Blacksburg, VA Florists

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Warm weather favors blooming flowers, trees, shrubs and bugs - Winston-Salem Journal

Triad and foothills to the mid 30s to high 40s in the mountain counties, said Jake Ruckman, a weather service meteorologist in Blacksburg, Va.“We aren’t usually this warm in February,” Ruckman said.Taking advantage of the warm weather are blooming plants such as cherry trees, flowering apricots, tulip magnolias and star magnolias as well as winter honeysuckle bush, witch hazels, daffodils and Lenten roses, said Hayden Shuping, the greenhouse manager at Reynolda Gardens in Winston-Salem.“All of the things that are blooming right now can handle a little frost,” Shuping said. “In nature, you have to take it as it comes. The climate, from the week to week, is always different.”Leslie Peck, a horticulturist with the Forsyth County Cooperative Extension Service, said people with flowering plants and shrubs should stay aware of the high and low temperatures in February and March.“Most of the stuff that is flowing is taking their cues from the warm weather,” Peck said.Gardeners should add water to their blooming plants to insulate their roots if the temperatures drop below freezing, she said. Friday’s forecast calls for a low temperature of 29 degrees.The warm weather also could bring some unwanted guests to the Triad — mosquitoes, said Louis Jackai, an entomologist and the chairman of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design at N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro.Mosquitoes breed around sources of water such as rivers and streams, Jackai said.However, mosquitoes and other biting insects likely will remain dormant during these final days of winter, he said.“Once it starts getting warm, they (mosquitoes) will be active,” Jackai said. “They could get their butts frozen if the temperatures drops below freezing at night.”Low temperatures at night in the low to high 30s or cooler likely will minimize activity among the mosquitoes and other insects, he said.“When it’s real good and cold, no self-respecting mosquito would be out,” Jackai said.#ndn-video-player-3.ndn_embedded .ndn_floatContainer { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }... http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/warm-weather-favors-blooming-flowers-trees-shrubs-and-bugs/article_a9c4b464-954c-55fe-9251-8b399148a0bf.html

Emily Bender: the year-round flower lady - Roanoke Times

Emily Bender is Blacksburg’s flower lady. Yellow yarrow, rose dahlias, purple coxcombs, pink gladioluses – her bouquets and wreaths bring color to people’s lives at their highest and lowest times.Although she no longer sells flowers as a business, Bender makes and gives away nearly a hundred flower arrangements a year, friends say. Subscription Required An online service is needed to view this article in its entirety. You need an online service to view this article in its entirety. Choose an online service. 1PIZZA17: 7-Day Delivery + Digital Access $50.05 for 91 days $99.84 for 182 days $185.64 for 364 days Sign up today and get a 2017 Pizza Card ($80 Value) with your new subscription!7-Day... http://www.roanoke.com/news/local/blacksburg/emily-bender-the-year-round-flower-lady/article_6c71c90c-cf79-5540-9ad8-85bc123c1e73.html

Green-blooded floral designer spruces up Virginia Tech - Roanoke ... - Roanoke Times

BLACKSBURG — Barbara Leshyn says she bleeds green.And she gets it honest: She said her passion for flowers and plants comes from her grandparents, Ukranian immigrants who owned three different florist shops in Chicago over the years.Subscription RequiredAn online service is needed to view this article in its entirety. You need an online service to view this article in its entirety.LoginChoose an online service.1 *Best Deal* 7-Day Home Delivery + Digital Access $16.90 for 30 days NEW SUBSCRIBERS: You'll get delivery of The Roanoke Times every day and access to all of our digital content, including roanoke.com and the eTimes at no additional charge.The first month's payment for your All Access package will be billed immediately to your credit card by PayPalPro, and you will receive instant digital access. Home delivery of the newspaper will begin within three to five business days, and The Roanoke Times will contact you to arrange future payment.2 Weekend (Fri-Sun) Home Delivery Plus Dig... http://www.roanoke.com/news/education/higher_education/virginia_tech/green-blooded-floral-designer-spruces-up-virginia-tech/article_c1e96dbd-d24a-5226-86ec-0f847712e41d.html

