This is Something Special

This is Something Special

Bouquets Graduation Mother's Day Prom 2014 Sun Pacific Bouquet Wedding flowers

A little flower that blooms in May
A lovely sunset at the end of the day
Someone helping a stranger along the way
That's heaven to me
                                      -Sam Cooke

Mother's Day is behinds us, but now is not the time to sit back and relax. Spring and early summer are serious "Prime Time" for flower professionals. Women's Day, Easter, Administrative Professionals Day, Earth Day and Mother's Day are the big flower days on the spring calendar, however, now we move into the cultural traditions that aren't centered on a single day.

You Are My Sunshine Bouquet

Senior and junior proms are happening all across the nation. Hope your fingers are ready for boutonniere and corsage work. This is many young adults' first experience with the beauty and power of flowers and fashion. Do you still have that picture of you and your date stuffed in the back of a year book somewhere?

Lizzy Wild Bouquet, featuring lisianthus.

Graduations, both high school and college, will be taking place in late May, through June. The image of a Grad with a bunch of tulips or a bouquet to match their gown or school colors is a classic. Flowers capture the essence of the accomplishments a Grad has achieved, and as friends and family gather to celebrate; fresh flowers are the best way to dress up a home or event space.

Sun Valley grows tulips, lilies, and iris year round so you and your customers have a dependable source for American Grow blooms throughout the year. We have all sorts of seasonal blooms coming on through the summer as well, so a wide selection and unique offerings are no problem.

Cabbage Patch Bouquet

The most popular month for weddings is June. Hopefully your calendar is booked and your brides are selecting the color palette and the varieties of flowers they will carry down the aisle. Do you have a very particular color you need? Tulips have more tonal range than any other cut flowers, so direct that picky bride to tulips, and ...yes she can have "blush pink."

The great part of working with flowers during this season is the celebratory vibe that all these events have in common. Flowers are great at accompanying milestones such as proms, graduations and weddings.

Ring Around the Daisy Bouquet

The mind is constantly making connections; flowers contribute a joyous weight to any party.

Flowers intuitively let the guests and participants know that "this is something special."

~All the bouquets in this post are from Sun Pacific Bouquet's Summer 2014 Collection.~ 

   

What to get the new neighbors???

What to get the new neighbors???

#americangrown #CAGrown #LetsTalkFlowers Bouquets flowers for new neighbors Gerberas

Summertime is just about here, and in my neighborhood I’ve noticed a few new families have been moving in.  Summer is the time when families move, since schools wind down and vacation time can be used to get reestablished in a new community. I’m blessed to live in a pretty ideal neighborhood in northern California with wide sidewalks and neighbors who gossip over the fence about local goings-on.  Everyone’s yard is fairly tidy and we make a point of introducing ourselves to the new arrivals.

This weekend a new family arrived on our block.  The moving truck pulled up as my wife and I were working in our vegetable garden. By late afternoon we were tired, yet wanted to welcome the new neighbors.  The thought of whipping up a batch of cookies or brownies was not a pleasant one, so my wife suggested flowers.  She zipped over to our local florist, getting there just before they closed and grabbed a great bouquet of California Grown flowers.  The Sun Burst Bouquet was all ready to go. It featured a big white Oriental Lily, bright Gerberas, Belladona, Lisianthus, Matsumoto Asters, a welcoming Sunflower and a host of fragrant greens including Solidago, Spiked Eucalyptus and Huckleberry.

The Sun Burst Bouquet from Sun Pacific Bouquet

  

As we walked over to meet the new neighbors we talked about how flowers are the perfect present for a new move in.  What if we had baked cookies and someone in the family was intolerant to gluten?  In today’s world people are more in touch with their health.  Are they on a special diet? Can they eat products with dairy?  Do they only eat organic?  With flowers, dietary restrictions aren’t an issue.

As we knocked on the door and were greeted by the new home owners, we saw pretty quickly that they had their work cut out for them.  The carpets were ripped up, the kitchen was being scrubbed with bleach and the stack of paint cans and supplies showed these folks would be working around the clock to get this house livable for their family.

Bringing a beautiful bouquet of flowers into this chaos was much appreciated.  The house smelled of cleanser, stuff was stacked in corners, and their teenage son was lugging in more boxes from the garage, looking less than thrilled.

“Oh, Flowers!” cheered the woman of the house, even though her clothes showed she had been cleaning, unpacking and sweating all day.  Her husband looked happy to have a few minutes reprieve from the work to meet his new neighbors, and quickly pointed me to the beer cooler, which he somehow knew would cement our friendship.

In all this, the flowers stood out as a symbol of the warm, loving household this house will become over the coming weeks.  The arrangement of the flowers also provided a little oasis of order among the stacks of boxes and furniture placed haphazardly around the house.  Since the flowers were already in a vase the new home owners, didn’t have to dig through boxes to find utensils, as they would have had to if we had baked a cake.

The wonderful scent of the Sun Valley Oriental Lily in the bouquet immediately changed the essence of the living room.  The strong scent of the Eucalyptus and Solidago cut through the smell of dust and mildew, lending a sweet scent of what is to become for this fixer upper.  The dark pink Gerberas and the radiant yellow Sunflower cut a sharp contrast to the stacks of corrugated cardboard boxes.

