Hi all and happy Friday! It has been a minute since I’ve put fingers to keys to bring you some updates on what is happening in Garden Party and in life.

For the past 6 weeks I’ve been working my way through Flower Farming Business Academy with Lennie Larkin. It has been really valuable in helping me create some solid business practices to make GP profitable. It has also provided me with peer feedback that has really validated some feelings I was already having regarding growing summer flowers at this point in time.

Truthfully, I don’t feel like there is enough financial transparency in small scale flower farming, especially on the consumer side, so strap in for a quick lesson in flower farming economics and why this should matter to you.

In this era of ethical consumption and heavily questioning where our money is being spent, I want to highlight why you should support local flowers and why my prices are never going to be cheaper than grocery store flowers or even the regional u-pick farms.

THE DILEMMA WITH IMPORTS

The short of it is, there is a real environmental and human cost to the flowers that are imported and sold in the US. Every day, dozens of flights enter the US carrying imported flowers from all over the globe, accounting for more than 80% of our current floral market.

These flowers are bred and treated to survive long transport, often cut 1–3 weeks before they reach the shelf, shipped from overseas, and held in cold storage. Facing already grueling working conditions, overworked and underpaid laborers experience regular chemical exposure with little to no protections, as the cut flower industry has far less regulation on pesticide/fungicide use than produce. This has a trickle down effect, as the consumer ends up with flowers that have been sprayed and sprayed, potentially exposing you and your household to unknown agents. These giant cut-flower conglomerates also wreak havoc on the environment in which they grow in.

Now, as someone who used to cry during math homework, I’ll be the first the acknowledge that numbers aren’t my strong suit but from where I am sitting, the math ain’t mathin’.

WHY GARDEN PARTY FLOWERS WON’T BE CHEAPEST OPTION, LIKELY EVER

Just this morning, I sat in on UGA’s Virtual Cut Flower Symposium and there was a statistic that mentioned that grocery stores are still the number one driver of consumer flower sales. Grocery store flowers are a loss-leader/volume game. Big grocery chains buy in massive bulk from industrial farms overseas where land, labor, and climate costs are dramatically lower. That's a scale no small farm can compete with on price, nor would you want them to, given the labor/environmental tradeoffs mentioned above.

As for U-Pick farms, I fully support them and believe they serve an important role in agritourism and connecting consumers with locally grown products through their experience-based model. However, Garden Party grown flowers will never be able to compete price-wise with a U-Pick farm. Why? Because U-Pick farms are passing on a majority of their labor costs to you. You're doing the cutting, processing, sorting, conditioning, and often the arranging. When you buy a designed bouquet or arrangement from me, you're paying for the growing and the skilled labor of harvest timing, conditioning, and design, which is work that takes real time and experience to do well.

I use these principles as my guiding light. Sometimes, they require me to reevaluate or adjust, as they did with my decision to scale back on growing summer flowers. And honestly what felt daunting now feels like relief. Is it great for me financially at the moment, no, but I think it will be. The biggest thing I hope that you take away from this is that when you buy flowers from me, not only are you getting an exceptional product that is in season and grown sustainably, you’re also supporting someone who deeply cares about the environmental and human impact of farming.

So, how can you support Garden Party during our summer lull?