Volunteer flower garden in Blacksburg blossoms to benefit community - WSLS

BLACKSBURG (WSLS 10) – It started as a hobby.“That’s how this sort of emerged, just sort of this desire to raise money for the church and then take advantage of a hobby that we both really enjoy,” said Megan Dickhans of her and her husband’s love of gardening.Their hobby blossomed into much more.“It was trial and error and just playing at home. I mean really we just sort of went in headfirst,” she said.Megan and Jim Dickhans started a flower garden on about a half an acre of land at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Blacksburg. Along with the Dickhans, nearly 50 volunteers spend time each week planting, weeding, watering, cutting, wrapping and selling after weekend mass through the season.Handheld bouquets cost $8, while a bouquet in vase costs $10.The volunteers contribute where they can, Some spend two to three days tending to the garden, while others spend Saturday mornings cutting and arranging the bouquets. They also spend time outside the church after Saturday and Sunday Mass to sell... http://wsls.com/2016/08/31/volunteer-flower-garden-in-blacksburg-blossoms-to-benefit-community/

Church flower garden funds good causes - Roanoke Times

BLACKSBURG — Behind St. Mary’s Catholic Church where the land slopes toward distant Toms Creek and Brush Mountain rears up to fill half the horizon, flowers are blooming. Beds of zinnias, sunflowers, Shasta daisies, gladiolus, cosmos and other blossoms create lines of riotous color over almost half an acre.Though as pretty as a confetti-strewn carpet, this garden doesn’t host weddings, teas or parties. It is a working garden, a plot where church volunteers raise flowers to sell. Probably the only market flower garden run by a church in Virginia, it is the brainchild of parishioners Megan and Jim Dickhans. The couple sought a church fundraising project that dovetailed with Megan’s newfound passion for gardening.Subscription RequiredAn online service is needed to view this article in its entirety. You need an online service to view this article in its entirety.LoginChoose an online service.1 *Best Deal* 7-Day Home Delivery Plus Digital Acces $15.47 for 30 days NEW SUBSCRIBERS: You'll get... http://www.roanoke.com/news/local/blacksburg/church-flower-garden-funds-good-causes/article_5cfb3475-a896-52db-bc74-84314a907747.html

‘Master florist’ Haruko Adkins, 90, had a passion for flower arrangements and tennis - The Washington Post

She would say that some were “too edgy compared with her formal training,” Morhart said. [Those we have lost to the coronavirus in Virginia, Maryland and D.C.]He said Adkins’s arrangements were unique because she “understood the idea of negative space.”“Others fill up all the space” in a vase, he said, whereas Adkins “understood that you didn’t have to crowd things in. She was an artist. She was definitely talented.”Morhart recalled Adkins as “totally sharp,” saying, “You would guess she was 80.” She was an avid tennis and ping-pong player and played both games well into her 80s, her friends said. When she and a friend visited the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., Morhart said, the trip was a “thrill for her.” Born in Nagoya, Japan, Adkins studied the art of floral arrangement and earned a four-year degree as a “master florist,” her friends said. She married Earl A. Adkins, a criminal investigator in the U.S. Army Military Police Corps. With his work, the couple traveled and lived in several places, including San Francisco and Germany, before settling in Arlington. He died in 1999.Adkins had a large group of friends and was known for helping others. If someone else wanted flowers she planned to use in an arrangement, she would happily give them away, Morhart said.“She was very, very generous,” Morhart said. “She was always willing to say: ‘Help yourself. Take that if you need it.’ She had a very sharing nature.”Adkins also did volunteer projects, including making sweaters and bags to carry food for those in need. She was once named Volunteer of the Year at Goodwin House.Valerie Burke, the chief philanthropy officer at Goodwin House, said Adkins also enjoyed working at a thrift shop on the property as a volunteer and was good at making displays.“She loved getting to know people and helping them find just the right trinket,” Burke said. In... https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/haruko-adkins-coronavirus/2020/08/18/58bc3c7a-e13e-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

Ham Lake couple trust God as they grow family flower farm business - The Catholic Spirit

