The Flower Press

An online floral magazine + community for northern Colorado

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“Flowers don’t tell, they show.” – Stephanie Skeem

  • Read, Seed, and Grow: Summer Programming for Little Ones at the Gardens on Spring Creek

    Read, Seed, and Grow: Summer Programming for Little Ones at the Gardens on Spring Creek

    With Poudre School District officially out for the summer, a handful of Fort Collins families made their way to one of the town’s best-kept secrets — the Gardens on Spring Creek — where the beloved Read and Seed program kicked off its summer season today.

    The program, one of the longest-running at the Gardens, welcomes toddlers, preschoolers, and their caregivers for 45-minute sessions on Monday and Tuesday mornings. Each session follows a familiar rhythm — a welcome song and story tied to the day’s theme under the shade of a catalpa tree, a guided nature walk through the gardens to hunt for colors, creatures, or seasonal blooms, and a hands-on craft to take home under the arbor of the outdoor kitchen.

    This week’s theme is pet rocks. Children used their imaginations to find shapes in stones, spotting bunnies, birds, and other creatures hiding in the granite before transforming them into nature-inspired creations to take home. It’s a tidy blend of early literacy, outdoor exploration, and school-readiness skills, woven naturally into the Gardens’ grounds.

    “We often have families that just come in the summer, but we do have quite a few families that will be here the entire year — it’s really awesome to see them progress in their growth,” said Britt Mowen, the Gardens’ Youth Programs Coordinator. “Seeding a love of nature in our participants — that’s our main goal.”

    While the program is designed for children ages two to five, older siblings are always welcome. Twelve-year-old Coco Fairburn, who attended this week alongside her younger brother, said she enjoyed that the activities were interactive and that the participants were encouraged to move through the gardens independently as they searched for just the right pet rocks.

    Read and Seed runs year-round, with sessions at 10:15 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. Scholarships are available for families in need. For more information, visit the Gardens on Spring Creek website or follow them on social media.

    • Join in every Monday and Tuesday at 10:15am and 11:15am. Photo and caption by Lauren Morgan
    • Story time and songs in the shade start the morning’s activities. Photo and caption by Lauren Morgan
    • Townes and Coco Fairburn decorate their new pet rocks. Photo and caption by Lauren Morgan

  • Celebrating 20 Years of Perennial Joys

    Celebrating 20 Years of Perennial Joys

    Joy Andrews’ front yard garden center isn’t technically open for retail business today. Wednesdays are reserved for wholesale accounts and catching up on maintenance. But like the butterflies and bumblebees, people can’t resist stopping by to take in the riot of blooms. And Joy can’t resist breaking from her work and schedule to let them.

    She chats about this plant and that, about the weather — and ends up making a few sales. It’s hard to turn anyone away once they’re there, under the seduction of so much color and delight.Offering beauty and happiness one plant at a time is her business model and her mission. 

    Joy started her namesake Fort Collins, Colorado nursery, Perennial Joys, twenty years ago this summer. What began as a hobby — replacing a little of her front yard’s grass with flowering plants, little by little each season — has grown into one of the town’s most unique and treasured sources for quality, regionally adapted garden plants. 

    Despite being well established as a local legend, it hasn’t always been a rosy path for Joy. Over two decades of growing and selling more than 700 varieties of plants from her home, she’s navigated city zoning battles, brutal winters, loss, injury, and the relentless physical demands of a one-woman operation. Urban agriculture enterprises like Joy’s are increasingly rare. According to the latest USDA data, the U.S. lost nearly 15,000 farms in 2024, with the sharpest declines among smaller operations — squeezed by zoning complexity, rising water costs, and the physical toll of going it almost entirely alone. 

    But Joy has persevered, and at nearly eighty years old, she plans to continue for a few more seasons. Plants make her happy. They made her mother — who helped her at the nursery until she was over 100 — happy. They make her neighbors and customers happy. A woman browsing on this Wednesday mentions she didn’t feel well, so she decided to come by. Joy understands. She knows firsthand what science is now confirming — that horticultural therapy has a measurably positive effect on mental health, with studies linking time among plants to reduced stress, improved mood, and a stronger sense of well-being.

    Joy works seven days a week, handling every aspect of her business on her own. When asked what her favorite flower is, she says anything that’s blooming. You can visit Joy and all that’s blooming at Perennial Joys — Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 9am to 4pm.

