Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farm needs little introduction to most garden-minded listeners. She has been instrumental in cultivating a flower-farmer and flower-farming economy in our country. Her innovative and dedicated seed research and breeding work over the past almost ten years, however, provides a whole new lens through which to appreciate her work.
Back in 2017, when I first interviewed Erin for the program & for The Earth in Her Hands, she was already a tireless advocate for local flowers and for supporting more flower farmers and local-flower florists in our everyday lives here in the US.
Through her on-farm and subsequently online flower farming Floret Workshops, for more than a decade, she has been renowned for encouraging and training eager new flower-farmer-florists in order to transform the cut flower industry from the multi-billion dollar large-corporate-owned international import (with little ecological or economic oversight) behemoth it had become, back into the more lovely, and loving, organic, locally-based circular and community-oriented economy she envisioned it could be – and should be.
Floret - once a flower farm and training center – is now more fully (and perhaps even more beautifully) described as “a family-owned flower farm and seed company specializing in breeding new cut flower varieties for gardeners, farmers & designers.” They add: “ Our thriving research & education farm is dedicated to giving flower lovers the tools & information they need to grow the gardens of their dreams.”
In honor of the Autumnal Equinox, and its seeds of the next season feeling - I am so pleased to once again welcome Erin to Cultivating Place – just as Floret's free seed saving mini-course launches on their website. Erin warmly shares so much more about this newest heart of Floret's growing work. Join us!
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The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
