Every spring, my mom prompted my sister and I to snip a bundle of purple iris flowers from the bed in the front yard and wrap the stems in wet paper towels, preparing them to be handed off that morning to the bus driver and our teachers as the school year ended.
A sort of farewell gift. A token of gratitude spoken with flowers. That feeling of sharing something beautiful… I loved showing up with flowers. I still do. Who doesn't?
A couple summers ago when I planted more in my garden than ever before I thought to myself, why have I never grown all these flowers in my garden?"
The only answer I had is that my pragmatic side didn’t see something edible. Valuable real estate in the garden beds, and not seeing the potential interplay of the ecosystem or the true value of biodiversity.
But the more I came to understand nature and the relationship between flowers, trees, plants, insects, and pollinators... I could no longer have a vegetable garden without flowers.
The most beautiful gift they gave me that year though, was the remembrance that beauty is enough of a reason to grow flowers. Just for beauty. That’s all... and it’s everything.
I was recently listening to a podcast with Dr. Zach Bush and he said something that stopped me mid-planting of Astilbe roots to wipe my dirt-covered hands on the grass, tap my phone screen, and voice text them into remembrance somewhere I could read them again...
"Love is the vibrational experience of witnessing beauty."
This I already knew.
From growing flowers.
From giving them to someone else.
If someone were to ask me today, the one thing I would recommend for someone's health, I think I'd say "plant something."
It's good for the body and it's good for the Earth.
To me, nurturing plants or marveling at their ability to grow without much human interaction at all is seeing the sacred in the ordinary.
It’s really about the relations we co-create in the process. Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote in Braiding Sweetgrass, "[The garden] is a place where if you can’t say “I love you” out loud, you can say it in seeds."
Yes, this is it. I say it in seeds.
I say it in flowers.
Reducing flowers though, to simply a commodity to be produced, sold, and used without regard for the environmental or human costs - that’s not my aim as a grower. Those actions have devalued flowers and created a floral industry based on high-volume and low-cost production channels.
Forest & Flowers Retreat is a proud member of The Slow Flowers Society -- an inclusive community dedicated to growing and design of local, seasonal and sustainable flowers and the promotion of those blooms in the floral marketplace.
The Slow Flowers movement began in the U.S. where 80% of cut flowers sold are imported from other countries and continents. This system consumes so many resources in transportation, packaging material, and water - not to mention the chemicals used on flowers.
Like the Slow Flowers movement, I believe in local, seasonal and sustainably-grown botanicals, and if this is where your values align too then I'd love to share our locally grown flowers with you.
From the Pretty Petals Program (a project for flower donations to local nursing homes inspired by my grandparents) to the floral experiences we’re offering here at Forest & Flowers Retreat… witness beauty, feel love, and say it with flowers.
“We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.“ -Mary Oliver
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