When they began researching farming, they planned to grow organic food. They were inspired by the writings of Joel Salatin, a Christian farmer in Virginia who has become the godfather of a movement favoring small-scale, sustainable, family-based farming. The Carlstroms were thinking produce and chickens when, in the winter of 2019, Kristen came across a book titled “The Cut Flower Garden” by Erin Benzakein, a florist farmer in Washington.“Basically, I just fell in love with it,” Kristen said. “It was kind of out of the blue for me.”She had always kept a small flower garden with sunflowers and zinnias, but nothing large-scale. But once she began to think about flowers, she became convinced that was the direction she wanted to move.“I knew we were going to take on something really big,” she said. “It was really important for me to be really passionate about it. And so, this was something that just really took a hold of me. And I had so much energy with thinking of doing really hard stuff to make it happen.”She and Jonah took Benzakein’s online course on flower farming, and dove into researching what would grow well in Minnesota’s climate. “Before we knew it, we’re like, we’re really doing it,” she said.Jonah gives Kristen all the credit for the flower focus. “I never thought I would be a flower farmer — I don’t think many men do think of that,” Jonah said, sitting near the field. He agreed to the online course, “and I was just sort of open with the Lord; ‘Wherever you lead us.’”“Ever since leaving school, I wanted to do something in nature. I love working outside. I’ve been praying along the way” for God’s guidance, he said. “Basically, I want to come home and I want to work from home.”The Carlstroms don’t know any other young farmers, but they’re not alone among Catholic millennials. Jim Ennis, executive director of St. Paul-based Catholic Rural Life, said there are like-minded young Catholics across the United States who are exploring and adopting a rural lifestyle, including small-scale farming. Many are drawn to a slower, family-focused pace of life away from the demands of city living and corporate work.Like the Carlstroms, many don’t have farming backgrounds, Ennis said, and it’s hard work without the guarantee of financial sustainability. But it’s rewarding, he said. Farming is creative work, where people can work in nature, with their hands, alongside family members, for the benefit of their own tables and their community. And even young children can see, understand and participate in their parents’ work, he said.“There’s something very innate in many people’s DNA to connect with God’s creation in a closer way,” he said, “and I think that’s very Catholic and very Christian.”Kristen admits that sometimes she’s thought the idea of turning stay-at-home mom to cut-flower florist is “crazy.” But, “there was a lot of discouragement that came whenever I tried to let it (the idea) go, and a lot of joy that was there when we kept pursuing it,” she said, so they forged ahead.The field is easily accessible from the Carlstroms’ house through a path in the woods. Kristen spends patches of time throughout the day tending its 20, 100-foot rows as she learns to orchestrate timing their harvesting with flowers’ longevity onc... https://thecatholicspirit.com/news/local-news/ham-lake-couple-trust-god-as-they-grow-family-flower-farm-business/

Business at local flower grower Three Little Buds is blooming - My Buckhannon

Three Little Buds owner Joanna Webb, who is a chemistry professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College, talked to My Buckhannon from her beautiful gardens, located around her home in downtown Buckhannon.Webb said this is her fourth official growing season, but she has been growing flowers for a long, long time. She said her husband jokingly told her she could not grow any more flowers until she took part of her bounty to a local florist to see if they would be interesting in purchasing some of her blossoms.A market-style bouquet of flowers grown and arranged by local flower grower Joanna Webb. / Photo courtesy Joanna Webb“I had always kicked around the idea of selling flowers to local florists,” Webb said. “So, I took some of my dahlias to Anita’s Flowers of Buckhannon, and they told me they would love to buy local flowers.”She said she learned on the fly about growing flowers and started growing ones she found most beautiful.“I like the market bouquet-style of flowers,” Webb said. “With COVID coming in when most of the flowers were blooming, most of the florists were closed, and I had all of these flowers, so I offe... https://www.mybuckhannon.com/business-at-local-flower-grower-three-little-buds-is-blooming/

Tulip Fest had to be canceled, but Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm finds new life for flowers - OregonLive

Family members set up a farm stand, sold a few flowers, and figured they’d be forced to let the rest rot.The family then received an email from a West Virginia nursery owner who had an idea and wanted to pass it along to nurseries across the country. The idea: Take flowers in the fields to assisted living centers where residents were living in isolation.Emily Iverson, 21, a family member and Wooden Shoe’s social media coordinator, teamed up with Lexie Criscola, 22, the tulip farm’s marketing coordinator, to make it happen.They created a ticket order on the farm’s web page where, for $15, people could pay for a pot of tulips to be delivered anonymously to an assisted living center.So far, the farm has delivered 6,000 pots of tulips to assisted living centers in Mount Angel, Molalla, Canby, Albany and Eugene.“The farm will never see back the lost revenue from the festival,” said Iverson. “The $15 covers just a bit of the costs it takes to do this delivery. But this is not about money, this is about goodwill.”Criscola said a person can request tulips be delivered to a specific assisted living center or let farm officials figure out where the tulips would bring a bit of joy.“We reach out to a center and figure out the protocol for a delivery,” she said. “We make sure everyone in the center gets a pot. We deliver them to the front door, and then step back.”Iverson estimates all the tulips will be given away within the next couple weeks.“It makes us feel like we are doing something for the community,” she said.[embedded content]-- Tom Hall... https://www.oregonlive.com/hg/2020/03/tulip-fest-had-to-be-canceled-but-wooden-shoe-tulip-farm-finds-new-life-for-flowers.html