Whitney's Fabulous Flowers

Whitney Bromberg Hawkings is the o-so-glamorous Co-Founder and CEO of the booming online floristry business, FLOWERBX. Rooted in luxury, the company has a stylish client roster, supplying flowers to the likes of Dior, Bottega Veneta, Jimmy Choo and Tom Ford - and it's easy to see why with their gorgeous blooms.

The Net-a-Porter of the flower business, having conquered the UK, their impressive business plan sees impending expansion into Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Collaborating with other leaders in their field - namely the fashion industry, recent partnerships include Laura Bailey as well as London-based womenswear designer, Emilia Wickstead. Here, the Bailey Bud Vase Collection, consisting of 5 beautiful hand-blown bud vases is best accompliant to any mantle piece and with the Emilia Wickstead Collection - think sleek, cylindrical statement brushed brass vases.

Felicity Carter: Tell us about FLOWERBX...?
Whitney Bromberg Hawkings: After working for TOM FORD for 19 years and feeling frustrated with the cost and inconsistency of the flowers I was buying and sending, I wanted to create a branded floral offering. Also, as a working Mom, I buy everything online. My weekly groceries are from Ocado, my clothes from Net-a-Porter or Matches.com and everything else from Amazon. Flowers were the one thing I couldn't buy, in a simple, chic way, online.

I started FLOWERBX a little over two years ago and am happy that it has resonated with so many people, so quickly and that the growth has been so significant.

FC: Why flowers?
WBH: The floral industry is one that hasn't been disrupted and for which there is no real, branded on-line solution. I am so happy that we have been able to create what I hope will be the first international flower brand.

FC: Who is your customer?

WBH: Our customer is a time-starved, discerning individual who is looking for quality and value. He or she likes the convenience of online shopping but is also looking for an exceptionally smooth and curated luxury experience.

FC: How has the brand evolved?

WBH: While we started out as purely an online flower delivery service, we were quickly asked to apply our clean, branded aesthetic to events for a lot of our individual and B2B clients. While this was initially not something we had intended to do, it was impossible to refuse both the sales' potential and the incredible marketing and exposure we get from doing events.

Vases were an obvious evolution to selling flowers, and we have been able to provide elegant and simple solutions for people that have, until now, been slightly fearful of "doing their own flowers."

Why hoverflies prefer Sikkim flowers to those in Bengaluru

If you were a hoverfly, part of a species that is among the most important pollinators in the world, flowers in Sikkim may perhaps be more attractive than even the ones found in Sweden or Bengaluru.

The simplest of the scientific questions — how does one of the most important pollination species in the world select its flowers — has lead to not only greater understanding of the pin-head-sized brains of hoverflies, but could also hold key to the protection of wild pollinators.

A global collaboration involving researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden, Flinders University in Australia, and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru set out to find these answers.

The teams led by Shannon Olsson (NCBS) and Karin Nordström (Uppsala University) followed hoverflies for months and patiently observed them.

The scientists tabulated the behaviour of hoverflies in tropical climes of outskirts of Bengaluru, mountainous northern Sikkim, and hemiboreal (landscapes close to the subarctic regions) of Uppsala, Sweden.

The observations — which were published recently in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the United States — showed that the tiny brains of hoverflies process multiple, complex factors to determine which flower they pollinate.

Crunching over a million data points, researchers found that combinations of visual clues (colour, shape, size), flower scents (more than 96 volatile chemical compounds) and immediate environment (humidity, carbon dioxide) determine attractiveness for, say Bengaluru hoverfly over its Swedish counterpart.

They then created artificial flowers (lures) based on what hoverflies in each place ‘liked' to test their hypothesis.

The study found that ‘Sikkim lure' worked well in other places, while, ‘Bengaluru lures' were "less attractive" to hoverflies from other places.

Dr. Olsson hazarded a guess, "In Sikkim, the hoverfly is the major pollinator as bees do not thrive in high altitudes. Wild flowers developed ways to make them as universally attractive as possible. Whereas, in tropical Bengaluru, flowers have a choice of pollinators and do not have to try hard to attract hoverflies in particular."

Hard to find in Bengaluru

During the study, the team realised that hoverflies were hard to find in urban Bengaluru, leading to the start of research to find the link between hoverfly populations and air pollution.

The study, says Dr. Olsson, can give insights on reversing the decline of wild pollinators, which are critical to the nearly $577-billion worth of crops globally.

"There is a thought on creation of pollination gardens and other spaces to revive pollinator populations. But, these ideas cannot be broad-based, because what works for European insect pollinators will not work in India. Studying these difference will help," she said.

While arresting the decline in pollinator population will need lowering the use of pesticides, decreasing monoculture agricultural practices, and increasing natural vegetation, Dr. Nordström said, "It is also incredibly important to understand the natural ecology of wild pollinators, not just hoverflies, so we can make informed choices when planning strategies."

