While on the Love'n'Fresh farm, I was lucky enough to be present for a visit, photo-shoot and farm dinner with Debra Prinzing, champion of Slow Flowers. Debra has a long-running, popular podcast "Slow Flowers" where she interviews all manner of people involved in the local flower movement in the US. She has also started Slow Flowers - the website - a nationwide, online directory to florists, shops and studios who design with American-grown flowers. Like me, Debra's training was originally in textile design (funny how many people make that cross-over from fibre to flowers!) but she has made a life out of travelling the States researching and writing about gardens, horticulture and flowers. This is a woman with a passion and she is one of the real drivers behind the sustainable flower movement over there.
Rob Cardillo (photographer) and I moving props around during the shoot at Love'n'Fresh. Image courtesy of Debra Prinzing.
One of the things that really sunk in while I was away, is just how different our industry is to that of the States. It made me even more aware of the fact that we need to stop looking to the US flower industry as a model and start looking at our own industry more carefully. We are not the States and we need to find our own ways forward to a better more friendly flowery future.
Debra interviewed Jenny and I about the Flower Farmer Fellowship and we spoke at length about my little flower farm and the Australian flower industry. It really is a great Podcast, so ...
You can here me say 'fall' and drop a couple of other Americanisms in there. It is so strange to listen to yourself being interviewed on the spot; scared to share it with my mum in case she pulls me up on saying 'um' too much! To be honest, listening back made me a bit teary this morning. For a couple of reasons: firstly, it made me miss Jennie, then it made me miss my blissful time over there and made me realise just how lucky I had been and lastly, the interview reminded me of the immense faith that these people have in me and quite frankly, sometimes that is just a bit scary.