Episode 391: Catching up with Flower Farming Educator Lisa Ziegler of The Gardener’s Workshop

Today I'm sharing a wonderful conversation, recorded recently during the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival in Seattle.

Lisa Mason Ziegler of The Gardener's Workshop has returned and you may recall she was a past guest of this podcast in 2014. I remember first meeting her in person during the summer of that year, at the Garden Writers annual conference in Indianapolis, soon after her book Cool Flowers was published.

Evidence of Lisa's prolific writing!

Lisa and I shared the same publisher, St. Lynn's Press, which also produced The 50 Mile Bouquet and Slow Flowers, so I had been asked to provide a blurb for her new book. When we finally met, I knew I wanted to invite Lisa to join me on the podcast -- and I simply can't believe that was nearly five years ago.  I will share links to that Episode -- Number 159 -- in today's show notes so you can go back and have a listen to our conversation.

A lot has happened in the time that's followed, including the explosion of the Slow Flowers community, heightened interest in flower farming in general, both in the US and in other countries that have seen outsourcing of their floral production, and I believe, an aesthetic shift in floral design, based on a more garden-influenced approach that relies on uncommon, couture blooms that large production growers aren't able to raise efficiently, opening the door for micro and medium farms to capture that market.

Lisa has been at the forefront of efforts to disseminate accurate flower farming education, setting the bar for best practices along with many of her fellow members in the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. With the launch of her Flower Farming Online Course last fall, she's been able to reach an even larger audience of students, spreading knowledge and encouragement through a new medium designed to fit lifestyles and budgets that don't always allow for in-person training.

She also last year released a new book with a new publisher, Vegetables Love Flowers, published by Cool Springs Press. I invited Lisa to meet me for breakfast, good conversation and a quiet moment to record this interview. I know you'll enjoy it.

Flowers in her arms!

Here's a bit more about today's guest, excerpted from The Gardener's Workshop web site:

What began as a small cut-flower farm producing for local

markets has grown into so much more. Lisa has become a leader in the cut-flower

growing industry, author, accomplished speaker and the owner of The Gardener’s

Workshop.

It all began in 1998 because Lisa wanted to work in her

garden as her career. At first, she sold her cut flowers to local florists and

Colonial Williamsburg. The business soon grew to include florist throughout the

Hampton Roads region, supermarkets, farmers markets, a members-only on-farm

market, and a bouquet drop-off subscription service.

A market bouquet from The Gardener's Workshop

During this time Lisa began giving programs to garden clubs,

master gardeners, commercial growers, and other groups. What became apparent is

that people were eager for her simplified organic gardening methods and her

greatest gift is sharing them.

The next natural step came when Lisa self-published The Easy Cut-Flower

Garden in 2011. a 100-page guide on how-to grow and harvest a

small home cutting garden. Her program travels began to spread from Texas to

Oregon to New York City and she went on to become published with Cool Flowers in 2014 (St. Lynn’s

Press) and Vegetables Love Flowers (Cool Springs Press 2018.)