Flowers for your vase: Go local

Elegance Formula Sweet Pea Mix from Johnny’s Seeds catalog.

By Marie Reinsdorf

Spring is on the way, and Culpeper County flower grower Bob Wollam is starting his sweet peas in a hoop house. They go in now to beat the heat but must be undercover where the soil won’t freeze. Sweet peas have a heavenly aroma, which is interesting because they do best with plenty of manure added to the soil.

Locally grown cut flowers, while not available through supermarkets or most florist shops, are in an exciting stage of re-emergence. They are stunning testimony to what our land can produce. Local flowers are grown by creative and enterprising farmers in abundant variety, with offerings changing by the week – Wollam Gardens lists over 150 – and they are available for your vase within a day of cutting. 

There are also other benefits: You can get acquainted with the farms and farmers. And the growing season is longer than you might think.

Wollam Farms bouquets [Theresa Defluri]

I recently spoke with Amber Flack of Little Acre Flowers, which provides regionally grown flowers throughout the D.C. metro area.  

Little Acre’s winter bouquets include “a variety of local blooms and greens, mostly from heated greenhouses and hoop houses.” Flack says. “This week we’re working with things like anemones, tulips, lilies, snapdragons, iris, buddleia, delphinium, eucalyptus, magnolia, and cedar.”

Toxic imports

Today, about 80 percent of cut flowers sold in our country are imported, most coming from South America. These businesses took off after the 1991 Andean Trade Preference Act, which offered duty-free imports to the U.S. as part of the “war on drugs.” 

The goal was to encourage farmers to grow something other than coca, explains Amy Stewart in Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, a book published in 2008 about the $40 million international cut-flower industry.  

This provides florists with a year-round standard selection of flowers already several days old by the time they hit the shop. 

These flowers are bred for packageability, and scent is one of the qualities that is pushed out. One bug or spot of blight can cause delay or rejection of the batch by agricultural inspectors at the port of entry. Thus, pesticides including some not legal in the U.S., are applied, and roses are typically dipped in a vat of fungicide, first the bloom then the stem. 

Bouquets from Two Boots Farm

Flowers aren’t for eating, so they are not tested for pesticide residue. The pesticides are a hazard not so much for us buyers as for florists handling these flowers all day long – and even more, for the workers in the country of origin, of course. I spoke to a floral designer who developed irritations and infections on her fingers after working exclusively with roses for a client.

Foreign-grown flowers will always have a place, but we can move local flowers to the front.

My experience at a flower farm

During the summer of 2008, I worked for Faucher Meadows, a two-acre Great Falls flower farm operated by Elaine Faucher from 1995 to 2010. She loved her flowers but it was hard work. 

My little half-day shifts were full of vigorous tasks while leaning over the ground in the heat and swatting off bugs bombarding the eyes: tugging hard to stretch nylon string into grids to keep dahlias from falling over, and carefully wedging baby plants into cuts made in stiff weed barrier cloth. 

But being amid the color and personalities of the flowers, with butterflies galore hovering, took the breath away. 

A California flower grower offers this observation in Flower Confidential: “The impact of a field of flowers in bloom is just something you never get over. People come here and I put a bouquet of flowers in their hands, and the response is tremendous. Like nothing else. Whiskey – that’s fine. Candies are all right. But flowers? That’s something different, I gotta tell you.”

Bob Wollam on his tractor with “4,000 hours on the odometer and still going strong.” [Theresa Defluri]

Going local

Because local flowers are not part of the retail “grid,” being a bit of a hunter-gatherer is called for:

• For inspiration to start your cut-flower habit, watch this short film made by the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers, featuring growers around the country. 
• Visit farmers markets.
• Spend a bit of time on the internet to find and bookmark growers. You may be able to visit some growers at any time. For others, sign up for the farm’s email newsletter to learn about special events. 

Little Acre Flowers’ “about/how” page lists growers’ websites, including Wollam Gardens, Butterbee Farm, Hillen Homestead, Jenkins Farm, Two Boots Farm, Cockleshell Farm, and Grateful Gardeners.  

Bob Wollam experienced such increased interest among people wanting to visit his farm during the pandemic when indoor facilities were closed that he put out picnic tables for visitors and rebranded his farm  as “A Flower Destination.”

A bouquet by Elaine Faucher.

Other farms that grow flowers include Cedar Folly Farm in the Front Royal area, LynnVale Studios in Prince William County, Greenstone Fields in Purcellville, and Pleasant Hills Farm in Darnestown, Md. 

• Some CSA (community-supported-agriculture) buying clubs have a flower option. The Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA, for example, offers a flower share for $12 a week, providing a bouquet of organically grown flowers from Greenstone Fields. 
• Think about local flowers for your event, such as weddings,  business meetings, or social gatherings. Your flowers will not be just table ornaments, but conversation pieces. All growers work with floral designers who can set up at your site, and some growers have event capacity.
• When calling a florist (here or anywhere), mention you are interested in local blooms. That could encourage a florist to connect with growers to start offering locally grown bouquets.

Grow your own

• If you have space, you can try growing your own. Some easier flowers to start from seed are zinnia, nigella, sunflower, phlox, and marigold. Plant larkspur, Sweet William, and poppy in the fall.
• A cut-flower garden can be incorporated into a homeowners association or business common area. 
• Some flower growers offer classes. 
• Plan to leave some flowers for the pollinators. According to Centreville horticulturalist and floral designer Theresa Defluri, Mountain Mint, a native grown more as a green for bouquets, has been observed being visited by 85 different pollinating insect species.