    All photos by Lauren Morgan

  • Growing West: Water, Land, and What Comes Next for Pedaling Petals

    Growing West: Water, Land, and What Comes Next for Pedaling Petals

    Growing West: Water, Land, and What Comes Next for Pedaling Petals

    Outside her front door and facing the foothills of the Rockies, Heather Hirschi adjusts drip irrigation lines while Tim Diana, her growing partner, broadforks soil in preparation for planting dahlia tubers. The two have been growing flowers together for two years under the Pedaling Petals name — a partnership rooted in friendship, a shared love of specialty dahlias, and a mission that began long before either of them called it a business.

    Spring preparations in the field. Photo and caption by Lauren Morgan
    Spring preparations in the field. Photo and caption by Lauren Morgan

    Tim started growing flowers in 2021, delivering bouquets by solar-powered e-bike to local medical centers after seeing firsthand how much flowers could lift someone’s spirits. The deliveries never stopped. Pedaling Petals now donates roughly 3,000 flowers per season to Columbine Health residents, twice a week, by bike. The farm’s stated mission extends beyond the bouquet: making the world better one flower at a time, the operation is built around sustainability — caring for communities, soil health, and plant and insect biodiversity as core values.

    This season, however, the conversation keeps returning to water — one of the most pressing conservation and sustainability challenges facing northern Colorado’s agricultural community.

    Colorado’s drought has reached historic levels, with snowpack at just 26% of median and Front Range water allocations cut to 50% or less of normal. Research in Frontiers in Plant Science confirms what growers already know — drought shortens stems, reduces flowering, and cuts commercial value significantly. A farmer Tim spoke with recently received five days of ditch water this season where he normally receives 68.

    For now, Tim and Heather are fortunate. Their current property has a natural spring — unrestricted, seasonal, and increasingly rare. But the property is changing hands and the search for new land is underway. “We are keenly aware that every drop of water that we use, someone else down the river doesn’t,” Tim said.

    Their criteria for what comes next is clear. Location and water. In that order. Everything else follows.

    For Pedaling Petals, finding the right next field is not just a business decision. It is the one that determines the future of the operation and its mission.

    Heather and helpers. Photo and caption by Lauren Morgan
  • NoCo Botanical Artist Profile: Tricia Soderberg

    NoCo Botanical Artist Profile: Tricia Soderberg

    On the evening of May 8, the Lincoln Center Gallery in Fort Collins hosted the opening reception for The Bright Side, an exhibit celebrating the power of bright color and uplifting energy through a dynamic mix of artistic styles. Among the four featured artists was Tricia Soderberg — a Colorado based mixed media artist whose abstract botanical prints and collages explore the cycle of cultivation and transformation. This profile is the latest in an ongoing series on northern Colorado’s botanical artists.

    Soderberg did not start with abstraction. Her early work was rooted in traditional landscape painting featuring wide vistas and  recognizable terrain. But as she moved into printmaking, her attention shifted. Drawn to the flat shapes and deliberate negative space of Japanese printmakers, she began looking closer into the landscape rather than across it. The result was a body of work that isolates botanical species — eucalyptus, peonies, aspens — and strips them down to their essential geometry. The works in The Bright Side center entirely on the iris, grown in her own backyard.

    Soderberg’s studio process is as intuitive as the work looks. She inks botanical shapes, arranges them in intentionally random compositions, and runs them through the press. Sheets are sometimes pressed together — a sandwich technique that yields unexpected results she then responds to. Decorative paper forms the collage foundation, layered with metallic paint to echo and extend the tonal relationships already present.

    What emerges, viewers keep telling her, is joy. “I’ve been accused lately that my work is very joyful,” Soderberg said with a laugh. “I’m at a point in my life where I feel very free — and I think that freedom is showing through in my work.” It is a response that aligns with recent research showing that botanical imagery — even abstracted and painted — produces measurable positive emotional responses in viewers.

    Next up for Soderberg: a new series built around the clematis growing in her home garden. The Bright Side runs through June 12 at the Lincoln Center Gallery, Wednesdays and Fridays, 1–6 pm, free admission.

