You can make your home as fancy as you want, but nothing will ever be as beautiful as the natural decor that plants provide – especially flowers. Florists have the privilege of carefully arranging nature’s gifts into different forms, with their imaginations.
Erin Benzakein runs a flower farm called Floret Flowers with her family in Skagit Valley, Washington. In 2001, Erin and her husband moved to the Valley, which is about an hour north of Seattle. They did it to seek a more simple and peaceful lifestyle to raise children in.
Erin actually spent most of her childhood at her great grandparents home in the country, which is where she developed a love for nature. She decided to return to her roots with her kids. Many people who live in the city are now considering doing the same. There’s just something meditative about being surrounded by nature.
She started with a small backyard garden before Floret exploded into a teaching farm and seed company. Then, strangers started asking Benzakein to order flowers, even though she never intended to sell them. When she sold her first bouquet, the customer cried as she was transported back to childhood summers.
Watching how a floral arrangement could bring such emotions and connect two people who didn’t know each other made Erin want to pursue this career. The next year, she replaced all of her veggies with flowers, and did the same with the orchard.
On their website, there are many how-to guides and growing resources for those who are learning about flowers. They also have a massive international network of growers so you can find beautiful flowers no matter where you live.
Although they’re all about creating a dreamy vibe, Floret is all about science and research. They spend hours and hours testing out different trials to develop the very best in flowers, with top-notch stem length, scent, and other qualities that make you feel as though you’re in the Secret Garden.
After their first book, A Year In Flowers, was such a tremendous success in the New York Times and beyond, the second book, A Year in Flowers: Designing Gorgeous Arrangements for Every Season was the follow up, including gorgeous photography and design techniques for different seasonal arrangements. Now, they’re working on new one dedicated to dahlias.
Now that we know the transformational story behind this epic flower farm, let’s get into some of the mind-flowing arrangements, which seem to transport us to a different planet.
These gorgeous pastel-colored zinnia were created with the goal of developing different varieties in all colors and forms. We’d say she’s doing a spot-on job!
Wouldn’t you love to wake up to the sight of this every morning? This is a dahlia breeding patch, and these babies are huge. The secret to their massive size? According to the caption, good soil, and lots of love.
If red roses aren’t your thing, you’ll swoon over these blush and toffee toned Honey Dijon roses. We’re obsessed with the name, the color, and the perfect little unfurling of petals that these roses take on. We wonder what they smell like…
We love the photo spreads that the Benzakeins lay out – this one is a sweet pea rainbow, which shows us a gorgeous color range of petals, from fiery orange to lovely lavender. Can we request a wall of this instead of fake brick wallpaper in our living room?
These zinnias are usually easy to grow, but Erin wanted to work on growing varieties that are generally tough for gardeners to grow, such as buttercream, raspberry, chocolate, soft peach, and champagne. We can find most of those colors in that bouquet.
Even if you don’t love yellow, it’s hard to not be obsessed with this golden-hued bouquet, or as Erin puts it, “the first armload of the season.” Is this what hugging sunshine would feel like?Those little ones with the orange centers are our true love, but we’re not sure what they’re called. We’ll leave that to the flower pros.