2 Woman's Day Marketing Themes

2 Woman's Day Marketing Themes

#American Grown Flowers #americangrown #OriginMatters #WomensDay flowers March 8 2015 Women's Day 2015

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.  

                                  ~John F. Kennedy

Women’s Day is March 8 and is fast approaching. What is your organization doing to benefit from this groundswell movement? Momentum has been building for the last several years and now the holiday is hitting its stride. Here are two themes on which to focus your marketing efforts.

Honor. The act of honoring someone is perhaps a lost art. Women’s Day aims to bring this idea back into vogue by creating a time and place for people to honor those who have touched their lives. Other flower-giving occasions do this, but it is usually directed at a specific person, like your mother. On Women’s Day you are free to honor your teachers, your mentors, your colleagues and even your siblings or children. Both women and men can participate in this idea of recognizing a special person in their life with flowers. This sentiment resonates strongly with consumers since people need to feel connected and people want to feel appreciated, and frankly both of these sentiments are in short supply in our day-to-day lives.

Respect. Who do you respect in your community? When do you get to show that admiration? For me, it is my son’s schoolteacher. I cannot fathom how she handles a room full of four-year olds with such grace and poise. Whether you are male or female, when you stop and think about the women in your life that you respect, the list gets long quickly. Encouraging consumers to show respect with flowers on March 8th creates positive feelings. We have an innate need to recognize the people who make our lives richer. The ironic part is that many of the women we respect the most may not even realize that we hold them in such high esteem. A simple bunch of tulips on Women’s Day can change this paradigm.

This holiday is a low-pressure, easy-to-manage way to honor and respect those individuals in our lives who matter; those women who make our lives better.


Sun Valley is offering Woman's Day specials on Tulips and Bouquets, so check in with your sales rep.


At store level, this is truly a feel-good event. A few stems of springy iris, or some fragrant lily blooms, are all you need. You can even encourage shoppers to buy bunches of flowers and hand out stems over the course of the day. A single tulip can speak volumes.

Women’s Day lacks the pretense of other flower holidays and, because it happens in spring, flowers are already on consumers’ minds. Talk to your floral departments and make sure they are aware that Women’s Day is on the horizon and that they are engaging customers leading up to March 8 — it will definitely increase sales.

The much-maligned phrase, “it’s the thought that counts,” actually comes to fruition for Women’s Day. The very act of getting some flowers for the women in your life shows that you both honor and respect the value that they bring to your life.

To learn more, visit Sun Valley's Woman's Day Resource Page.

This article is reprinted in part from the Produce News.

Iris: A True American Grown Flower

Iris: A True American Grown Flower

#American Grown Flowers #americangrown Casa Blanca Hing Kong Iris Nevada Purple City Sky Diver

Did you know 95% of the iris bought by consumers in America is grown right here in the United States?

This is in contrast to most other flower crops where the vast majority come from off shore sources.  We just released a new film with Lane DeVries explaining how we are able to have year round iris production. Please have a quick view, it is just over two minutes long.(Here is a link if the below player doesn't work.)

We love growing iris at both our farm in Humboldt County and our farm in Oxnard. Sun Valley is known for growing the spectacular blue Telstar variety, but you may not be aware that we grow some other popular colors as well.

• Casa Blanca (White)
• Hong Kong, Purple City (Purple)
• Sky Diver (Light Blue)
• Nevada (Yellow)

As you hear more and more about the American Grown flower movement, make sure you think of elegant, magisterial iris. Iris are a true American grown beauty. Across time, iris have been the subject of many poems and works of art.

Here is one of our favorite pieces from a distinctly American Grown author, Mary McNeil Fenollosa, born in Alabama in 1865

IRIS FLOWERS
My mother let me go with her, (I had been good all day), To see the iris flowers that bloom In gardens far away. 
We walked and walked through hedges green, Through rice-fields empty still, To where we saw a garden gate Beneath the farthest hill.
She pointed out the rows of "flowers";— I saw no planted things, But white and purple butterflies Tied down with silken strings.
They strained and fluttered in the breeze, So eager to be free; I begged the man to let them go, But mother laughed at me.
She said that they could never rise, Like birds, to heaven so blue. But even mothers do not know Some things that children do.
That night, the flowers untied themselves And softly stole away, To fly in sunshine round my dreams Until the break of day.

-Mary McNeil Fenollosa (1865-1954)

Guest Post from Debra Prinzing

Guest Post from Debra Prinzing

#American Grown Flowers Debra Prinzing

A few weeks ago, we were lucky to have author Debra Prinzing visit our Arcata farm. Debra is a strong voice for the American Grown flower movement and the founder of the Slow Flowers website. At SlowFlowers.com consumers and flower professionals can easily find growers, wholesalers and retailers of flowers grown right here at home. 
Enjoy her view of our farm 
~Lily

A (American Grown) Flower-filled Road Trip, Part Three

The hot, new “ice cream” tulip – spotted in a vase on Sun Valley CEO Lane DeVries’s desk!

I’ve been home for an entire month from an 11-day road trip that took me by plane to Southern California and back home again behind the wheel of a rental car.

I have many fond memories (as well as the photographs that I collected), while stopping along U.S. Hwy. 101 on my way north to Seattle. My first post featured Rose Story Farm and the Carpinteria flower scene; my 2nd post was about visiting author-friend Sharon Lovejoy and her husband Jeff Prostovitch in San Luis Obispo. [I'm going to save the photos and stories of my stop in Healdsburg-wine country for another day.]

So here is my third travelogue installation – all about The Sun Valley Group of Arcata, California.



