The Floral Hustle

  📍 Hello, flower friend. This is Jen from the Floral Hustle Podcast for this week's, Minnesota. I wanna talk about why and how you should work with flower farmers in your area. I personally feel like in the last. Probably since 2018, I actually took a trip out to, uh, flower Stock bef right before the pandemic.

Uh, it was. a amazing experience. It's something that Holly Chapel puts on. Uh, and I actually, I have another episode kind of talking about how that really just like changed so much in my, um, floral career and floral trajectory as a, um, designer, as a human being. But what I really fell in love with is growing flowers and locally grown flowers.

I right now have a urban flower farm and I took the Flore, uh, workshop, which is a workshop that's every year that literally tells you from soup to nuts how to start growing flowers at scale, or even if you wanna do it smaller. Uh, I've also taken the team flower hole gardening intensive that they have because I.

Just love learning. And that is, um, two resources that I've personally used. But, uh, in Minnesota, we have a little bit of a special circumstances from a local flower farmer perspective. We actually have a flower grower's co-op. It is called T C F E, twin City Floral Exchange. And actually this week it was announced that mash, um, purchased it.

Uh, which is interesting cuz we'll see how that evolves. But literally it has been this resource of all these flower farmers that come together and sell at this one location. That person who coordinates, who owned the business, you know, sources all the flowers you can special order. So we really have like an amazing situation here.

But without that, I still buy from other, uh, flower farmers directly. And how I've found them is Instagram. And I know a lot of people don't think about like, oh, I wanna search for flower farmers on Instagram. It's not something that I search out to do, but just like when I'm searching out for finding new wedding planners or finding wedding planners to reach out to, or finding other businesses or even freelancers I mentioned in the lance, I pay attention to who is tagged by other Flos.

And when I see those tags, I screenshot, I, I hit the uh, tag, I go to that flower farmer page and I screenshot it. and then save it for me to reach out to them to either get on their email, email list if they have a weekly email list, or to just reach out to them via DM to understand how they sell to Floris.

And if they aren't selling to Floris, I just talk to 'em about like, this is. You know, something that, um, I do with other flower farmers and, you know, what do you grow? Maybe it'd be something that I could be interested in potentially, um, purchasing direct and you could develop your business. There are two flower farmers that I buy direct from at scale here, and then another one that, um, I bought.

From, I would say like three different times last year, and I'm mainly buying like dahlias. I bought some like green with red tinge, um, hydrangeas from one. I buy a lot of amaranthus and celosia for from another, but literally it has elevated. My designs, it's fueled my creativity. It's fueled my soul because like there's just so much beautiful, uh, product that just comes from our local flower farmers here, as well as like, I just feel so much more inspired working with those rather than the same old roses that, uh, which I, I love roses personally, but there's nothing like a bald dahlia that makes my heart like just sink like, So amazing to just feel, especially when you grow flowers, which I'm going to do an episode on that as well, to feel like connected, to feel more like you're a part of the process, and to feel just so much more inspired because you're inspired by nature, you're inspired by beauty, but let's just say that you can't find.

On Facebook, some local flower farmers. Something that I have also done is, uh, you can go to Slow Flowers. That is a website that has a lot of, um, different, um, flower farmers and the American Cut Flower Growers Association is another. So, And then literally you can also just go to Google and Google, um, local flower farmers Minnesota, or flower farmers, you know, Bloomington, Minnesota, or whatever that combination is.

You can do a quick search and it's just so easy for you to be able to find all of these flower farmers and utilize. Their, their inventory of amazingness. When I started designing with locally grown product, I felt like my Instagram feed, the vibe and the feel like literally just evolved, like overnight.

Uh, I just, I felt. I was showing up in a different way. I felt like I was, uh, more natural and organic. I felt my feed just transformed into something that was more appealing to the modern romance garden style that is kind of flooding Pinterest right now. And, and lots of other Floris, uh, that is the direction they go.

So I just, I loved it and I think. You don't know unless you try. And so make it an initiative for this year because it's also something to talk about. People want sustainability. People want to support sustainability if possible, and they want to support the local economy. And if you are explaining to them that you try to source locally grown first.

You're just, that's a little edge. If the other florist isn't mentioning that, and that's on top of the edge for you as a person of process, of processing flowers, of getting them ready to be able to design with, there is so much less work. You're, you have bring buckets to your, um, flower farmer friend.

They are literally, you're removing a rubber band. , and that is about it. You're not going through this crazy process of taking plastic off of unwrapping cardboard, which there is a time and place. Sometimes you just need those items, but you're not going to fill your garbage cans with waste because that waste is just not there.

And I. I also think that like time to farm to vase is cut just so much shorter that it is going to make a huge difference in the longevity of the flowers on how they're looking on wedding day because they're not. Another five to seven days older because of that transportation time. So here's a few reasons I hope you found that interesting.

If you ever have questions about like, how do I work with a flower farmer? You know, like in my area, I just don't understand. Please send me a dm. I'm happy to help. It's something I'm very passionate about. I'm very passionate about supporting our local flower economy because I feel that that is so important, especially.

When, you know, like there's just so much change in, in jobs and people are really branching out, uh, and, and wanting to start their own business. And I've really seen that starting their own business as a flower farmer in a big way here in Minnesota. So, I sometimes even find flower farmers that, and I've been around them for years now, that I'm like, I had no idea.

Like this person was an hour south of here and had these amazing dahlias, or had these amazing, you know, climatics or whatever it is. So truly, it's worth your time. Reach out to a flower farmer and show them 📍 some love. Have a great day.