Bootstrapped Farmgirl Flowers Is Taking On The Flower Industry

Christina Stembel, 39, grew up on an Indiana corn and soybean farm and didn't go to college. Now she's building Farmgirl Flowers in San Francisco, which will clock $15 million in revenue this year. When she launched the company in 2010, the $18 billion U.S. flower industry was dominated by four big players who offered huge selections, mostly made up of flowers shipped from overseas to small shops where about 40% of the inventory wound up in the trash because it spoiled before it could be sold. Stembel's strategy: source flowers locally and slash waste by selling a very limited number of arrangements direct to consumers from her website. She wraps her bouquets in distinctive burlap donated by nearby coffee roasters. When she tried to raise money, she was dismissed by VCs, but she managed to bootstrap the business and now has investors approaching her. In this interview, which has been edited and condensed, she explains the impact legal marijuana is having on her business and why she thinks the company could ultimately produce $1 billion in revenue.

Susan Adams: Where did you get the idea for Farmgirl Flowers?

Christina Stembel: I was director of alumni relations at Stanford Law School and during the economic downturn in 2007 and 2008, we were doing a lot of events but the budgets were getting cut. We were spending between $100 and $200 on centerpiece flower arrangements. I started to research why the flowers cost so much, and I found that just four companies did three quarters of the flower business.

Adams: What made you think you could compete with them?

Stembel: I'd send flowers to my mom in Indiana and I was always left dissatisfied with the whole process, not just the product. I spent an hour online looking at options, to find the least ugly one. Then I'd spend $80 to $90 on that, and when she received it, it wouldn't look anything like what I ordered. There's even a hashtag, #flowerfail. My research also showed that younger consumers were purchasing fewer flowers.

Adams: Why would you enter a shrinking market?

Stembel: The most recent innovation was in the '90s with ProFlowers, which started sourcing from South America instead of North America. They didn't do anything to fix the problems I saw.

Adams: What role did waste play in your decision to start a flower company?

Stembel: Flower shops waste between 40% and 60% of their inventory. They have so many options and the owner doesn't know what people are going to order so the flowers go bad. I came up with a model that I thought would solve all the problems. Instead of having 100 choices, we offer only a few curated options. You just get to pick the size you want. We have less than 1% waste.

Adams: How did you know your model would work as a business?

Stembel: I didn't know, but I thought it was a great idea. I did one focus group before I quit my job. I gathered almost 50 people and showed them a bouquet I made versus three or four from the top four florists. Eighty-six percent of the people in the focus group chose my bouquet.

Adams: What are margins like?

Stembel: I think at scale, we can get them to 25%. We're at a 2.9% net profit margin now but that's because we're investing all of our profit back into the company so we can grow. If we weren't doing that we'd have a 10% to 12% net profit. 1800Flowers had a profit margin of 8% last year.

Adams: Was there anything else you considered before starting the business?

Stembel: It had to check four boxes for me. With no college degree and no network, I had to be able to bootstrap. I wanted the ability to scale big if I was going to work that hard at something. It needed to solve a real problem. And I wanted to do something good in the world, which for me was sourcing flowers locally.

Adams: Why did you care about local sourcing?

Stembel: In my research, I learned that 50% of U.S. flower farmers had gone out of business. Growing up in the agricultural industry, it was important to me to support local agriculture.

Adams: How did you fund your launch?

Stembel: I had $49,000 in my bank account. I thought it was a lot of money. It's not. But I'd been at Stanford for seven-and-a-half years and I thought, if it's not now, it's never. I gave myself two years.

Adams: Where did you get your flowers?

Stembel: San Francisco has a great flower market where I could get great prices for flowers in small quantities directly from wholesalers and directly from farmers. But one of the early problems I ran into was that some farmers wouldn't sell to me. They'd only sell to wholesalers.

Adams: Why wouldn't farmers sell to you?

Stembel: Because their dad didn't and their grandpa didn't. A lot of them were like, this Internet thing, I don't know if it's going to be long term.

Adams: How did you market the business?

Stembel:  I would take flower arrangements to coffee shops in San Francisco with little marketing cards on them. Then I'd go back to the shops and see how many cards had been taken to see if it was worth the $20 flower cost.

Adams: How was your first year?

Stembel: I did $56,000 in revenue. The second year was $276,000. The third year I started to be able to spend more money on marketing with Facebook and some with Yelp. That took us to $920,000 the third year.

Getting to the root of problem with rhododendron

Theresa H. of Santa Rosa asks: The leaves of my rhododendron are curling inward and turning brown, and the plant is wilting. What's going on?

Phytophthora cinnamoni (root rot), is a root rot disease which is usually fatal and often kills a plant very quickly.