Visiting Sun Valley and touring its vast flower-growing universe has been on my bucket list for quite a while. I’ve enjoyed collaborating with CEO Lane DeVries and his staff over the past few years to promote American-grown flowers and flower farms. In fact, Lane was a podcast guest last year – you can listen to that interview here. But I had never been able to see Sun Valley up close and personal!

Still on the road last month, I routed myself through Eureka, Calif., where I first visited another writer-friend, Amy Stewart of Flower Confidential and The Drunken Botanist fame (listen to our Podcast interview here).

The following morning I continued north to the next town on the map, Arcata – home to Sun Valley’s headquarters and one of the company’s farm locations. 

Sun Valley is a leading grower of cut bulb and field flowers in the United States. According to its web site, Sun Valley chose this area as an ideal environment for growing bulb flowers, due to its mild winters, cool summers, generous humidity and coastally moderated sunlight. The fields surrounding the greenhouses also provide excellent growing conditions for spring, summer and fall iris, and summer flowers including crocosmia, hypericum, monkshood and montbretia.

Bill Prescott, the farm’s social media/communications guru, met and escorted me on a whirlwind tour. It’s a good thing that I brought my rubber-soled Merrills, cuz the ground gets muddy and wet at a flower farm – in the shade houses and in the greenhouses. These farms practice water conservation, of course, but the puddles and wet spots still exist.

We started by walking through the tulip operations. By the way, click here to see the farm’s mind-boggling array of tulip varieties – you’ll not believe it!

Bill Prescott, my host and tour guide at Sun Valley Flower Farm in Arcata, Calif.

This is how the tulip-growing cycle begins. Bulbs planted in growing medium, shoulder to shoulder. Their tips emerge from the soil and then the crates are transferred to the greenhouse rows.

Just one of countless state-of-the-art greenhouses that produce beautiful tulips throughout the year.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of the beautiful variegated foliage on this tulip variety. It’s not always about the bloom, especially when you have leaves like this! 

Hello, tulip! 

The tulip harvest – this was the week before Easter, so imagine: nonstop harvesting! 

. . . and this is how the flowers come out of the ground – bulbs and all – to ensure the longest stems.

Some other popular crops include irises and lilies:

Gotta love these lemony-hued irises! 

And the classic purple ones, too! 

Lilies, just picked and ready for shipment to flower shops, supermarkets and designers. 

Having fun with the lilies – Bill is a bit of a ham!

Bill sent me home with a huge bucket filled with irises and tulips – gorgeous, fresh, just-picked and more than I could ever use in a single Easter arrangement. They survived the 10-hour drive to Seattle that day and still looked awesome when I gave an arrangement of those blooms to my mother on Easter. We both enjoyed those American-grown flowers for nearly two weeks – especially the lilies, with so many plump buds that kept opening up, a few new blooms every day.

Check out “Flower Talk: Grow with Lily” here - and subscribe to receive notices of the frequent installments.

Tulip Tradition

Tulip Tradition

#American Grown Flowers CAGrown summertime tulips Tulip Tradition Tulips year-round tulips

A flower spent should not be said - but
         It's leaving should make us glad - that we
         were privileged to view - a miracle that was
         passing through.

  

One of the best parts of working in the floral industry is all the stories you hear about the flowers. Not just colors, varieties, shapes and sizes, but deep meanings, symbolic actions and thoughtful moments. While the Sun Valley team was down in Miami recently, I spoke with a fellow vendor named Hilliard. He works on the horticulture side of things and we've been booth neighbors at many a show over the years, his accent betrays his tanned skin and his demeanor makes me think of him as a classic British gentleman.

The flower stories I hear are generally positive, yet they often start off with a life changing event.  Several years back Hilliard's mother passed away. Flowers express the inexpressible and sometimes grief and remembrance are the emotions that we have to deal with, taking the bad with the good. When Hilliard's mother died, he and his brothers and sisters took her ashes to the top of a coastal peak in central California. They opened the urn and let the Pacific wind blow the ashes into the sky, said a few prayers, shared some stories and then hiked down the mountain.

Sun Valley Summertime Tulips

Now a dozen years later, Hilliard has one of the more touching traditions I've ever heard. He is an avid mountain biker, still looking fit in his mid-fifties. Every year for his mother's birthday which is in June, he wakes before dawn and hops on his bike with a special cargo tucked into his Camel-Back backpack.

His mother emigrated from England, and all through her life her favorite flower was the tulip, one of the simplest yet poignant flowers cultivated by man. She always had them growing in her garden and explained to her children and grandchildren that they reminded her of the previous life she lived in England.

Every year now, the day before his mother's birthday Hilliard stops by the market and buys a 10 stem bunch of tulips.  As he recounts his tale, he adds that he always looks for our tulips. The folks growing flowers, bushes and all sort of other plants in California have a natural bond. It is cemented by the Pacific Ocean, earthquakes and high real estate prices.  It seems we all do business with people you know, people you can relate to and people you trust.

In the predawn light Hilliard gets on the saddle of his mountain bike and sets out to honor is mom, or "mum" to hear him tell it. After riding a few miles to the old fire road that leads to the peak, he downshifts into the low gears and arduously ascends the mountain.

When he reaches the peak, just as the sun rises in the east, he takes a few minutes to catch his breath, enjoy the view and think about his mom. There is a flat stone placed by time just perfect for such tasks.


When the time feels right, Hilliard takes the tulips from his bag, pulls off the sleeve and snips off the rubber band holding them together. He stands at the edge, looks to the heavens, then back at the beautiful tulips. Then with both hands holding the tulips, he bends his knees and tosses them high into the air, each stem catching the wind and the light differently, spiraling, twirling and spinning into the expanse between here and there.

"Happy Birthday Mum."