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Florist Review Magazine
6/1/2007
Business Evolution
• http://www.floristsreview.com/main/june/featurestory.html
Teresa Sabankaya, owner of The Bonny Doon Garden Co., in Santa Cruz, Calif., was featured in Flower Confidential and has made organic flowers a priority for her business, which she purchased in 2003 after designing out of her home. She offers organic and Veriflora-certified flowers as well as conventionally grown flowers, and she says she sees such demand rising. She grows many of her flowers organically on her own plot of land in Bonny Doon, Calif. Other organic flowers she sources primarily from small growers and at farmers’ markets.
In August 2006, she was approached by local natural foods grocer New Leaf Markets to provide bouquets. The market didn’t specifically require organic flowers though Ms. Sabankaya says that was her goal. She has worked with one of her local growing partners who agreed to plant for her 10 acres of organic flowers, including stocks, bells-of-Ireland, Queen Anne’s lace and Asiatic lilies. “The only stumbling block that I’ve ever had, besides the challenge of growing organically itself,” Ms. Sabankaya says, “was variety.”
While some customers seek out organic flowers, she says for others it’s simply an added benefit. And some may not see the value. “I still get the customer every now and then who will be looking through a bucket of flowers, and I’ll have my organic sign on it, and they’ll say, ‘What does it really matter? You’re not eating them,’” she describes. “So we still have a few people who are not looking at it in a global way.
“What we’re trying to do is, one by one, explain to people it’s good for the environment to grow them in this way. It’s good for the people who are handling them. It’s good for you,” she says. “And it can be done.”
Wedding flowers are an area that perhaps is seeing this “greening” increase more rapidly than other segments of the floral industry. A Feb. 11, 2007, New York Times story, “How Green Was My Wedding,” described the trend toward environmentally conscious weddings and events. And a consumer-oriented monthly online magazine, Portovert (www.portovert.com), was unveiled this spring catering to “eco-savvy brides and grooms.”
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