they know how impor­tant water is to the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing flow­ers.  One of the grow­ers is Farm­er­swest in Carpin­te­ria, Cal­i­for­nia. They know water is pre­cious and they do their part by drain­ing water from the crops grown hydro­pon­i­cal­ly for their Ger­ber Daisies. It is col­lect­ed and reused on oth­er crops as well as imple­ment­ed irri­ga­tion water man­age­ment to reduce water use.  Many of the farms in this area fol­low very sim­i­lar practices.

In an arti­cle from ProduceNews.com, Cal­i­for­nia flower farm­ers talk about how they have pre­pared for drought. Accord­ing to the arti­cle, how the drought affects grow­ers varies wide­ly on where their farms are locat­ed with­in the state and many use a com­bi­na­tion of well water, dis­trict water as well as reclaimed and recy­cled water.

Wastewater Treatment Graphic

Below is a graph­ic from the Hype­r­i­on Waste­water Treat­ment Sys­tem locat­ed on the coast in El Segun­do, Calif. and we thought you could see where the waste­water ends up once it goes into the drainage sys­tems from offices, ware­hous­es and homes. As you can see from the graph­ic, some of the water is reused as recy­cled water for irrigation.

Click Image to View Full Size

July Floral Design Classes

By Flower Duet

Three com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent flo­ral design class­es  are offered this July. Two are at our stu­dio in the South bay of Los Ange­les and the oth­er is at the South Coast Botan­ic Gar­den in Palos Verdes. Each offers an inter­me­di­ate lev­el expe­ri­ence for the all students.

Here is a clos­er look at this mon­th’s class­es. Be sure to sign up soon before the class is full! All class sizes are lim­it­ed so you receive one-on-one attention.

Roses, Roses, Roses — July 18, 2015

Learn all about the won­der­ful come­back of the gar­den style rose in com­mer­cial flo­ral design and how to inte­grate it into an ele­gant arrange­ment with stan­dard and spray ros­es. This class includes an option­al tour of the Los Ange­les Flower Dis­trict.  We pro­vide the cut flow­ers, vas­es, flo­ral cut­ters and step-by-step instruc­tions on how to rec­og­nize the fresh­est flow­ers, how to care for them and how to cre­ate a beau­ti­ful flower arrange­ment. Each of you will then be hands on with your own set of flow­ers to cre­ate a bou­quet to keep. (No added fees for any sup­plies.) Reser­va­tions required through Flower Duet.

Succulent Garland Class at South Coast Botanic Garden — July 19th, 2015

This class sold out last month at The Hunt­ing­ton Library where Kit of Flower Duet showed stu­dents how to cre­ate a long-last­ing liv­ing gar­land com­plete with suc­cu­lents, green­ery and fresh flow­ers. All of the fea­tured suc­cu­lents could be replant­ed into a pot or gar­den. Flower Duet will teach stu­dents how to choose the fresh­est cut flow­ers, which flow­ers and green­ery com­bine well togeth­er to make a cohe­sive design, how to com­pose the design and make it last a long time. All sup­plies are includ­ed. Stu­dents will take home their designs. Reg­is­tra­tion for this class is required 48 hours in advance of class start date. Please con­tact Guest Ser­vices at 310–544‑1948
at the Gar­den to reserve the class.

Wedding Centerpieces — Wednesday Wedding Series II — July 22nd, 2015

Furry Felines Protect Flowers and the Los Angeles Flower District

By Flower Duet

Last week, I was delight­ed to read a feel-good sto­ry in the Los Ange­les Times on June 26, 2015, about res­cued cats, includ­ing one tough kit­ty called Paci­no — as in “Al,” who work at the Los Ange­les Flower Dis­trict on rat patrol.

Accord­ing to Jerome Camp­bell, the jour­nal­ist for the arti­cle, “As part of the Work­ing Cats pro­gram, street cats like Paci­no are res­cued from ani­mal shel­ters and sent to loca­tions rang­ing from police sta­tions, like the LAPD’s Wilshire and Foothill divi­sions, to pri­vate homes, busi­ness­es and schools. Over the years, the pro­gram has placed about 500 cats in near­ly 50 locations.”

The pro­gram was devel­oped in 1999 when a mar­ket employ­ee alert­ed Melya Kaplan, a fre­quent cus­tomer of the mar­ket, about the rats in the work­place. Tra­di­tion­al exter­mi­na­tors tech­niques did not keep the rodents away.

Cats patrol the mar­ket at night, keep the rodent pop­u­la­tion at bay, save flow­ers from being nib­bled on and wood­en cool­er doors from being gnawed through!

Accord­ing to Kaplan, cats may live few­er than five years on the streets, but can live more than 14 years in a home, busi­ness or police sta­tion. At the Flower Dis­trict, the patrol cats are giv­en meals and the build­ings give them pro­tec­tion from bad weath­er, dogs and cars.

Read the entire arti­cle on these flower-pro­tect­ing cats at The Los Ange­les Times.

Floral Design Tool — Wreath Forms for Succulent Wreaths & Succulents

When you take our liv­ing suc­cu­lent gar­land class this month, we’ll teach you the tech­nique for cre­at­ing “liv­ing” gar­lands in moss shapes in addi­tion to using our tra­di­tion­al flo­ral design­er tech­nique for keep­ing flow­ers fresh in a garland.

After that class, you’ll be ready to tack­le your win­ter suc­cu­lent wreath. Yes…to make a suc­cu­lent wreath look fab­u­lous for your Novem­ber door, you’ll need to start mak­ing it now. It takes time for the roots to take hold in a wreath form and for some suc­cu­lents to fill in. Here are the tools you can eas­i­ly order from Amazon.com for your own liv­ing suc­cu­lent wreath or oth­er fun shape.

Moss Wreath Form with Moss Pins

Suc­cu­lent Cut­tings for Top­i­aries and Wreaths

Floral Design Book — Living Wreaths

This book, Liv­ing Wreaths: 20 Beau­ti­ful Projects for Gift and Decor by Natal­ie Bernhisel-Robinson

From Amazon.com:

From the sim­plest herb wreath to more extrav­a­gant suc­cu­lent designs, the strong out­lines and shapes of these liv­ing wreaths have great visu­al impact. Bern­his­el-Robin­son uses step-by-step instruc­tions, an encour­ag­ing voice, and gor­geous pho­tographs illus­trat­ing her tech­niques to teach how to make not just a wreath but a mod­ern gar­den in minia­ture that changes to become even more beau­ti­ful as the plants mature. Includes echev­e­ria, hens and chicks, cac­tus, moss, straw­ber­ry, toma­to, herb, let­tuce, laven­der, and more! Natal­ie Bern­his­el-Robin­son has more than fif­teen years expe­ri­ence in the flo­ral design world. Her design com­pa­ny, La Fleur, spe­cial­izes in cus­tom flo­ral design for wed­dings and spe­cial events. Natal­ie holds a suc­cess­ful hol­i­day wreath-mak­ing class each Decem­ber. She makes her home in Utah with her hus­band and two children.

Order from Amazon.com — Liv­ing Wreaths: 20 Beau­ti­ful Projects for Gift and Decor by Natal­ie Bernhisel-Robinson