    Tricia Soderberg is based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. See her full portfolio at triciasoderberg.com and @triciasoderbergart

  • NoCo Botanical Artist Profile: Annika Lahr

    NoCo Botanical Artist Profile: Annika Lahr

    Annika Lahr spends a lot of time looking at flowers. As a Fort Collins-based floral designer and botanically inspired painter, that attention is both professional habit and artistic practice.

    Lahr’s relationship with flowers began as a conceptual one — her academic paintings explored floral imagery as a lens for examining femininity, gender identity and power. That foundation has since given way to a more intimate, documentation-driven practice: detailed paintings of bridal bouquets, floral preservation work, and a new career as a floral designer at Fort Collins’ Joyful Poppy.

    A mini-documentary interview with Lahr opens an ongoing series profiling the botanical artists of Northern Colorado, a region whose high desert landscape and thriving arts community have made it fertile ground for this genre of artistic expression. 

    The perception of botanical painting as decorative or minor has shifted considerably. Scholar Irina Neacșu’s 2022 study on contemporary botanical art documents its resurgence as a serious fine art medium — something Lahr, who encountered that bias early in her practice, has experienced firsthand.

    Lahr was initially discouraged from using flowers as subjects. “I was always told that painting florals was not advanced, but was cliche,” she said.

    There is also growing evidence that the practice itself is good for the practitioner. A 2025 review in Frontiers in Psychology found that nature-based creative practice produces measurable reductions in anxiety and depression — a dimension of the work that will run as a throughline across this series. For Lahr, this connection to the healing dimension of art runs deep — her grandmother, an art therapist, introduced her to painting as a child. 

    For Northern Colorado residents drawn to the art form, resources are close at hand. The Gardens on Spring Creek offers botanical art programming for all skill levels, and the Rocky Mountain Botanical Artist Society connects regional artists with the broader Front Range community and beyond.

    Annika Lahr is based in Fort Collins, Colorado. See her full portfolio at annikamarieart.com.

  • Happy and Bright: Painted Flowers Hold Space

    Happy and Bright: Painted Flowers Hold Space

    It’s still too early in northern Colorado to plant many of summer’s most popular and eye-catching annual flowers. The bold seasonal color that defines Old Town Fort Collins’ street corners each year is still weeks away. But in the meantime, the Lincoln Center Art Gallery is offering an alternative dose of floral therapy. The Bright Side, a new exhibit featuring Colorado artists Annie O’Brien Gonzales, Laura Merage, Tricia Soderberg, and Randy Steinke, opened May 1 and runs through June 12, with a free opening reception this Friday, May 8. 

    Liz Good, the city’s visual arts coordinator, says the exhibit is a great opportunity to be surrounded by color. ‘It should be a little bit of a pick-me-up,’ Good said. “We try to pick art that is visually stimulating, exciting, happy and bright.”

    The Bright Side brings together artists working across a range of styles — with much of the work rooted in floral themes and subjects. Interactive installation, abstract work, and portraiture are all united by a shared commitment to bold color and uplifting energy. The result is a collection designed to move viewers emotionally, offering an immersive experience centered on positivity and joy.

    In addition to the gallery, Good’s office oversees the city’s Art in Public Places projects — including the city wall and transformer cabinet mural programs. Whether painted in vivid realism or sweeping abstraction, floral imagery runs throughout the city’s mural collection. The result is year-round botanical and nature-inspired color woven into the fabric of daily life across downtown Fort Collins.

    That intersection of botanical imagery, public space, and community wellbeing is drawing growing attention from researchers. A 2025 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that viewed flowers — whether real or painted — produce strong, measurable emotional responses, suggesting that a painted bloom may move us much the same way a real one does.

    The Bright Side opening reception is this Friday, May 8, at the Lincoln Center Gallery, 417 W. Magnolia. Free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Wednesdays and Fridays, 1–6 pm. Information and maps for the downtown wall and transformer cabinet murals are available at www.fortcollins.gov/publicart.

  • CSU Day at The Gardens on Spring Creek

    CSU Day at The Gardens on Spring Creek

    On Sunday, April 19, Colorado State University students were invited to spend a free afternoon at The Gardens on Spring Creek — a 12-acre botanic garden tucked along the Spring Creek Trail, in Fort Collins, Colorado. Although it is less than a mile from campus, it was for many of the students in attendance their first visit.

    The event, called CSU Day at the Gardens, was the first of its kind. Organized through a partnership between The Gardens and CSU, it drew students into a space that, despite its proximity, had largely flown under the radar for the university community.

