Well, as I return from The Special Event in Tampa and I’m excited to start writing and sharing all of the goodies I’ve gathered up, however, I’m hit with a reality that I have too much to share with you before I even go there. 

We just published and shared our new videos for February, but I have some other interesting and exciting articles and news that recently went live:

Selecta’s New E-Zine, FloralNews:

We were approached by FloralNews magazine to write an article for their debut e-zine issue.  Our very own, Ben Powell, wrote a great and inspiring article on...

It is Cyber Week!  We have a great deal for all our ShopMayesh.com customers, but what if you don’t buy online?  Well, don’t worry – we just created a new Mayesh Wholesale Florist Peony Variety and it is now available for download!  We break down our best-selling peonies by variety that includes a pictures and description of the lovely blooms.  At the end of the guide you will find some care and handling tips to ensure your peonies are at their best shape!

Where do you buy your wholesale flowers from?  It is always little scary when deciding whether or not to try something new, especially a new wholesale florist.  For flower designers, the fresh cut flowers you decide to use combined with your artistic ability is everything – gains repeat business, new customers, maybe even new business ventures.  So for us, Mayesh, it is always a challenge to try and gain a customer’s trust, especially when they can be hundreds of miles away.

I can honestly say that we have the best people behind Mayesh who are extremely dedicated to improving and strengthening our industry.  But, as I find myself often repeating, it’s always better to hear how great a company is from someone other than the company itself.  Which brings me to my main point . . . We get in positive feedback each week and I wanted to share these two customer testimonials that came over just this week.

It happens every week across the country at all our locations, we get flower orders for events last minute, the Friday before or the Monday of the week, or (gasp) even later than that.  Do we try to cover them?  Of course, we try our best each and every day no matter the circumstance. 

While I realize that orders do pop up last minute time-to-time, I thought it might be helpful for you to see how long it takes us to get in our wholesale flowers from various points of origination.  This example uses product arriving to our Detroit branch (each branch varies a bit).

...

What’s the connection between Kim Kardashian’s wedding and Mayesh Wholesale Florist?  Read on to find out!

Are you into celebrity weddings?  Do you want to know which florist was responsible for designing Kim Kardashian’s wedding flowers?  Mark’s Garden of Sherman Oaks, California is the company behind the designs.  Mark’s Garden is the florist that has been responsible for the beautiful floral designs seen at the Academy Awards Governors Ball for last 18 years, the Emmy’s, the Golden Globes, and many celebrity weddings.

It has been reported that there were 50,000 flowers - that included white roses, white hydrangea, and white phalaenopsis orchids - at the Kardashian/Humphries wedding.  Are you wondering who supplied the majority of those wholesale flowers to Mark’s Garden?  Mayesh, of course!  We feel so lucky to supply wholesale flowers to so many events across the country - from small intimate home parties, to benefits, to weddings, destination events...

I’d like to introduce to you “Seabreeze”.  Seabreeze is a pollenless asiatic lily!  These beautiful wholesale fresh cut flowers will develop like normal but never produce that brown, wedding dress staining pollen!  As with most new products, availability is extremely limited.

Hopefully you’ve heard about our Mayesh Design Star Contest.  If not here’s a quick run down:

• Designer’s submit a short 5 minute video from September 1 to September 15
• One designer will be chosen to be our 2012 spokesperson in 12 educational flower design videos
• The Design Star will gain great exposure for themselves and their company
• The Design Star will earn a fab trip to Holland’s Horti Fair

I’ve seen some people hesitate to enter because they feel that they may not be good looking enough or they don’t have the time to put something together or they aren’t a professional videographer . . . I’m sure there’s a million other excuses not to get in front of the camera.

Each week we get to be involved in some exciting projects and events – working with the most renowned floral designers to start-ups to everything in between in the event world.  Recently, Mayesh Wholesale Florist had the pleasure of working with a project for Coach’s launch of their new perfume, Poppy Flower, at Macy’s in South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.  We were contracted by the Geoff Howell Studio, a New York company, to provide roses for the event.

Our job was to deliver 1000 wholesale roses a day – processed, stripped, cut to length and conditioned for seven days to Macy’s.  We set up the initial display in the buckets and then subsequent deliveries would be incorporated into the display by on site personnel.

