When Erin Tobiasz, a children’s librarian in Pittsburgh, was planning her September 2022 wedding to Matt Oas, an attorney, she thought about the goldenrod growing in the fields outside the library where she led the fall story.
“It looks like Pennsylvania,” said Ms. Tobiasz, 37, a youth services manager at the CC Mellor Memorial Library. She decided to include the yellow flowering plant in her bridal bouquet, along with Jewels of Opar, roses, zinnias and Chabaud La France carnations. All sourced from local flower farmers.
“I had Pennsylvania roots, but my family didn’t, so it was a good way to meet my family in the area I live in,” said Ms. Tobiasz, who has lived in Pennsylvania for 13 years. Every September, when she sees goldenrod, she said, it reminds her of her wedding.
Ms Tobiasz and Mr Oas, 38, are among several couples using local flowers for their weddings. Local growers offer brides and grooms a more sustainable option over imported flowers, often without the use of preservatives or harmful pesticides, while also allowing them to personalize their wedding by highlighting a season and location.
“The level of customization that can happen with local flowers is completely different than ordering from, like Amazon, these large national and international wholesalers,” said Jessica Stewart, florist and owner Bramble & Blossom in Pittsburgh, who worked with Ms. Tobiasz and Mr. Oas.
Most florists ordering, say, peonies from wholesalers will often have to order the same shade and size in bulk. Buying from many small, local farmers gives florists a variety of sizes and shades, creating a more dynamic color palette. “Pinterest culture tells couples that luxury comes from replicating a design from someone else’s wedding, but I think the opposite is true,” Ms Stewart said. “Finding a quirky flower, what others might call a mutant, enriches the design.”
Ms. Stewart sources heirloom irises from Sol Patch Garden, in nearby Braddock, Pa., planted by the owner’s grandfather. “I’ll be buying them all week when they pop,” he said. “The uniqueness of it is like farm to table — it’s so unique and could literally be just for your wedding.”
Jennie Love, its owner Love ‘n Fresh Flowers, an urban flower farm in Philadelphia, offers a variety of plants and flowers, including willow wicker, wild columbine, and carved salmon peonies. He likens the use of local flowers to “high fashion”.
“The only way to get that level of customization and custom elegance is by using the really good stuff,” he said. “And that comes from local farms.”
Not only do local growers provide access to more distinctive blooms, but the flowers are also likely to be more fragrant.
Helen Skiba, who grows more than 80 varieties of flowers in Artemis Flower Shop in Boulder, Colo., said that with many imported roses, “a lot of those fragrance genes have been bred out of them, so you lose that whole sensory dimension of an experience.”
Imports still account for approx 80 percent of flower sales in the United States, according to the US Department of Agriculture, but the domestic flower market was increasing. The most recent USDA Floriculture Research reported 10,216 producers in 2023, compared to 8,949 in 2022.
And membership in the slow flowers The network, which represents local flower farmers and others in the industry, has tripled in size, to 750 from 250, since the group started in 2014, said Debra Prinzing, the network’s founder and author of “The 50-Mile Bouquet: Seasonal , Local and Sustainable Flowers.”
Fifteen years ago, Ms. Prinzing noticed the slow food movement in the culinary world, which focuses on sourcing sustainable local ingredients, and wondered: Why couldn’t there be a slow flower movement? “If you really want to live with the seasons, and people do it in their diet, why don’t we do it in our flowers?” said Mrs. Prinzing.
Ms Prinzing attributes the growing interest in local flora in part to social media, where couples and florists share photos of romantic bouquets of unconventional flowers. Among them Lennie Larkin, its owner B-Side Farm in Portland, Ore. Her Instagram feed includes meadows of coral peonies and bunches of golden celebration roses. Ms. Larkin describes her work with couples as an educational process based on sensory conditioning. “We encourage them to think about what flowers they might miss,” she said.
Annaliese Danckers, a 29-year-old Montessori teacher in Longmont, Colo., contacted Ms. Skiba to source and design the flowers for her September 2023 wedding.
“Going with a local farmer was unfair to us,” said Ms Danckers, whose bouquet included sunflowers, dahlias and amaranth. “Being able to work one-on-one, knowing the care that went into growing and arranging each bouquet and using our buying power to make a little difference to the way the wedding industry makes money was all part of our selection.”
When using local flowers, couples should keep in mind that they are limited to what is available in season and in their communities. If you’re getting married in the winter in an area where flowers don’t bloom, there are still options. Your florist can design arrangements using branches from local apple and cherry trees, for example, or anemones or raccoons grown in hoop houses, Ms. Stewart said. Some flower farmers, like Heather Henson of Boreal Blooms in Cold Lake, Alberta, make dried flower arrangements for winter weddings.
Local flowers often cost about the same as imports to consumers, depending on type, location and other factors. But all the money from the market goes back into the community instead of being dispersed among various businesses in the international supply chain. “That goes to the farmers I’ve met personally,” Ms Stewart said.
Imported flowers tend to they leave a bigger carbon footprint since they are often transported thousands of miles in airplane refrigerators, he said Becky Feasby, a horticultural therapist based in Calgary, Alberta and the Canadian ambassador for the Slow Flowers network. Local, small-scale growers are more likely to use environmentally friendly practices, added Ms. Feasby, who is working on her master’s degree in sustainability at Harvard with an emphasis in floriculture.
The use of pesticides, which can be harmful to humans and animals, is less prevalent on local flower farms compared to international growers, said Ms Skiba, whose farm does not use pesticides.
Jose Suarez, the director of the Climate and Environmental Health Research Program at the University of California, San Diego, has studied the impact of chronic pesticide exposure on children living and working on flower farms in Ecuador. In one of his studiesmany of these children had poorer ones neurobehavioral development and mental health problems after a period of increased pesticide use, he said.
Pesticides may prevent blemish on flowers and preservatives may promote longevity, Ms Skiba said, but blemish can also be beautiful. “That which is imperfect,” he said, “tells us a story.”
