Every year in late July and early August, the streets and parks of Medellin erupt in a 10-day celebration of flowers.

Antioquia, the department in northwest Colombia that counts Medellin as its capital, is one of the largest cut flower-producing region in Colombia, and the annual festival blends culture and color in an explosion of fresh blooms.

As seen in the summer 2012 issue of Flower Magazine and Joobili.com.

Designer Beverly Farrington of Accents of the South, in Huntsville, AL sets a simple elegant table for the Fourth of July Holiday.  Lush Mounds of white hydrangea are set in rope-adorned glass cylinders and line the center of her party table set on the waterfront.  Bring on the fireworks!

May Day (May 1st), falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day, which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neo-pagan festivals such as Samhain.  May Day marks the end of the un-farmable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations.

For the Druids of the British Isles, May 1 was the second most important holiday of the year, Beltane. Then the Romans came to occupy the British Isles. The beginning of May was devoted primarily to the worship of Flora, the goddess of flowers. May Day observance was discouraged during the Puritans. Though, it was revived when the Puritans lost power in England, it didn’t have the same robust force. Gradually, it came to be regarded more as a day of joy and merriment for the kids, rather than a day of observing the ancient fertility rights. May Day may be best known for its tradition of dancing the maypole dance and crowning of the Queen of the May.

By the Middle Ages, every English village had its Maypole. The bringing in of the Maypole from the woods was a great occasion and was accompanied by much rejoicing and merrymaking.

The tradition of celebrating May Day by dancing and singing around a maypole, tied with colorful streamers or ribbons, survived as a part of a British tradition. The kids celebrating the day by moving back and forth around the pole with the the streamers, choosing of May queen, and hanging of May baskets on the doorknobs of folks — are all the leftovers of old European traditions.

In Hawaii, May Day is also known as Lei Day, and is normally set aside as a day to celebrate island culture in general and native Hawaiian culture in particular. The first Lei Day was proposed in 1927 in Honolulu. Leonard “Red” and Ruth Hawk composed “May Day is Lei Day in Hawai’i,” the traditional holiday song. Originally it was a contemporary fox trot, later rearranged as the Hawaiian “hula” song performed today.

Looking for a magnificent gift to send along with your floral order?

This gorgeous balsa wood wall sculpture, from Venice, CA  member Floral Art, is available in several colors.   

Hand painted with a white lacquer background encased in a clear acrylic box frame-24x 24 x 5D

For more gifting ideas please see their facebook page.

Thank you to member Ovando for this delightful Thanksgiving greeting!

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Me oh my, Thanksgiving is but a week away.  We certainly appreciate longstanding traditions just as much as the next designer, but who’s to say that you can’t dress up your décor with a more modern spin?

Less really can be more: Warm colors will never go out of style for the fall season. You can easily offer more modernist appeal by working with fashioned, multi-stem arrangements.    Succulent Beauty Mark, featuring swooping callas and our signature succulents, is the quintessential contemporary design for Thanksgiving.   Delicately bold, endlessly elegant, and sure to be admired by all of your dinner guests.

Now, who said that “modern tradition” was an oxymoron?

We wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Trick or Treat!!  As Halloween approaches, beware the goblins lurking … in some of the more unique flowering plants out there!

The Titan Arum, which grows in the rainforests of Sumatra, is a flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world.

Due to its odor, which is reminiscent of the smell of a decomposing mammal, the titan arum is characterized as a carrion flower, and is also known as the “corpse flower”, or “corpse plant”.

 A native to Northern California and Oregon, the Cobra Lily was discovered in 1841 by the botanist William D. Brackenridge at Mount Shasta.  

 This plant is designated as uncommon due to its rarity in the field.   A carnivorous plant, it is also called the California Pitcher plant,  or Cobra Plant, and it is the sole member of the genus Darlingtonia in the family Sarraceniaceae.  

The name Cobra Lily stems from the resemblance of its tubular leaves to a rearing cobra, complete with a forked leaf—ranging from yellow to purplish-green—that resemble  fangs or a serpent’s tongue.

The genus Tacca, which includes Bat flowers and Arrowroot, consists of ten species of flowering plants in the order Dioscoreales, native to tropical regions of Africa, Australia, and south-eastern Asia.

100 customers who spent $100 on flowers (exclusive of delivery & fees) received our fall season customer appreciation package :

• a one year subscription to flower magazine.  Learn techniques from top designers, be inspired by floral decor, and infuse your lifestyle with chic floral fashion.
• one year of insider access to Global Black Book for selected travel, lifestyle and connection partnerships worldwide. Where to stay, how to get there, and what to do there.

Keep an eye out for future offers! We appreciate our customers!

Thank you for a wonderful Mother’s Day week. Please note this offer expired on Monday, May 2nd.

For a limited time, we are excited to offer customers who place a Mother’s Day order with a value over $150, a complimentary annual subscription to
flower, the nation’s only floral lifestyle magazine.

If you do not wish to receive the magazine, or prefer it to go to your recipient, please mention this in the ‘Order Description’ section of your order form.

Easter and the holidays that are related to it are moveable feasts, in that they do not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian or Julian calendars (both of which follow the cycle of the sun and the seasons).

In Western Christianity, using the Gregorian calendar, Easter always falls on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25, inclusively. The following day, Easter Monday, is a legal holiday in many countries with predominantly Christian traditions.

Eastern Christianity bases its calculations on the Julian Calendar. Due to the 13 day difference between the calendars between 1900 and 2099, March 21 corresponds, during the 21st century, to the 3rd of April in the Gregorian Calendar. Easter therefore varies between April 4 and May 8 on the Gregorian calendar (The Julian calendar is no longer used as the civil calendar of the countries where Eastern Christian traditions predominate). Among the Oriental Orthodox some churches have changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the date for Easter as for other fixed and moveable feasts is the same as in the Western church.

But, this year, Sunday, April 24^th is Easter for Protestants, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians alike!

For information on how the Easter Bunny got involved….!   Please see :  wikipedia.org.