In addition to Coach and Geoff Howell Studio wanting 7000 fresh cut roses to be incorporated into the Poppy Flower launch, they also brought in a celebrity designer, Denise Porcaro, from Flower Girl...

Our CEO, Pat Dahlson, and our Director of Purchasing, Pam Uranga, went to Mexico earlier this month to explore sourcing wholesale flowers from that region.  They toured the flower growing regions and took some great pictures to share with you.  These pictures don’t tell the whole story, but give a flair of the local markets.  Hope you enjoy!

Pam with a test variety of giant white oriental lilies. 

As promised, here’s Heather Cook’s follow-up article on her trip to Resendiz Brother’s Farm.  Learn a little about the farm and how Mel Resendiz is a visionary within our floral industry!



Two views of the farmland at Resendiz Brothers. You can see the leucadendrons safari and salignum on the hillsides. In spring, these hills are painted in color with waxflower which you can see in picture on the right.  All of these hillsides are covered in poly tubing to provide water to the plants which are irrigated regularly.  Also you can see there are roads above and below...

I think we all get excited for new wholesale flowers or different product colors – right?  Well I’m excited!  We are starting to get in some fun new echinacea, also known as coneflower.  Coneflower now comes in pinks and greens – such a great addition to our summer flower line up!  Make note that the foliage is not the best looking, but the flower itself is super cool.  Check out a few pictures below:

Pink Echinacea

Coconut Lime Coneflower ...

This year our wholesale flower purchasing team and a few of our location managers attended NORCAL’s Fun ‘N Sun Weekend.  During the trip, our team also took tours of a couple different farms – Dramm & Etchter and Resendiz Brothers Protea Growers.  We have a bunch of great pictures to share with you from the show and from the farms.

At the show there were tons of great designs all created from fresh California product – Sunflowers, Roses, Snapdragons, Ivy, Mini Callas, Blushing Bride Protea, Waxflower, Stephanotis on the Vine (I love this stuff), Lilies, Tulips and so much more.

We have an amazing grower based in Ecuador who just sent us over three new varieties of wholesale garden roses – Snow Chips, Kate, & Snow Augusta.

These are brand new and we have not had a chance to do any testing, so please bare with us while we gather more information for you.  In particular we want to tell you what color these are upon opening, as we all know that garden roses often soften in color as they fully bloom.

Heather Cook just wrote a great article outlining the different asters – with the majority available as fresh cut flowers at wholesale florists.  Enjoy!

China, Beauty, Matsumoto, Rainbow, Krallen, Igel, Seestern, Meteor, MardiGras, Novi Belgii, Crown, Serenade, Monte casino, Solidago, Solidaster…... OMG!! It’s a little more complicated than some people might think! With the introduction of new varieties, forms, and shapes, its time for a refresher. This is an old and honored member of the floral industry, its about time we see some new entries.



Above you’ll find pictures of some of our more basic asters, more commonly known as “spray asters” . There are a myriad of different names and varieties of spray asters and a disbudded...

Can you believe that this is the last week of June already?  Which means we are wrapping up our weekly homepage wedding pictures of the week feature.  But don’t worry, we loved how you all came together as a community to share your creativity and we will surely be doing this again!  My team member, Jenn McJunkins was the one responsible for sorting through over 370 pictures and hand selecting 40 to highlight on our website’s homepage.  So I wanted to send a special shout out to Jenn and thank her for her diligence and vision for grouping the images together.

And of the 40, Jenn thought it would be fun for our last week to highlight a few of our favorites – which is a difficult task because everyone submitted amazing pictures of their work!  So here we go!  This week, you’ll find soft pink hydrangea and lilies, succulents, lilac, bouvardia, wax flower, snowberries, lisianthus, dahlias, astilbe, stellata pods, green hydrangea, green vibernum, red hydrangea, roses, and peonies – all great...

I’m very excited because this week’s wedding pictures of the week include one of my personal favorite photographs from Park Place Design.  I really love how it seems that the photographer was in the water and I always admire floating flower arrangements!  Looking at the rest of the pictures (and if you didn’t read the title), can you guess the theme for this week?  It’s “Red Romance” and they feature an array of lovely red blooms including carnations, lilies, roses, peonies, ranunculus, and hypericum.  This week our homepage pictures are courtesy of:

Today is a great day in my world because “The CA Grown Experience Visits Mayesh Wholesale” episode is finally live! 

