Chehalis, WA Florists

Chehalis Flower Shop News

Play nice with flowers: Lessons on 'Floral Diplomacy' in the White House (photos) - OregonLive.com

Kunstboek) are available at Powell's Books. From Portland, she travels north where she will be signing at Barnes & Noble Northgate Store in Seattle from 7-9 p.m. July 8 and Book 'n' Brush in Chehalis from 1-3 p.m. July 9.In her handsome, 144-page hardcover book, Dowling explains how diplomatic messages can be conveyed through botanical metaphors.In 2011, White House guest German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds a doctorate in physical chemistry, saw four small topiaries -- "molecular bouquets" -- orbiting a larger bouquet of moss, horsetail and lily grass to represent the symbol for infinity and signify endless possibilities, according to Dowling.For a White House state dinner in 2009, guests from India were honored with table settings inspired by the peacock, a source of pride and beauty in Indian culture. Atop apple-green silk linens were fuchsia and purple flowers -- hydrangeas, sweet peas, roses and orchids -- in Tiffany bamboo vermeil containers.In 2010, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and First Lady Carla Bruni were greeted by pink parrot tulips and garden roses arranged in French-style bouquets.Maybe Prince Harry will never come to your home for tea, but wouldn't it be nice to greet your mother-in-law with her favorite peonies?The ideas in the book, illustrated by 100 photographs, will inspire ways to celebrate birthdays and holidays, and, of course, one-on-one relationships.Dowling, who grew up in Chehalis, and earned degrees at the University of Washington in Seattle, emphasizes two approaches to home-style floral diplomacy.Go easy: Just as with a relationship, flower arrangements shouldn't be stiff and unyielding, ... http://www.oregonlive.com/hg/index.ssf/2017/06/floral_diplomacy_white_house_d.html

Promise you a rose carden: Ex-White House florist (and Chehalis native) tells all - The Seattle Times

Laura Dowling, who until her tenure ended abruptly in 2015 was the White House chief floral designer. “I was surprised to see such a pared-back aesthetic from them.”Dowling, 57, a native of Chehalis, was walking around the flower district in New York on the first day of spring, discussing her new book, “Floral Diplomacy at the White House,” which contains a number of juicy details about decorating drama at her former place of employment, along with anecdotes about flower arrangements and craft projects.Like the time the juxtaposition of cotton-candy machines and burlap linen tablecloths at a South Lawn picnic for members of Congress and their families led to the guests getting shocked. (Dowling got a roll of dryer sheets from the housekeeping staff and used them to cut through the static electricity.)Most Read StoriesUnlimited Digital Access. $1 for 4 weeks.Or when the White House honeybees broke free at President Barack Obama’s 50th birthday barbecue in the Rose Garden.“My image of it is the bees chasing the guests back and forth while the butlers removed the arrangements,” Dowling said.She won the job through a competition in the fall of 2009 not unlike those on “The Apprentice” (little did they know).After an eight-month process of applications and interviews, three florist-finalists were sequestered separately on the ground floor of the Executive Mansion for four hours. During that time, they had to fully deck out a table for a State Department dinner, and ... http://www.seattletimes.com/life/home-decor/promise-you-a-rose-carden-ex-white-house-florist-and-chehalis-native-tells-all/

Former White House Florist from Alexandria Publishes Book 'Floral Diplomacy' - Patch.com

Flower Ambassador award from the Royal Horticultural Society of Belgium at a ceremony honoring international floral diplomacy in Ghent, Belgium. Dowling didn't start out in floral design. A native of Chehalis, Washington, Dowling received her B.A. degree in political science and Masters Degree in Public Administration from the University of Washington in Seattle. Fifteen years ago, she was inspired to change careers (from strategic communications to flowers) after traveling to Paris and becoming intrigued with French flower design. She studied French floral art under the direction of leading Parisian designers and operated a small studio out of her basement kitchen in Alexandria. From this position, she competed in the nationwide search for White House Chief Floral Designer. By expanding her floral design and consulting platform to include writing books and teaching, her goal is to continue to share a unique vision for creative floristry in the garden style and to inspire others with her story.Dowling made headlines when she left the White House but doesn't appear to hold any grudges. Here's a bit about Dowling and her role, from a promotional blurb on Amazon.com:"Laura Dowling served as Chief Floral Designer at the White House form 2009 until 2015. In this unique position, she managed décor and flowers for thousands of White House events while using flowers as a strategic tool for communicating diplomatic, symbolic and policy messages. She is renowned for creating a new romantic style of flower arranging featuring free-flowing lines of vines and flowers emanating from a classical bouquet. This style is most evocative of nature and the garden, and balances a strong artistic vision with the wildness of nature. Under her leadership, Laura implemented floral artistry at the White House, designing bouquets of seasonal garden flowers in a style that is both modern and refined, yet casually elegant. She often presents her innovative arrangements in hand-made organic containers composed of leaves, branches and berries that are woven into patterns and motifs, creating integrated, cohesive displays that conjure both nature and the garden. Here, she describes... http://patch.com/virginia/oldtownalexandria/former-white-house-florist-alexandria-publishes-book-floral-diplomacy