 

Malibu Gerbera and our Black-Eyed Sunflower

As we chatted with our new neighbors and found the connections we shared, two more kids came out of the woodwork to show us the treasures they had found in their new house.  The flowers were placed on the mantel over the fire place, beers were opened, and a friendship was made.  The flowers were a delightful message of welcome to the neighborhood and a sign of new beginnings.

Walking back to our house, I complemented my wife for thinking of bringing flowers. They really brought a level of elegance and hope to a chaotic situation, and did so effortlessly.  An old Dutch flower marketing campaign from the seventies said, “Flowers Like People.”  This great slogan really ran true last Saturday afternoon, so as you meet new friends and neighbors this summer make sure to have a bunch of flowers handy since they really are the perfect way to say, “Hello, nice to meet you.”

 

Hollywood Flowers

Hollywood Flowers

Bouquets channel islands beach eucalypyus Gerrit Vanderkooy Iris Lane DeVries Oxnard Rosehips salal snapdragons sunflowewrs Tulips

“In Hollywood, brides keep the bouquets and throw away the groom.”


                                                                                            -Groucho Marx

The first thing you notice when you step into the Sun Valley Oxnard headquarters, just about an hour from the glitz and glam of Hollywood, is the smell. The incredible aroma knocks you off your feet. You look around, what is going on here? Why doesn’t the Arcata farm smell this good?

You take a closer look, oh, they are making bouquets. There are racks of eucalyptus, salal, bear grass and all sorts of other fragrant greens. People are busy snipping them to just the right height to combine with stacks of lilies, tulips, irises, snapdragons and sunflowers. Whoa, this is quite a big production!


Our Oxnard bouquet makers, with eucalyptus and rosehips.

What most people don’t realize is that on a flower farm, you don’t get to enjoy the scent of the flowers all that much. The flowers are picked when the buds are developed, yet not quite open. So if you go stand in a cooler brimming with ultra-fragrant Oriental Lilies you don’t smell anything special. These flowers will open up perfectly and their fragrance will enchant the person who takes them home, however, in the cooler they are just patiently waiting for their time to shine. This is not the case in the Oxnard bouquet division, the wonderful smell of the all the different elements is truly captivating.



Our Oxnard bouquet makers, with tulips, snapdragons and sunflowers.

Our farm in Oxnard has a little different vibe than Arcata, everybody has sunglasses either on or perched above their foreheads, this is a fashion accessory you rarely need in foggy Humboldt County. Getting to the farm you realize that you are in a serious agricultural area. Field after field is being plowed and shaped to grow strawberries, raspberries and a few flowers. According to Oxnard General Manager, Gerrit Vanderkooy, this land was all citrus groves, specifically lemons, up until the seventies. At that point, people started removing the lemons and planting huge fields of more profitable berry crops, it was at this same time that the first Dutch style greenhouse was built in the area.

Sun Valley now has three non-contiguous pieces of property we cultivate. We have named them, Home Ranch, Channel Islands and Golden Coast. If you are familiar with Southern California geography, you know the Channel Islands are just off the coast. I thought it was a long shot that we were actually growing flowers out on the Channel Islands, since most of them are a National Park. I did have a pleasant vision in my head that the Channel Islands Farm was near Channel Islands Beach. The farm would have a sweet view of the Islands as they lay off the coast in the warm waters of So-Cal. Add surfboards, guitars, bon fires, icy cold beer, along with some flowers, and this topped my list of “must see” things to do in Oxnard.

We hop into “Old Red” the mud caked Ford pick-up truck which will take us to the Channel Islands Farm, I immediately think, “Well, this ride isn’t going to impress anybody at the beach.” As we attempt to pull out into heavy traffic, my thoughts change to, “Well, I may die in this muddy truck.” Gerrit punches the gas pedal, and about 2 seconds later the truck lurches forward. I notice with a bit of concern that Gerrit is steering one way and “Old Red” is going the other. The truck miraculously straightens out onto the road.

Full steam ahead, I figure when we get to the beach, I may just have Gerrit drop me off behind a sand dune or something. We bump off the paved road onto a dirt track surrounding a huge swath of land in tidy rows. “Mmmm," I think, "taking the back roads to the beach, cool.”

A minute later the truck comes to a stop by a stand of iris, Lane and Gerrit hop out, Lane pulls one stem out of the ground and starts inspecting the bulb development with his pocket knife. Then they dive into crates of bulbs to see if they are at the ideal stage to be planted. Lane and Gerrit are discussing rhizomes, weather conditions and soil conditions, while I start having a realization.


Gerrit and Lane, with Casa Blanca Iris bulbs, ready to plant.

We walk the length of the field, team members are busy planting Telstar iris bulbs in the fertile soil. Besides the lack of beach, the scene is rather beautiful. The rows of bulbs are being planted by hand, surrounded by palm trees, raspberry fields and the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest rising in the distance. There is something intangibly peaceful about standing out in the fields. Perhaps it is the quiet, or the breeze, or the potential which the soil holds. I still can’t put my finger on it, but I see why farmers, whether flowers, wheat, cotton or whatever, do it. There is a quiet spiritual experience to be found out among the rows.



We hop back in the truck to head back to Home Ranch. Old Red’s engine pouring on more horsepower that somehow gets lost before it reaches the rear wheels.

“So Gerrit, why do you call this field Channel Islands?”

His finger points up from the steering wheel to a passing street sign which reads, Channel Islands Boulevard.

“This is not the first time I’ve explained this question” he replies, with a knowing smile as his eyes laugh behind his sunglasses.  “You want to head over to Golden Coast?”

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