My Journey with Flowers

I have seen people come to flowers from so many different directions. Maybe they're a vegetable farmer and were wanting to expand their offerings at the farmer's market, or somebody who just loves them, just buys flowers every time they go to the grocery store and wanted to start growing some in their backyard. For me, I came to it through landscaping. Just loved growing things and wanted to have more of that in my life. And, you know, flowers quickly took over like they do pretty much for everybody. A little farm was born in my backyard. And as our kids got older, the business got bigger. We're starting shipping Dahlia tubers today. But there was this part of me that didn't want to just be a farmer. I wanted to not just cultivate beauty. I wanted to make beauty. Nobody could even imagine somebody both growing and arranging flowers. Everyone said you had to choose. You could be one or the other, but you definitely couldn't be both. And I wanted to be both. There were a lot of years that I grew flowers and was a gardener before I actually cut the blooms and brought them inside. I was completely self-taught. In the beginning, I didn't know anything and my bouquets were so ugly. And I thought they looked amazing. So I would rip pictures out of magazines and I would tape them up on the wall in the garage. And I would go pick all the flowers I could and I would come in and I would try to figure out how the heck do you make that happen in that vase? And it was impossible. So I spent many tearful nights out in the garage trying to teach myself how to make these arrangements that I was seeing in magazines. Like, how could I actually do that? Unless you could have someone show you or teach you, how would you figure it out? Over time, my connections grew and I met people and I was able to take workshops or email someone and ask questions or someone would share a tip on their blog. That was really when I had breakthroughs. And then I would go practice it like crazy and then get good at it. So I think when it comes to the art of floral design and arranging, I think all of us have learned a lot of what we know from someone else sharing what they know with us. Like, it is definitely something you kind of need to see done in order to get it. Hi, I'm Erin Benzikein. I run a small flower farm in Washington State called Florette. In addition to growing flowers, I also do weddings and events. And today I'm going to show you how to make a big arrangement. In the beginning, my reasons for wanting to be a farmer florist were pretty innocent. Like I loved growing and I loved making beautiful things with the flowers that I grew. So I wanted to find a way to combine my two passions. But as I got to understand the industry in a deeper way, I absolutely wanted to try to help change it. When I started growing flowers professionally, the floral industry looked nothing like it does today. Most of the flower shops were owned by men. Most of the florists were men. All of the books and the tutorials and the things that you could find about arranging flowers, they were never using anything that you would see in the garden. All of the flowers that were being bought and sold, very few of them were grown here in the States. Everything felt so controlled and so rigid and very removed from nature. It lacked magic. I spent so much energy and time trying to convince all of the different players in the industry that this local seasonal flower movement was a thing, right? We could change the world if we all worked together. And pretty much everybody was like, whatever, just rolled their eyes. Florists would always say, there is no way that you can make arrangements out of using only seasonal product for the entire, say, wedding season. Like, that is not possible. And then farmers would argue that there is no way that florists are gonna want to buy all of the unusual novelty stuff. They want to buy the kinds of flowers that they're used to at the wholesaler. Eventually, I found that the most effective way to make my case was to just demonstrate that it was possible. People need to see something in order to believe it. Okay, ready when you are. Mic on? Mic's on. Okay. A flower farmer friend of mine and I, who was on the opposite coast, we were feeling very creatively zapped. We were kind of feeling burned out. And we wanted to find some kind of way to stay connected during the growing season and also stay creatively inspired. So we came up with this idea. What if we made an arrangement every week of the growing season using only flowers that we grew on our farms or we sourced within, like, say, 60 miles of our farms? It had to be local. We started what we called the Seasonal Bouquet Project, and we started our own little blog. Each week, we would both make an arrangement using whatever we could source locally. We'd make our bouquets. We would take pictures of them. We'd put them on the blog, and then we would list all of the ingredients that we used in the bouquets. We wanted to demonstrate what was possible with local seasonal flowers. I think we started in late March or early April, and we went all the way into late October. We were really doing it just for us. But over time, it started to build momentum, and other growers and gardeners and florists started to play along. People would send in their photos, and we would link it in the blog in the comments. They'd link to their bouquets. When it was all said and done at the end of that growing season, we had participants from all over the world made thousands and thousands of bouquets using local seasonal blooms, and it was the most rewarding, fulfilling experience. Over that time, so many people were excited about what we were doing. That was really when I got the first real proof that there was something here. And over the next five years, we welcomed over 500 people here to the farm to learn either flower farming or seasonal floral design. They flew in from all over the world. Tickets sold out within minutes. We crashed our website. I mean, it was like the Wild West, and it was incredible. Everyone was as excited about it as we were, and we were all learning together and sharing notes and comparing ideas and trialing and testing and coming together to build this new community. It was such a departure from the way that the flower industry had been before. And so Jill and I decided now is the time that we write a book about this. There's definitely a need, and there is so much curiosity around it, so we spent more than a year writing and photographing and making A Year in Flowers. Happy launch day! Today is the day! It actually made it onto the New York Times bestseller list, like a flower arranging book, but that's how passionate people are about this topic. It changes you from the inside out. It really does. What do you think? Are you videoing me? Look at my heart. The local seasonal flower movement was born out of joy and abundance and connection and community, and it runs so deep in it that it's just such a beautiful thing. Now, about 20 years later, the majority of new flower farmers are women. They're bringing a different sensibility with them rather than this large-scale production mindset. Now, so many flower farmers and growers are doing it in their backyards and on little tiny plots and trying to educate the general public about the value of local seasonal blooms, about working with nature, about the importance of supporting your local growers and local small businesses. So every time you buy flowers that are grown locally, like you're not only investing in your community, but you're investing in someone's dream of making the world more beautiful. It's a pretty incredible thing. It took a long time to get to where we are today, but I feel like we're just at the beginning of what's possible. I'm very excited to be part of it and to get to watch what happens in the next 10 or 20 years.