Our last cut flower garden update was published in March. The funny thing about growing plants from seeds: most of your work revolves around patience!
We’re proud to say that it looks like our patience certainly paid off.
So, what happened between then and now, from March to July?
Why Bother?
Our inspiration for growing our very own cut flower garden was simple: we want to keep even more of our production in-house, because it’s both more cost efficient and better for the environment. We’re already growing experts, so how hard could it be?
As a company, we’re known for our natural home decor - like wreaths and centerpieces. Most of our designs feature other botanicals, and we typically purchase these from other growers who specialize in this.
When we purchase from other growers, they have to ship their products to us. That involves packaging materials, boxes, and so much gas. If you haven’t noticed already, we’re pretty big on reducing our carbon footprint. We like to keep the Earth and its health in mind at every step in our business.
Starting Out
Admittedly, we didn’t have high hopes for this project. It was more of a test run than anything. If we were lucky, we’d use this year’s experiment to inform decisions for next year.
Our busy season starts in late summer/early fall, right around September, and it doesn’t stop until the start of February. In order for this project to succeed, we needed a huge, bountiful, high quality harvest that fully dried in time to begin our fresh production process. For those of you who’ve done the math, that’s about a 6 month turn around time from seed to dried decoration.
Read all about our planting process here!
What Happened?
As we mentioned, we’re super excited to say our little seedling experiments more than exceeded expectations!
Our seeds started out in trays of soil, just a few inches deep. Within a few short weeks, most of our different species produced sprouts. Already, that’s a great start to an uphill journey.
We kept a sharp eye on our new life, adjusting their light and water as needed. We got lucky with our strawflower, celosia, and silver tip grass.
Unfortunately, the Floridian summer heat claimed a couple of our seedling species. That’s okay - we’ll try again in more favorable weather.
Before long, sprouts became mature stalks - complete with flower buds! This was right around the start of June. We transferred larger plants to their own containers, and our staff got to work staking the plants. By inserting a stake next to each plant stalk and attaching the two to each other, the plant gets extra support for its upward growth.
If you’re doing this at home, staking is totally optional. We just find that it’s incredibly space efficient for us and growth efficient for the plant.
Over the course of the past two months, the garden erupted in color! Blooms, blooms everywhere! Our strawflower, silvertip grass, and celosia are ready for harvest. Yarrow needs a little more time, so we’ll harvest later in the year.
So We Have Flowers. What Now?
It was so tempting to go in and start cutting the first flowers we saw. Since we’re in a time crunch, it might have made sense. However, cutting too soon would have been a mistake.
Quality of the blooms is extremely important, so we continued our waiting game just a little longer until most of the blooms we saw were robust and fully mature.
Little by little, our team went into the gardens with clippers and baskets, harvesting only the blooms that were the most ready. Thankfully, we were blessed with abundance.
We cut each bloom with 8-10 inches of stalk still attached, because that’ll be important for the drying process.
Drying Our Freshly Cut Flowers
Much like growing our garden, drying is mostly a waiting game.
Our team took their baskets of blooms to one of our workshops - specifically selected because it’s a little darker and a little cooler than the rest. This building serves many purposes, like being our soap studio for our line of soaps and lotions.
We’re fortunate to have an amazingly smart and talented team. Our in-house engineer, Amor, went into the workshop and custom built drying racks from 2x4s and chicken wire fencing.
In order to dry our specimens, each one has to be individually inspected. The inspection is straightforward: remove the leaves and any unruly growth from the cutting, bundle 2-4 stems of a similar size together with rubber bands, then shake and agitate the bundle to knock out excess pollen, dirt, and dust.
We hang each bungle upside down by wedging the stalks between the wires. The specimens are light enough that they won’t fall, but the hanging is gentle enough that it won’t squish the flowers.
It’s important to keep in mind that whatever position we hang our flowers in is the position they’ll dry in. We make sure none of the bundles touch each other for this reason.
As the specimens dry out in a cool, dark environment for a week or two, the blooms retain their color. The cuttings also shrink a bit as they dehydrate.
What Comes Next?
Already, some of our earliest hung flower cuttings are almost done drying, and they’re so vibrant!
As we begin our holiday production, we’ll remove bundles from the wall. Our expert designers will cut the stems down to a manageable size and separate clumps of flowers to be spread out across our wreaths and decor. We’ll weave the now shorter stems into our fresh magnolia home decor, and before you know it, those designs are on your doorstep!
Anything we don’t use this holiday season will be carefully stored and preserved for the next designs that require them. We’re all about reducing waste, so if we have a large quantity of extra botanicals, it’s very likely we’d create a 2025 spring collection specifically to incorporate the excess.
What Do You Think?
Did you try this project with us? How does your garden grow? Are you in the drying phase yet?
We’d be over the moon to hear about your experience! Tell us your story by emailing us or DMing on our social media. We can’t wait to see what you’ll create!