J Schwanke takes a tour our LA Market location with Pat Dahlson, our CEO.  They discuss Mayesh’s amazing sourcing, technology and service capabilities.  In addition, J chats with a few Mayesh employees and a couple of customers to really dig into why Mayesh rocks!  And as I say often, it’s one thing to hear from Mayesh why we are the best at what we do, but it’s another to hear it from our super customers! 

We need help!  We created this cool app for our Flower Library to store and organize images that you are interested in – you could call it a folder or portfolio or album.  You can create any number of folders based on your project, events, weddings, etc.  We will also offer a feature that allows you to email a folder/portfolio to clients!  We have so many people that love our new Flower Library, but we think this new feature will just take it to the next level!

But, we need a great name!  And that’s where you come in.  We want YOU to name this new feature!

...

This week’s wedding pictures of the week is themed “Purple Rain” featuring lovely bouquets in hues of purples and blues.  Check out the 5 new Facebook wedding design pictures on our website’s homepage.  These beautiful bouquets feature an array of wholesale flowers that includes: roses, hydrangea, geranium, hypericum, kermit mums, fujis, cymbidium orchids, wheat, seeded eucalyptus, stock, erynigium/thistle, mokara orchids, delphinium, and ageratum.  This week our homepage pictures are courtesy of:

Florists, what is wrong on your personal profile page on Facebook?  For me, I couldn’t figure out how to add Mayesh’s profile page as my employer – it would only let me select the generic community page for Mayesh.  So if someone clicks on it they just go to a generic page with nothing.  VERY ANNOYING!

But guess what?  I finally figured out how to fix it!  And since many of you are florists and/or event business owners and/or highly involved with your companies, you may also a little annoyed that you weren’t able to select your company’s page.  Before you go through the steps of this fix, make sure that you can’t actually add your business page.  Go to “Edit Page”, then click on “Education and Work” and start typing the name of the business, hopefully your business page shows up and you can select it, but if not follow the steps below.

This week’s wedding pictures of the week is themed “Pretty in Pink”.  Check out the 5 new Facebook wedding design pictures on our website’s homepage.  These beautiful bouquets feature an array of wholesale flowers that includes: hydrangea, lilies, roses, peonies, stellata pods, muscari, ranunculus, boronia, gerbera daisies, nerines, and dahlias.  This week our homepage pictures are courtesy of:

We didn’t forget the grooms when selecting our favorite FB pictures.  Check out the 5 new Facebook wedding design pictures on our website’s homepage.  The theme for this week is boutonnieres!  These little designs create big impact featuring an array of wholesale flowers that includes: succulents, seeded eucalyptus, craspedia, hellebores, stellata pods, and grasses.  This week our homepage pictures are courtesy of:

If you missed “Pat Goes to Italy – Part 1”, then here’s a quick recap:  In April 2011, Pat visited Italy.  Part 1 shares the details from the first part of his trip to Seborga and Sanremo.  Part 2, we are sharing details of Pat’s trip to Genova and the Euroflora show.

Genova, Italy is where the Euroflora 2011 show was held.  The Euroflora show was started back in 1966 and since has had 9 shows drawing in over four and a half million guests to take in breathtaking floral and garden displays.  Fresh cut flowers, plants, technical ability, and creativity all come together all the while showing off the best of Italy in terms of floriculture.  The next show will be held in 2015.

Heather Cook recently created this article covering the specifics of Verbascum, Stachys, and Dusty Miller.  I don’t know about you, but I get confused as to whether I’m looking at Lamb’s Ear or Dusty Miller every now and then.  So thanks Heather for the clarification! 

Over the past few years, popularity of silver foliages in the wedding and event business has risen, and so in the wholesale flower business.  Plants that traditionally have been listed as noxious weeds are now being ordered by florists. Just to help clarify the differences in these foliages, here are brief botanical description and some pictures of Verbascum, Stachys and Dusty Miller. These are silver foliages available through wholesale floral suppliers.

Check out the 5 new Facebook wedding design pictures on our website’s homepage.  The theme for this week was coined, “Country Chic”!  These rustic and romantic designs were created using antique colored roses, green eye roses, antique hydrangea, bouvardia, mini callas, freesia, dahlias, wax flower, anemones, tulips, football mums, china mums, stellata/scabiosa pods, cymbidiums, lisianthus, berzillia, dusty miller, hypericum berries, astilbe, snowberry.

