It starts with a few carols chiming from department stores at the mall in October. By mid-November, it infiltrates every fifth song or so on your favorite radio station. Soon you find yourself decked out in a reindeer sweater, drinking eggnog and wholeheartedly belting out "Let it Snow!" with your great aunt and third cousins while your sister plays harmony on the piano. The Christmas season is nearly here, and it always seems that music is the first indicator that it's on its way.
Unless, of course, you work in the floral industry.
For us flower folks, Christmas planning starts way back in July. (Click
here for my "Christmas in July" post.) While kids do cannonballs off the high dive and their parents cook entire meals on the grill, flower professionals thumb through Christmas planners in trade publications and begin selecting their greens for the coming holiday. At Sun Valley, Debbie the Greens Guru takes prebooks and begins prepping her picking team. It takes a lot of planning on every end of the floral industry for a holiday of this magnitude!
Now that Christmas music is starting to work its way into daily radio rotations, what is happening in the Sun Valley world of Christmas greens?
Debbie gave me some hands-on experience to help me understand...
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| Debbie demonstrates the proper way to trim Pine |
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| I give it a go... |
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Scales in each work station measure two pound bunches of entirely
usable greens - these are a great value! |
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| My finished bunches (I think the guy next to me had twice as many!) |
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Some two pound tips bunches end up in 12 pack assorted boxes like
this one, which Debbie calls a "Splash of Christmas." This box includes
Noble, Silver and Douglas Fir, Princess Pine, Juniper and Cedar. |
There is a whole section of our Arcata farm Warehouse devoted to processing holiday greens. I'd argue that there are not many places as delightfully aromatic as this department (except for maybe near the Willow Creek rose bushes in the summer)! This is where team members create two pound greens bunches, assemble boxed bales and bulk bales, and prepare greens for other departments to use in Christmas Greens Enhanced Bunches.
This is one thing that truly sets Sun Valley's Christmas greens department apart from others - the ability to pair our flowers and/or berries (like Ilex) with the greens in house. These enhanced bunches truly evoke the feeling of Christmas, but don't take my word for it. See for yourself!
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| One of our "Fill Your Buckets" ads, featuring Tulips with Cedar and Orientals with Fir! |
While Debbie showed me the tricks and trades of the greens department, she shared a little more insight into the greens industry as well. This season has been a particularly tough one for the whole industry, as a lack of labor force has made it difficult to get product.
Despite the shortage, Sun Valley is stocked with plenty of the three core Christmas greens, which Debbie called the "backbone" of Christmas (you might remember them from my first post):
Cedar,
Douglas Fir and
Pine. To complete Christmas, as Debbie put it, we also have rarer greens like Silver Fir, Noble Fir and Juniper on hand. And those who
didn't spend their summers planning out their Christmas lists (or those who didn't plan for
enough) will be pleased to find that Debbie's greens team will still be able to fill those just in time, last minute greens orders.
Shortage schmortage!
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| Clockwise from upper left: Port Orford Cedar, Douglas Fir and Princess Pine |
Next time you hear "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" crooning over the radio, perhaps you'll remember to book your Christmas greens so all your customers' Christmases will be green.
Make sure you check out our resource pages to learn more about our Christmas Greens Enhanced bunches by clicking here. http://www.thesunvalleygroup.com/thesunvalleygroup/pdf/SV_RP_HolidayTulipsECB.pdf