Express Gratitude and Appreciation with Flowers from Capitol Florist - ThurstonTalk

Pacific Northwest growing season. Each week Cynthia speaks with her vendors to find out what blooms are available from farms such as Kirsop Farms in Tumwater, Woodbine Farm in Chehalis and Independence Valley Farm in Rochester. During our rainy season, the flowers are purchased from nurseries in California and Canada with tropicals flown in from Hawaii.Cynthia loves the nature of her business. “Sharing beauty can be an expression of love for a friend or even self-love, which is so important,” she tells me as she arranges a bouquet for a long-time client. She loves to see what the enclosure card will say. One loyal customer uses the same sentiment each time he sends flowers to his wife, the card says simply “You know what.”Marinka Major creates a floral arrangement for a customer with fresh blooms from local farms. ©ThurstonTalkThe online business from the website is the largest component of her business but walk-ins and floral subscriptions are a big part of their success. A floral subscription is a weekly bouquet of flowers delivered in a vase and ready for display. Many dentists, restaurants and local attorneys use this service to provide a splash of beauty and color in their offices. Subscriptions start at $35 and can be customized to your desire and budget.Cynthia has two year-round employees and adds additional help during the wedding season and other busy times. Her daughter Marinka shares her time between the flower shop and an internship at Wolf Haven. Both lovers of nature and beauty, they have a cooperative working relationship and will often critique each other’s work offering some friendly advice during the creation of a bouquet.img class="size-medium wp-image-100373" src="http://www.thurstontalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/1577f2772cae03-FullSizeRender-8-300x288.jpg" alt="capitol florist" width="300" height="288" srcset="http://www.thurstontalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/1577f2772cae03-FullSizeRender-8-300x288.jpg 300w, http://www.thurstontalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/1577f2772cae03-FullSizeRender-8-696x66... http://www.thurstontalk.com/2016/07/13/capitol-florist-olympia/

Benny's Florist & Greenhouse Still Blooming in Chehalis - Centralia Chronicle

Benny family.“Al was like my mentor, my adopted grandfather. I just kind of fell into the Benny family,” Dean said with a laugh.Two others owned the flower shop before the Bennys, but the Chehalis building has always been a flower shop, for about 100 years, Dean estimates.“(There’s) lots of history,” Dean said.The whole block around the building used to be all greenhouses, Dean said.In 2011, she sold the business back to the Benny family due to health reasons before buying the shops back in 2014. During that time Dean wasn’t in the flower business. She worked at The Chronicle for about 18 months.When Dean took over again in 2014, she decided to close the Centralia branch.“I wanted to spend more time rebuilding the customer base, designing unique bouquets, instead of running back and forth,” she said.During her time in the business, along with the rise of online order gatherers, Dean has also seen design and tradition changes. These days there are a lot more vase designs. When Dean began working for the shop, corsages used to be traditional for Mother’s Day, and while they are still common for school dances, the Mother’s Day orders are waning. While flower shops have seen some impacts in recent years, Dean said she thinks especially with its greenhouse and business bouncing back, Benny’s will be fixture in Chehalis.“I think we’re going to be here a long time,” Dean said. http://www.chronline.com/benny-s-florist-greenhouse-still-blooming-in-chehalis/article_f611e2e4-d78f-11e5-9e29-ffaa1c8633ec.html