    The event was funded by a CSU Community Engaged Learning Mini Grant and organized with direct involvement from students in NR 400 — Public Communication in Natural Resources, a course taught by Dr. Jamie Dahl. The course used the event as a hands-on public communication project, with student volunteers staffing the afternoon and directing visitors throughout the grounds.

    Dr. Dahl designed the partnership with intention — to connect students with local biodiversity, build awareness of conservation issues, and offer access to a restorative green space close to campus.

    The day’s programming reflected those goals. The event offered a range of opportunities. Students explored the wandered paths lined with bulbs, shrubs, and trees in peak spring bloom. The many cacti, the drought tolerant stars of the curated gardens were show stopping in their flowering.

    Alongside the gardens themselves, students browsed a range of informational tables where participating organizations connected them to campus resources, environmental programs and community initiatives.

    Students also had access to arts and crafts stations, the Butterfly House, Restorative Fitness sessions, and lunch from the El Diablo food truck.

    The Gardens on Spring Creek has served the Fort Collins community through public programming, conservation and education for years. The CSU partnership represents a deliberate effort to bring a younger, student audience into that community — and to position the Gardens as a legitimate wellness and academic resource for the university next door.

    That case is increasingly supported by research. A 2025 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that nature-based creative experiences contribute to well-being across emotional, cognitive and social dimensions — a finding that aligns directly with what CSU Day set out to offer.

    “We want to make sure students know that they are welcome here — this is a great place to just be and relax, have lunch, or come and study, and our wellness classes offer a great way to get exercise while being in a beautiful nature space.” — Gigi Schaller, Adult Program Coordinator, The Gardens on Spring Creek

    Organizers hope the partnership between CSU and The Gardens will continue to grow. For students who attended, discounted memberships offer a straightforward reason to return. 

  • Early Bloomers: A neighborhood garden center manages the delightful dilemma of an early spring

    Early Bloomers: A neighborhood garden center manages the delightful dilemma of an early spring

    This year Joy Andrews is celebrating her 20th anniversary owning and operating her small northern Colorado garden center. Perennial Joys is no ordinary garden center. Operated out of her home and yard, it is a one-of-a-kind Fort Collins small business. The past winter and the present spring — the driest and warmest many regional experts can remember — have created an unexpected dilemma for Andrews: early blooming.

    In 2006, Andrews began propagating, potting up and selling one-gallon perennial garden plants to her neighbors, friends and fellow gardeners. Pots and flats of locally adapted, pollinator-friendly flowering plants began to fill her front and side yards, beckoning admirers, customers and also the attention of the City of Fort Collins. To allow Andrews to continue selling legally out of her front yard, the city zoned her property for urban agriculture. And with the permission to grow, grow is exactly what Andrews continued to do.

    Space has always been Andrews’ biggest challenge. Her operation maxes out every available nook and cranny and requires a complex scheme to shuffle and support her plants at their various stages of growth and flowering throughout the season. This shuffling act has never been more complicated than it has been this year.

    The warm and dry conditions have caused many of Andrews’ plants to bloom months ahead of schedule, posing real challenges to her rotation plans and her use of city water. Additionally, it has confused her clients. Many customers, observing the flowering columbine, euphorbia and geum, have assumed Andrews is open for business. “The early blooming gives the wrong signal that it’s ‘go time,’” she said. “Customers were stopping by in March. March is not May!”

    Mid-May is traditionally when Andrews opens for business, timing with the region’s unofficial but widely agreed-upon safe-to-plant date of Mother’s Day. The early blooming of Andrews’ plants, along with the area’s flowering fruit trees and shrubs, although a welcome sign of spring, has worrying implications. If the drought and hot temperatures continue, Andrews will have to make strategic choices about when, where and how she sells her beloved plants.

  • Northern Colorado flower growers embrace season of rest and and reimagining

    Northern Colorado flower growers embrace season of rest and and reimagining

    Northern Colorado is expecting its first snowfall of the year, a reminder that the growing season is officially over. For longtime local flower growers Sue Miller of Blush Flowers on Vine and Debbie Miller of The Farmer’s Wife Flowers, the timing lines up with the winding down of their field tasks and the beginning of next year’s planning.

