Like the final out in a Phillies playoff game, our season came to an abrupt end when we’d had high hopes to make it a little further. The plan was to keep Philadelphia florists well stocked in wholesale locally-grown flowers and foliage through the first week of December. But temperatures dipped down to the low-20s on two different occasions at our farms this month (usually we don’t go below 30 before Thanksgiving) and froze the anticipated harvests. While our farms have a few stems left, it’s not enough to keep the PFG party going.
For our last week of sales on November 15th, we had hundreds of heirloom mums, eucalyptus, smokebush, flowering kale, oakleaf hydrangea foliage, potted amaryllis, twig wreaths, marigolds, and more. It was a great showing for after such hard freezes!
Even though the season was a bit shorter than we projected, we’re beyond delighted with how it all played out! We moved over 200,000 stems from 6 local flower farms to 126 local floral buyers. You all SHOWED UP! Thank you!!
PFG is a baby business, only 15 months old, so we’re still making sure this model works. It’s no easy feat to build a sense of collaboration, trust, and community among small farms and small floral businesses that are used to competing for the same market share. Part of our work is to combat a sense of scarcity and assure everyone of abundance. Fortunately for us, the flowers have a way of speaking for themselves and building bridges quickly.
Now that we’ve got our systems in place and our core growers, we’re ready to add more farms in 2024. If you are a local flower farmer with 3+ years of professional experience and more than an acre in production, please email info@philadelphiafloralguild.com to introduce yourself. Florists: know of a farm that you think should be part of PFG? Please share our invitation!
As we take a little rest over the winter and spend a good deal of time planning for 2024, we would be so grateful for your honest feedback about your experience with PFG this season. Here is a link to a satisfaction survey. It will remain open until December 15th so please fill it out when you have a few minutes.
Our newsletters will be monthly, rather than weekly, over the winter. Tune into our Instagram feed for more regular updates. Thank you for following along with our news and stories this year. We already miss you and can’t wait to see your smiling faces again in the spring!