A devoted florist gives each 9/11 victim a white birthday rose - The Gazette

On Friday, six names will be adorned with white roses.Amelia Fields, 46, had been working at the Pentagon for only two days when Flight 77 crashed into the imposing military fortress outside Washington.Ivhan Luis Carpio Bautista, 24, a cook for Windows on the World, was supposed to take the day off but subbed in for a co-worker.AnnMarie Riccobini, 58, a billings supervisor at a law firm, had just beaten breast cancer.Michael Berkeley, 38, had just founded his own brokerage.Michael LaForte, 39, a broker, never met his third child, born two months after 9/11.FDNY Lieutenant Vincent Francis Giammona, 40, last spoke to his wife while en route to the burning towers.Family members often reach out to Collarone or to the memorial’s staff, touched and surprised by the ritual. “It is with tears of gratitude that I write this,” said Jennifer Glick in an email to the memorial. Her brother Jeremy was among those who rushed the hijackers on Flight 93, which crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. “With all the insecurity and chaos that we face right now, knowing that our loved ones are remembered gives me great comfort.”Kerry Irvine, an artist, used to visit the memorial often to think about her sister, Kristy Irvine-Ryan, a 30 year-old equities trader who had been married for just three months when she died. But in March, she told The Washington Post, “It was all chained off, and one of my first thoughts was, ‘Oh, God, her birthday,’ which was May 22nd.” Then she got a photo of her sister’s name decorated with a white rose. “To know they’re taking care of all of them, and giving them the respect they deserve,” she said, “it takes the load off the families a little bit.”The memorial grounds reopened July 4. The museum will begin allowing visitors inside again this weekend - first, family members only on Friday and then the public on Saturday, with drastically limited capacity.Collarone didn’t come up with the idea for the birthday flowers; that was a volunteer in the museum. But he’s the one who’s made it happen all these years, carefully selecting roses - he wants them to be a perfect white - from the city’s flower market and cleaning them and nursing them at his shop Floratech, in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. “I’m not looking for the cheapest roses,” he says. “I look for the best.”When the pandemic forced New York to shut down, halting inbound flights bearing hard-to-get white roses from global suppliers in the Netherlands and South America, Collarone knew instantly “that I had to take care of it,” he says. “I went into an immediate rescue mode for the 9/11 memorial.”Whereas roses had been coming in on 10 flights a day, there was now one flight a week from Europe. He worked connections (“My Holland guys helped me out.”), paid large markups as freight pricessoared, and sent drivers to the airport to pick up loads of roses directly from the source, circumventing wholesalers, because, he says, the city’s flower market, then and now, “is operating on life support.”His own shop, which used to supply flowers for Madison Square Garden and high-end hotels like the Mandarin Oriental, has hit dire straits. “We’re lucky if we make enough money to keep our electricity on,” Collarone says. He’s had to close all three of his retail flower shops, and lay off all of his employees, some of whom had been working with him for 20 to 30 years.Still, he wouldn’t dream of stopping the birthday-rose ritual, or asking for payment.He “grew up poor,” he says, in the firemen-and-cops enclave of Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, and worked in a flower shop before becoming an insurance salesman.It was a chance meeting with Andy Warhol at the legendary Limelight nightclub, he says, that got him to turn back toward his love of flowers. Warhol co... https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/a-devoted-florist-gives-each-911-victim-a-white-birthday-rose-20200911

Florist Starts ‘Flowers for Black Men' After George Floyd's Death, Sharing Random Kindness - NBC Southern California

S. Capitol in shock, many couldn’t help but wonder why the underwhelming police response to President Trump’s rioting supporters was so different from the massive show of force seen this summer at a Washington D.C. Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd. NBCLX’s Fernando Hurtado talked to Frank Straub, an expert in critical incident responses at the National Police Foundation, for a breakdown of the police reaction to both events. "Guys really do like flowers and they even blush when they get them which is kind of cool," Brown said. "'Flowers for Black men' were a way to show that, hey I love you, I see you, I understand this is a traumatic experience you’re going through, so here’s flowers to show you that," she said. Mallory With The Flowers has more than 11,000 followers on Instagram. And if there’s proof that her approach works, it’s now on her finger. Her boyfriend proposed on new year’s day. But she says for her wedding, someone else will handle the flowers. Ted chen nbc 4 news view park. ... https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/view-park-mallory-with-the-flowers/2504159/