The symptoms are a sudden collapse of parts of the plant, or the entire plant, during the growing season. Check the roots and cut into the infected part of the stem. The disease is characterized by the roots being a deep brown color instead of white, like healthy roots should be.

If you scrape away the bark at ground level you will find the cambium layer below the bark has been stained a dark reddish-brown. The disease is caused by inadequate drainage and warm or hot soil temperatures. The combination of these two is often fatal to rhododendrons.

It is most common in areas with hot summers but can occur anywhere with poor drainage. Phythopthora cinnamomii is most active at a soil temperature of 65-75 degrees. Plants in containers are particularly susceptible, especially if watered overhead.

Be sure that the planting area is well prepared with coarse organic matter to ensure good drainage and aeration in the soil. Freshly composted bark has been shown to have some root-rot resistant properties. Packaged mixes for rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias would be good to use.

Make sure that the soil where the rhododendrons are growing does not become compacted by people or animals walking over it.

Growing rhododendrons in shade and mulching with organic matter will help keep the soil temperature down.

If you have a heavy clay soil, the best thing to do is to plant above soil level, either in raised beds or by mounding up the soil around the root of the plant.

Tom M. of Windsor asks: I would like to use my cold frame this year and grow a few greens, other than the usual Swiss chard, lettuces, etc. Any suggestions?

With a little protection from the elements, you can keep harvesting fresh greens well into fall and winter. Choose frost-hardy crops that continue growing during the transition to colder weather and shorter daylight hours.

Plant them early enough that they're nearly mature by the time the day length drops below 10 hours.

Here are a few good choices for the more unusual fall and winter greens, along with timing tips to help you get the most out of your greenhouse or coldframe.

Claytonia, also known as Miner's Lettuce, is one of the most cold-tolerant of salad greens and is hardy to about 0 degrees. It is easy to grow, is not bothered by moderate frosts and you can get multiple harvests over the course of winter.

The heart-shaped leaves have a wild flavor, and have a crunchy, succulent texture that is especially delicious.

Each stem has tiny white edible flowers. Sow seeds directly into the ground about 1/2 inch apart, 1/4 inch deep, in rows 12 inches apart, thinning to 4-6 inches apart. You can even plant in succession.

Mache, also called corn salad, is a very hardy, low-growing plant that produces tight rosettes of thick glossy leaves hardy to 5 degrees.

Late-blooming flowers worth the wait for your garden

You can't avoid flowers in the springtime. Most plants burst naturally into bloom as warm weather returns, with the flowers producing fruits and setting seed that will ripen over the summer and germinate during the following seasons.

But that doesn't mean you have to forgo flowers in the fall. Annuals will keep pumping out blooms until cold weather turns them off. And perennials? Well, let's take a look at just some of the most dazzling late bloomers.

No fall flower garden would be complete without hybrid Japanese anemones (Anemone x hybrida). Around Sonoma County, they bloom in September, with some sporadic follow-up bloom in late September to early October. They grow 3 to 4 feet tall on slender stems in a sunny to partly shady site with some summer water to get them through the seasonal drought. They'll reward you in September with the most charming 3-inch-wide flowers with a cluster of bright yellow stamens in the centers. Depending on the cultivar, the petals may be white, pink, or purplish pink, but my favorite is a variety called "September Charm" with clear shell pink petals that are strikingly beautiful. Kept watered, the anemones will spread into a wide stand that produces a sea of these exquisite blossoms.

In 1961, botanists changed the name of the Chrysanthemum genus to Dendranthema, which caused such a horticultural uproar that botanists restored the name to Chrysanthemum again in 1995. Thank goodness, because our fall gardens just wouldn't be the same without our mums — possibly the most beloved of all the fall flowers, all exhibiting typical fall colors: rusts, ochres, white, reddish browns, and yellows. We cut them and make big, poofy vases full. Ladies use them for corsages at football games. They are the essence of fall in a flower. It's almost impossible to pick a favorite cultivar because there are so many flower forms of this perennial: cushion, pompon, button, decorative, single, spoon, quill, anemone, spider, cascade and exhibition. You choose.

Did you know that there are a range of autumn-blooming crocuses? So this genus is not only the first up and flowering in the spring, but has representatives that are the last to go to bed in the fall. One of the most popular species is Crocus sativus, the saffron crocus. The late September flower is pale pink to purplish mauve and the orange, feathery stigma, when dried, is our precious culinary saffron — which is why it's no longer found in the wild. Saffron hunters plucked it to death. But it's widely grown in cultivation.

Although not particularly showy, Kirengeshoma palmata, commonly called waxbells, is an interesting native of the mountains of Japan. It makes a 3-to 4-foot mound of large, maple-like leaves, and hangs out pale yellow, shuttlecock-shaped flowers in September. It likes shade and moist soil, so plant it where you can water it during summer's drought.