    Thankfully for Sue and Debbie, fall’s tasks are usually fewer than spring’s. Perennials are mulched and some are cut back, irrigation systems are winterized, Dahlia tubers are dug up, and equipment is stored—but the overall fall workload is lighter because of a field management philosophy both have adopted.

    Sue and Debbie use an ecological approach that differs from many growers: they leave their annual crops standing through the winter. Instead of clearing beds in the fall, they let the dried plants remain in place until spring. This minimizes unnecessary soil disturbance which protects it from erosion, helps reduce weed pressure, and supports insect and wildlife habitat. Dried stalks, stems and seed heads provide pleasing texture and movement during the stark winter months. 


    The fall and winter months are also when growers review their notes, catch up on the books, and make calculated business decisions. Deciding what and how much to grow for the 2026 season is a complicated figuring this year for Sue and Debbie who have both been and will continue to be impacted by two recent and significant changes in the region’s floral industry.

    In March 2024, the region’s largest buyer of local flowers—Palmer Flowers—was acquired by the Midwestern company Family Flowers– a large, privately owned floral enterprise that operates legacy flower shops nationwide. After the acquisition, Family Flowers ended Palmer’s former practice of purchasing seasonal flowers directly from area farms.

    This policy change greatly affected the Northern Colorado Flower Community, a cooperative wholesale collective that served as a primary market for many local growers. The collective announced earlier this month that it was shutting down and closing it’s warehouse.

    For Sue, the loss of both markets is significant. For the last two years she has grown exclusively for wholesale purchasers. She plans on adapting by scaling back her operation and focusing more on dried flower production that is easier to sell in Denver markets.

    Debbie was greatly impacted this year by Palmer’s changing policy. They had been her primary revenue stream, selling up to 75% of her product to them directly in years past. She plans to streamline her business and plantings to accommodate a cut-your-own operation and more easy pick varieties. Additionally, she plans to market more as a venue for photography, events, and workshops.

    Aside from concerns about the viability of their present growing operations, both farmers are concerned about the access to and support for local flowers in our area. Despite the uncertain seasons ahead, Sue and Debbie remain optimistic and committed to growing in the future. The local changes create new challenges and opportunities for a community that has always been hard working and resilient.



  • Backyard Ikebana: an interview with Kiev Kirby of Wabi Sabi Hobo

    Backyard Ikebana: an interview with Kiev Kirby of Wabi Sabi Hobo

    Also known as Kadō, or the “way of flowers” ikebana is the centuries-old Japanese art of flower arrangement. Its origins date back to the sixth century when Chinese monks introduced Buddhism to Japan, and with it the practice of offering simple altar flowers for worship and ceremony. This practice evolved over time into the more formalized art of ikebana with its countless codified schools, techniques and grandmasters.

    Traditional Ikebana style centers on a handful of core design and spiritual principles: it embraces seasonality, using materials that reflect the current moment in nature and celebrating impermanence. Its compositions emphasize negative space, asymmetry and balance, are often built around three lines symbolizing heaven, humanity, and earth. Ikebana arrangements seek harmony, balance, and quiet. 

    Kiev Kirby doesn’t want you to worry too much about what ikebana is supposed to be though. Kirby, an antique dealer and collector who calls himself and his business the Wabi Sabi Hobo, became an ikebana enthusiast when he started collecting hanakago, the Japanese baskets used to gather and display Ikebana floral material.  

    The botanical art form and the baskets are both intriguing to Kirby as they uphold his namesake principle of wabi-sabi which appreciates simplicity, imperfection, and the quiet beauty of natural materials.

    This is what Kirby invites us to consider as we step into our backyards looking for ikebana inspiration this fall. “People can feel overwhelmed with the historical and formal rules of ikebana.” Kirby fears. “In our modern times, filled with so much stress and concern, ikebana is accessible to anyone who loves beauty.” Kirby recommends avoiding complexity when heading outdoors to gather material. Instead he hopes we feel inspired by the simplicity of going into our yards to “find a twig, a a spray of leaves, and a little flower” to engage with the essence of ikebana.

    Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

    The traditional considerations of ikebana are meant to guide the artist toward deep meditation and expression, but to newcomers, the precise rules and structured forms might feel rigid or limiting.

    Some ideas for how to celebrate backyard ikebana:

    Photo by: Lauren Morgan

    All of these combine into a meditative practice that exists not only as a decorative art but as a personal expression of harmony with nature.