'Essential' businesses: Florists, boat sellers and toy makers - The Daily Herald

Some not mentioned in the list have come up with their own interpretations. Do florists delivering flowers qualify as “agriculture”? Washington Floral Service, a wholesale firm with warehouses in Tacoma and Spokane, applied for and received a state exemption, Chris Berglund, a company vice president, told The Herald. “We’re essential,” Berglund said. Many of his customers — retail florists — are also seeking exemptions. “From what we’re hearing, it’s a 50-50 split on whether florists are getting an exemption,” Berglund said. “It seems to depend on whether they say they’re a flower shop or agriculture.” “If you can do a food delivery, you can just as easily do a floral delivery,” he said. Can yacht and pleasure boat dealers fit into the transportation category — as “marine consultants”? Harry Walp, president and CEO of Northwest Yacht Brokers Association, said it’s not yet clear if boat sellers are essential businesses. Essential marine industry jobs include consultants, naval architects and surveyors, but the state order doesn’t specify whether that applies to recreational or commercial segments of the industry, Walp said. “Several of my associates are taking a liberal interpretation of ‘consultants’ and make the argument that yacht brokers fit that description,” Walp said. “If so, yacht sales could be deemed essential. My concern is that a yacht broker potentially places himself, his family and his associates in harm’s way if he resumes sales activities. The yacht brokerage industry is taking the COVID-19 pandemic very seriously and the vast majority of our members would prefer to err on the side of caution.” About that Funko order … Meanwhile, hundreds of U.S. retailers are now focused on e-commerce delivery because retail outlets are shuttered. To fill orders, warehouses and distribution centers are open for business. Are those essential? Clothes, handbags, outdoor gear, bedding and toys are all available online from the likes of Washington-based Nordstrom, REI and Amazon, as well as retailers in othe... https://www.heraldnet.com/business/essential-businesses-florists-boat-sellers-and-toy-makers/

A devoted florist gives each 9/11 victim a white birthday rose - Anchorage Daily News

On Friday, six names will be adorned with white roses. Amelia Fields, 46, had been working at the Pentagon for only two days when Flight 77 crashed into the imposing military fortress outside Washington. Ivhan Luis Carpio Bautista, 24, a cook for Windows on the World, was supposed to take the day off but subbed in for a co-worker. AnnMarie Riccobini, 58, a billings supervisor at a law firm, had just beaten breast cancer. Michael Berkeley, 38, had just founded his own brokerage. Michael LaForte, 39, a broker, never met his third child, born two months after 9/11. FDNY Lieutenant Vincent Francis Giammona, 40, last spoke to his wife while en route to the burning towers. Family members often reach out to Collarone or to the memorial’s staff, touched and surprised by the ritual. “It is with tears of gratitude that I write this,” said Jennifer Glick in an email to the memorial. Her brother Jeremy was among those who rushed the hijackers on Flight 93, which crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. “With all the insecurity and chaos that we face right now, knowing that our loved ones are remembered gives me great comfort.” Kerry Irvine, an artist, used to visit the memorial often to think about her sister, Kristy Irvine-Ryan, a 30 year-old equities trader who had been married for just three months when she died. But in March, she told The Washington Post, “It was all chained off, and one of my first thoughts was, ‘Oh, God, her birthday,’ which was May 22nd.” Then she got a photo of her sister’s name decorated with a white rose. “To know they’re taking care of all of them, and giving them the respect they deserve,” she said, “it takes the load off the families a little bit.” The memorial grounds reopened July 4. The museum will begin allowing visitors inside again this weekend - first, family members only on Friday and then the public on Saturday, with drastically limited capacity. Collarone didn’t come up with the idea for the birthday flowers; that was a volunteer in the museum. But he’s the one who’s made it happen all these years, carefully selecting roses — he wants them to be a perfect white — from the city’s flower market and cleaning them and nursing them at his shop Floratech, in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. “I’m not looking for the cheapest roses,” he says. “I look for the best.” When the pandemic forced New York to shut down, halting inbound flights bearing hard-to-get white roses from global suppliers in the Netherlands and South America, Collarone knew instantly “that I had to take care of it,” he says. “I went into an immediate rescue mode for the 9/11 memorial.” Whereas roses had been coming in on 10 flights a day, there was now one flight a week from Europe. He worked connections (“My Holland guys helped me out.”), paid large markups as freight pricessoared, and sent drivers to the airport to pick up loads of roses directly from the source, circumventing wholesalers, because, he says, the city’s flower market, then and now, “is operating on life support.” His own shop, which used to supply flowers for Madison Square Garden and high-end hotels like the Mandarin Oriental, has hit di... https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/09/10/a-devoted-florist-gives-each-911-victim-a-white-birthday-rose/