Mayesh Wholesale Florist's CEO, Pat Dahlson, is always on the move. He serves on several industry boards, visits growers, and attends industry events taking him to different corners of the world.

In April 2011, Pat visited Italy.  Specifically he went to the Italian village of Seborga, Sanremo, and Genova.  Part 1 of 2 will showcase Pat’s journey through Seborga and Sanremo.  Part 2, which I’ll post next week, we will share Pat’s trip to Genova, which hosted the  Euroflora 2011 show.

Seborga, Italy Pat came across 8 foot tall Ginestra here!  Seborga is a very small village near the border of France and is known as an agricultural region, with it's main focus on olives and floriculture crops.  A perfect place...

We would like to introduce you to “Willeke Alberti”.  No, not the 1960’s female Dutch singer, but rather a new variety of fresh cut Oriental lilies!  This particular variety of Oriental has a deeper shade of pink on its tips, fading to a white star center that is also speckled with white dots.

What do you think?

Kicking off the peony season, here is the second peony article written by Heather Cook:



Few plants can offer a history like the peony plant.  It’s believed that the peony  was known in China as far back as 1000 BC. In the 7th century AD, peonies became popular amongst Chinese royalty and began to increase in demand and value. The best varieties were extremely expensive. It is told that peony plants were often included as part of a dowry  settlement amongst the wealthy elite of Chinese society during the Tang Dynasty. Peonies continued to be favored by Chinese royalty and as their kingdoms expanded, the peony’s geographic territory grew. Chinese began using grafting techniques to expand...

Check out the 5 new Facebook wedding design pictures on our website’s homepage.  The theme for this week was inspired by Billy Idol’s song “White Wedding”!  Classic white flowers are seen in this collection:  Gardenias, roses, ranunculus, hydrangeas, freesia, callas, oriental lilies, orchids, and lily of the valley!

Peony season is here!  And our own Heather Cook has put together a couple of peony articles that I wanted to share with you!  This first article is about the most popular peony varieties that are available wholesale as a fresh cut flower. 

From Heather:  Please find below pictures of some of the most common peony varieties we will be seeing over the next 2 months. I have listed the most common varieties with pictures to help you identify them. Many varieties of peonies will fade and change color as they mature, a very good example is Monsieur Jules Elie. In bud form it is a perfect hot pink, but Mayesh considers this variety "mauve" because it fades pretty dramatically. Gardenia is a white peony that in bud form is quite clearly blush pink, but as it matures it becomes more white. Not all varieties are available at all times, as some are "early bloomers" and some are "late bloomers". I’ve also listed the date of when the variety was introduced next to variety name where applicable.

It’s a new week and we have 5 new Facebook wedding design pictures on our website’s homepage.  Again, thank you to everyone who participated in our Facebook wedding photo contest!  We are so lucky to work with and be associated with the best in the floral business!

This week our homepage pictures are courtesy of:

• Desert Bloom Event Florist of Scottsdale, AZ; desertbloomeventflorist.com
• Rose of Sharon Event Florist of Fayetteville, AR; roseofsharon-eventflorist.com
• Studio Blush Floral Design of Madison, CT; studioblush.com
• Blooming Flowers of Ashville, OH; bloomingflowers.net
• Manor House Flowers of Lewis Center, OH; manorhouseflowers.com

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Facebook wedding photo contest!  Not only did we receive tons of great pictures, but many came with warm words and camaraderie! 

With over 370 beautiful photos submitted for our contest, we had our work cut out for us to pick our 1st five that will be featured on our website’s homepage.  Don’t worry if you aren’t seeing your picture here today.  We will be selecting 5 new pictures each week during our wedding season.  Also, in addition to using the pictures on our site, we selected a few for a new wedding season banner that will be displayed at our locations.

When J Schwanke and his film crew came to Mayesh Wholesale Florist earlier this month to film a segment for "The California Grown Experience", we were able to capture some behind the scenes footage with our own video camera. We took that footage and created a trailer for our episode just for you - it's pretty awesome!

As a wholesaler of flowers, Mayesh, as a company, needs to know everything there is to know about fresh cut flowers.  Our wisdom lies within each of us who work for Mayesh and I’ve decided to take on the task of pulling out that wisdom to share with all of you.  So each Friday, I will strive to publish a new blog post discussing our favorites for a certain flower category, hence the name “Favorites Friday”.