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was blooming at the exact moment the ethic of organic, local farming was making its way to the flower world. She also produced fantastically lush, longstemmed blooms— the kind of flower that made it clear she was a good grower as well as a good marketer.
At the time, I was working on a flower farm in the Hudson Valley. The farmer, Angela DeFelice, was teaching me to farm. There is none better. But one day a young florist breezed into the barn to pick up wedding flowers, and we got to talking about the workshops. She told me that, for a designer, having your name linked to Floret can be really helpful. It was an enjoyable, knowing conversation, like one you might have at a New York party— about a new chef or Miuccia’ s strategy at Prada— but for that reason it also made me squeamish. Not many beginning farmers could afford the workshops. On the other hand, Benzakein was obviously a woman of guts and intelligence who,
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at 37, had mastered everything she’ d set out to achieve— a farm, a brand, a book, lately a seed business— on two acres of land. In early June, I flew out to Seattle.
Although it’ s tempting to see parallels between Benzakein and Martha Stewart— both have great taste, both are attractive, both are businesswomen above all else— Floret reflects ideas that have emerged since Stewart first bread-crumbed her methods for others to follow. Ideas like directness, efficiency, community. For instance, to make it easier and cheaper for brides to order flowers, Floret came up with an“ à la carte” menu that allows them to order bouquets and centerpieces as needed and not have to meet the $ 3,000 full-service minimum. It’ s highly profitable for Floret, says Benzakein, and it’ s realistic.
Efficiency, of course, reigns in the land of beets and ranunculuses. Indeed, knowing that you can grow very profitably
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on an acre or two— by using intensive planting techniques and focusing on premium crops— makes small-scale farming attractive, according to Jean- Martin Fortier, a Quebecois farmer-author. Fortier surprised skeptics several years ago when he revealed that his one-anda-half-acre garden brought in more than $ 100,000 annually. Floret has taken the same“ intensive” approach, with similar results, though not without soulsearching. At one point, the Benzakeins came very close to buying a much larger farm, 80 to 100 acres. Benzakein had found there was enormous interest among out-of-state florists in having Floret’ s flowers air-shipped to them.
“ But as we sat on it longer, we thought, Why not teach people in all these local communities to grow flowers?” she said.“ Connect farmers and florists together and take out the middleman. Why not just work together?” We were sitting in the dining room of a friend’ s farmhouse,
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Photo: Lara Dart |
A Day in the Life at Floret Flower Farm