Our Flowers and Friends live show has continued with yet another week of floral fun! Are you staying caught up on the series? Each live is full of floral advice and stories from our special guest experts, as well as plenty of insight from our incredible hosts! Next Friday morning, we hope you’ll join us for another hour in our flower-powered community. Settle in with some coffee or tea, enjoy some fresh air, and join us right here to get in on the fun! If you can’t make it, don’t worry. The Flowers and Friends live shows are always available on our website to watch at any time, so you can always stay caught up– or even have a Flowers and Friends binge watching session!
This past week’s episode of Flowers and Friends was an extra special one. We’ve been with our hosts Kara Jamison, Dionne Woods, and Ana Galena for a few weeks now, but this week was an opportunity to get to know them even better. Flowers and Friends – Growing Places, Getting to Know our Hosts is still available to watch on our website, so definitely stop by and check it out! However, if you’re looking for a recap in preparation for the next live show this Friday, we’ve got you covered.
The hosts of Flowers and Friends are each experts in particular floral-fields. Kara, Ana, and Dionne have unique experiences, styles, and points of view, but, like all of us at BloomTV, share a similar goal; building strong foundations and bonds within the flower loving community. This week, they each shared a little bit about themselves and how they fell in love with all things floral.
Ana Galena started her section with a mantra that has applied to her for her entire life– “Everything is better with flowers and friends.” She has been in the floral industry for about twenty three years, but as she shared during last week’s episode, she feels like flowers have been a core aspect of her life for as long as she can remember. Her start in the industry is a little different than you might expect! Her first foray into flower arranging was actually in the economic part of the business rather than the creative, but after many years of witnessing how the customer’s in her mother’s flower shop were truly changed and uplifted by flowers, she felt them calling to her. Nowadays, Ana hosts flower arrangement workshops that are more than just places to learn a new skill, but a place to bring some joy into her students’ lives and teach them how to give themselves permission to enjoy flowers.
Kara Jamison wasn’t always the expert cultivator of cut flowers that she is today! She shared that she actually worked as a nurse for many years, and it wasn’t until a few life changing events and the loss of her mother that she pulled away from that career. Joy was of paramount importance to her– being both her mother’s first name, and something that she wanted to spread in everything she does. When she and her husband moved on to empty farmland with the intent of growing healthy vegetables for their new son to eat, she discovered her true passion for something she never expected to. With the strike of the pandemic and a new abundance of time on her hands, Kara planted over 1000 perennial flowers on her land! From there, her cut flower business sprouted and bloomed into the absolutely stunning flower farms she has now.
Dionne Woods has been a part of the Flowers and Friends team since before she joined as one of our amazing hosts. Not only was she helping out behind the scenes, but Dionne was the show’s very first guest! Dionne shared her story, and how she began on the path of becoming an artist out of desperation. It was a way to pay the bills that allowed her to combine her passion and drive with her boundless creativity. As she shared her story, she gave us a brief demonstration on how anyone can create beautiful flower paintings if they want to. One thing in particular Dionne emphasized was the importance of enjoying the process! Painting can be a journey of self discovery– and she spreads the message that anyone who wishes to paint can and should give it a try.
Don’t forget to join these incredible ladies this Friday at 10AM PST for another fun, floral live stream!
By Alex Moreton
