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Celebrate American Flowers Week! Buy local

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED JUL 1, 2019

A dress covered in gerbera daisies, designed by Jenny M. Diaz, represents California in American Flowers Week's botanical couture collection. (Photo courtesy Jenny M. Diaz/American Flowers Week)

Support California growers of ‘Slow Flowers’

The last time you bought flowers, did you wonder: Where did these come from? Who grew these blooms and how?

This is American Flowers Week, a celebration of the nation’s flower farmers. It’s the ornamental equivalent of farm to fork. This is field (or garden) to vase.

Getting to know more about the source of bouquets is at the crux of Slow Flowers and American Flowers Week. Like Slow Food and its connection to locally sourced ingredients, Slow Flowers emphasizes locally sourced blooms and decorative material.

Slow Flowers expert Debra Prinzing came up with American Flowers Week in 2015 to draw attention to attempts to bring back commercial flower farming to the United States. About 80 percent of all flowers sold in the U.S. are grown overseas.

“I get asked this question often: Why should I care where my flowers come from?” Prinzing said. “The parallels between the Slow Food movement and the Slow Flowers movement are obvious. When we know where, who and how flowers are grown, we vote with our pocketbook.”

To show off some eye-popping blooms, Slow Flowers floral designers across the country created dresses entirely out of flowers. The botanical couture collection is featured in Florists’ Review magazine and at AmericanFlowersWeek.com .

Jenny M. Diaz, a Fresno-based artist and graphic designer, represented California in the collection with a '60s-style mod shift studded with hundreds of California-grown gerbera daisies. Diaz photographed the stunning pink and orange dress in her hometown.

“It's projects like these that help elevate and raise awareness about U.S. domestic floral agriculture and sustainable floral design,” Prinzing said. “The public and professionals are invited to download a library of free resources from the website (AmericanFlowersWeek.com), including graphics, images, floral coloring sheets and social media tools. Participation in American Flowers Week is open to all.”

Is American Flowers Week catching on?

Prinzing measures its impact via social media. In 2015, American Flowers Week made 400,000 social media impressions (Facebook shares, Instagram hits, etc.). Last year, it topped 4 million.

Its impact continues all year long as more farmers get into growing flowers.

Said Prinzing, “What I find really exciting is the amazing diversification, especially in small-cut flower farms, including those in the Sacramento Valley, who are growing unusual and heirloom annual varieties of cut flowers from ageratum to zinnias, highly valued garden roses for the floral marketplace, and flowers that the home gardener might never try growing, such as lisianthus.”

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Keywords:

American Flowers Week cut flowers Sacramento Sacramento Valley commercial flowers farms events farm to vase gardening Fresno Slow Flowers blooms flowers

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Flowers in My Back Yard Series

Aug. 4: Dianthus a deceptively hardy flower

July 28: Naked Ladies put on summer show

July 21: Thank Luther Burbank for these long-lasting beauties (Shasta daisies)

July 14: How to keep hydrangeas happy

July 7: Grow these bright cosmos for bees and butterflies

June 30: Agapanthus adds blue fireworks to the garden

June 23: Easy-care gazanias fill those hot corners

June 16: Daylilies are perfect for water-wise gardens (and a lot more)

June 9: Grow coneflowers for pollinators -- and yourself

June 2: Sunflowers capture Sacramento's summer attitude

May 29: Are your roses going 'blind'?

May 26: Zinnias are the summer flowers every garden needs

May 19: Plant dahlias now for late-summer flower power

May 12: Know your coreopsis from your bidens

May 5: Mums the word on Mother's Day weekend

April 28: Majestic Matilija poppy is worth a look

April 21: Celebrate roses, America's favorite flower

April 14: Small flowers with outsized impact

April 7: Calendulas do double duty

April 3: Make Easter lilies last for years to come

March 31: In praise of a pollinator magnet (small-leaf salvias)

March 24: Azaleas brighten shady spots

March 17: The perfect flower for beginners? Try zonal geraniums

March 10: Keep camellias happy for years to come

March 3: Fruit tree blossoms are a fleeting joy

Feb. 27: Are your roses looking rusty?

Feb. 24: Treasure spring daffodils now and for years to come

Feb. 17: How and why to grow wildflowers

Feb. 10: Let's talk Valentine's Day roses

Feb. 3: Why grow flowers?

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Garden checklist for week of Aug. 2

Get out early in the morning and monitor your garden’s moisture needs. Deep water and add temporary shade structures for plants that are feeling a little burned. In particular, protect developing peppers and eggplant.

* Put off fertilization until this heat passes; plants need to concentrate on hydration instead of growth.

* Harvest tomatoes, beans, squash, pepper and eggplants to prompt plants to keep producing. Give your plants a deep watering twice a week, more if planted in containers.

* Watch out for caterpillars and hornworms in the vegetable garden. They can strip a plant bare in one day. Pick them off plants by hand in early morning or late afternoon.

* Mulch can be your garden’s best friend – it conserves moisture while blocking out weeds. But don’t let mulch mound around stalks, stems or trunks. That can promote rot.

* Pinch off dead flowers from perennials and annuals to lengthen their summer bloom.

* Pick up after your fruit trees. Clean up debris and dropped fruit; this cuts down on insects and prevents the spread of brown rot.

* Prepare for a fall full of flowers by paying a little extra attention to your garden. Cut off spent blooms from roses, annuals and perennials. Roses will rebloom about six to eight weeks after deadheading.

* Indoors, start seedlings for fall vegetable planting, including bunching onion, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radicchio and lettuce.

* Sow seeds of perennials in pots for fall planting including yarrow, coneflower and salvia.

* In the garden, direct seed beets, carrots, leaf lettuce and turnips. Make sure to keep seeds and seedlings consistently moist.

* Plant potatoes.

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