Among trees, the floss silk tree (Chorisia speciosa) blooms with pink, rose, or purple star-like flowers in September and its subsequent fruits burst open into cottony masses of fluff. It likes full sun and some summer water and grows into a tall tree with a studded trunk. It's perfectly suited to our climate.

The Franklin Tree (Franklinia alatamaha) is persnickety, like its namesake Benjamin Franklin, and takes extra care to grow. It was discovered in Georgia by John Bartram, a friend of Franklin's, who brought it to Philadelphia. It disappeared from the wild in 1790, and all Franklin Trees since are clones of Bartram's rescue. It's an exquisitely beautiful small tree, especially when its last white blooms in September are seen against its reddish purple senescing leaves. I tried growing it in Sebastopol, but it lasted only a couple of years. Maybe you'll have more luck. It will be worth the effort.

From October to December, the Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo "Compacta"), a cousin of the madrone, hangs out pendulous clusters of white, urn-shaped flowers and bright red strawberry-like fruits at the same time, making quite a show. It's an evergreen, like its cousin, and loves our coastal climate.

Among shrubs, definitely plant a Blue Mist (Caryopteris x clandonensis "Heavenly Blue"). It's compact, growing from 2 to 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall, likes full sun, and produces scads of deep blue fringed flowers from August until December. Give it some summer water to keep it going strongly for its fall display.

Of course, nature in her profuse enthusiasm for flowers in all seasons, has more: escallonia, camellia, gardenia, chaste tree, and others, but the suggestions in this article may give you ideas for plantings this fall or next spring that mean your garden will not peter out just when harvest season rolls around. Your Thanksgiving table will always need a centerpiece, n'est pas?

Animals spring in to flower show

EVERY spring, Janelle Noble likes to share her joy at seeing her daffodils bloom.

"We try to involve all our pets and horses," she says. "Our Arab mare is very gentle and lovely, and was quite accepting of the garland of flowers."

Noble, pictured here adorned in flowers last spring at her family's Claremont farm, began growing daffodils for show about five years ago. She began by planting daffodils in pots around her home and now "they're everywhere – scattered in garden beds, pots and in my husband's vegetable patch, though he's come to terms with that now".

The ebullient gardener, who is also the Mona Pavilions manager, produced some award-winning daffodils last year, but she isn't resting on her laurels. Her daffodils are again contenders for awards in the Claremont Daffodil, Camellia and Spring Flower show today and tomorrow.

"Showing flowers isn't intimidating. It's a laid-back and fun environment," she says. "People don't just take daffodils, they take all sorts of spring flowers.

"There will be a magnificent display of camellias. Walking into the showroom is like taking a lovely breath of fresh air. You know it's the start of spring when you see all the vibrant colours."

Sans flowers, women lose out on medicinal values

Women wearing flowers is a common sight in the country, particularly in South India, but the tradition is vanishing. Though the women in western countries are accepting the medicinal and aromatic values in wearing flowers, our women are slowly abandoning the time-tested convention and are rushing to the cosmetic dermatological clinics, wasting time and money.

Not only for beauty, there are several benefits and values in wearing flowers. Flowers are a symbol of love, good luck, happiness and prosperity. Besides this, there are several aromatic values of each flower. According to experts in flower therapy some flowers could prevent hair loss and help grow healthy hair and also help in prevent dandruff.

Noted women welfare organisation She Association of India found fault with the educational institutions, which are not allowing the girls wearing flowers into schools. "After wearing flowers the women definitely look very beautiful. Every flower has its own qualities and values. However, the women in the present era are not following the habit. According to the Vedic culture, wearing flowers represents love, good luck, happiness and prosperity.

In several "ithihasas", it is mentioned that wearing flowers is believed to bring happiness and prosperity in the women's house. Meanwhile, the girls and ladies are of late most habituated to deodorants instead of wearing flowers," lamented M Sree Devi , President, She Association. By wearing flowers like Jasmine, the wife and husband relations will be more strong and would  give a pleasant and romantic mood to the spouse.

The tiredness, other professional and daily tensions will automatically vanish with the aromatic values of jasmine. However, the women, now a days are not following the age-old suggestions 62-year-old B Padmavathi underlined the importance of wearing flowers. There are no festivals or marriages without flowers. At least, the 50- plus women wear any one flower on the head, but the present generation  are not following this, she lamented.

If, one observes, in mythological books, Shakunthala, wore flowers not only in her hair,  but also on the hands and also as garlands as the flowers will boost up the entire body. " Flowers should not be kept in refrigerators but should be worn soon after they are plucked" internationally renowned Professor in Vedic Ecology and Flower Remedies B Lakshmi told The Hans India.