From left, Ethan Bradford, coordinator, corporate partnerships, Mid-Ohio Food Collective, and Andrew Royer, vice president of Ohio operations, Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts.
Family-owned Connells Maple Lee earmarks $10 from every purchase of its Admiration arrangement for charitable giving. The arrangement has generated nearly $10,000 in donations since 2015.
Admiration features two roses, bells of Ireland, carnations, football mums, cushion poms, charmelia alstroemeria, hypericum and silver dollar eucalyptus.
“We are grateful for the support of our customers and organizations such as the food bank for the wonderful work they do to improve lives in our communities and beyond,” said Tom Royer, president and CEO of Connells Maple Lee.
The food collective, which is based at 3960 Brookham Drive, Grove City, serves 20 counties.
A circle has no end, which is one of the reasons why a Christmas wreath is a symbol of eternity.
One made from natural evergreen won’t last forever, of course, but you can take some simple steps to get the most out of it.
Make a noble gesture: Just as not all Christmas trees are created equal, the same holds true for wreaths. They have different characteristics, one of which has to do with needle retention.
Balsam wreaths are among the most fragrant, but they have a reputation for shedding needles. It has to do with where they are grown: Canada, northeastern states, the upper Great Lakes and Pennsylvania.
Noble fir wreaths, on the other hand, hail from the Pacific Northwest, where they are tested by high altitude, heavy rain and frost, and high winds. That makes them hearty in the face of what the holiday season throws at them.
The noble’s blue-green needles are rounded, giving them a fluffier look than the flatter balsam branches.
While noble fir might cost more than balsam because of growing time and shipping costs, it more than makes up for in longevity and construction.
Soak it: Any plant is on borrowed time once it is cut; however, keeping it moist will delay the inevitable. You can soak it in a bathtub or utility sink filled with room-temperature water for 24 hours to give it a deep hydration before you hang it.
Spray it with hairspray: You can seal in the wreath’s moisture with hairspray, which acts like glue and holds the needles on. To avoid a mess, it’s best to spray outdoors before hanging the wreath on a door, window or wall.
Mist it: Every day or every other day, lightly mist the wreath to keep it moist. To avoid getting walls wet or creating streaks on glass, remove the wreath from where it’s hanging while doing this.
Keep it shady and cool: Avoid direct sunlight and hang it on the outside of a door; otherwise, it can get cooked behind glass if hung between a main door and a storm door. The space between the doors suffers from reduced airflow, lower moisture and heat.
These steps will keep your Christmas wreath delivering joy throughout the holiday season.
Poinsettias are America’s No. 1 potted plant, with red being the most popular color.
Christmas is celebrated around the world, but it clearly leans into cold weather.
Santa lives at the North Pole, after all. Among the most common holiday imagery are snow-covered evergreens, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose.
But it doesn’t take a lot of sleuthing on the Internet to find a stock image of Santa unwinding after a globe-trotting Christmas Eve. He’s lounging in a beach chair, his red pant legs rolled up, his bare feet in sand. Often, there’s a colorful drink in his hand, a turquoise-blue body of water nearby.
It is the season of believing, after all. But if a sun-soaking Santa seems far-fetched to you, here’s a warm weather connection to Christmas that you don’t have to take on faith.
It’s a fact that the poinsettia – the official plant of Christmas – is native to Mexico. It’s a tropical plant that finds its comfort zone between 65 to 70 degrees during the day.
The plant takes its name from Joel Roberts Poinsett, a native of South Carolina who is credited with bringing the poinsettia to the United States while he was serving as the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico.
Red poinsettias remain the most popular, but they come in more than 100 varieties, “including shades of white, cream, pink, purple, orange and yellow,” FFA noted. Poinsettias are grown in all 50 states.
The colorful part of the plant is a modified leaf called a bract, which often is mistaken as the flower. You must look in the center of the bracts for the small yellow flowers, known as cyathium.
No matter the size or the color of your poinsettia, you’ll want to take these steps to make it last long.
Average room temperature is fine. Poinsettias can’t tolerate cold (including icy water) and can suffer from droopy leaves (a condition known as epinasty) if exposed to cold temperatures.
Epinasty also can result from a build-up of ethylene gas. Big-box retailers are notorious for leaving poinsettias in plastic sleeves, which trap ethylene and essentially ruin the plant.
Bright, ample light is best for the plant, mimicking conditions in Mexico.
Keep the plant moist but not sitting in water. Like people, poinsettias don’t like wet feet. The frequency and amount of water will vary depending upon the amount of sunlight, humidity and pot size to which the plant is exposed.
Poinsettias are sensitive plants, so you want to avoid banging them into things as they can bruise easily.
Not only are poinsettias a prominent part of Christmas, but they are the subject of their own holiday.
National Poinsettia Day, celebrated on Dec. 12, marks the anniversary of the day that Joel Roberts Poinsett died in 1851.
Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts will salute military veterans on Nov. 11 with free red, white and blue bouquets.
The Veterans Day bouquets – featuring a red carnation, a white carnation and a blue bow – will be available in-store only at 3014 E. Broad St., Bexley; 2033 Stringtown Road, Grove City; and 8573 Owenfield Drive, Powell. Click here for store hours.
“Honoring the men and women who protect our freedom has become a favorite tradition in our stores,” said Tom Royer, president and CEO of family-owned Connells Maple Lee. “We are forever thankful for the dedication and sacrifice that our veterans and their families have made for all of us in our great country.”
Non-veterans may purchase the bouquets for $2.20 each.
When you’re a fourth-generation family-owned business nearing its 90th year in operation, you cherish your company history.
But a hallmark of Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts’ enduring legacy is honoring its past while still being willing and able to change course when circumstances dictate.
That agility has made Connells Maple Lee one of the most successful florists in the United States.
Sometimes change is thrust upon you suddenly, as it was during the coronavirus pandemic, an existential threat that forced Connells Maple Lee to rethink many of the ways it functioned. At other times, Connells Maple Lee has had to respond to structural developments in society, which brings us to our latest rebranding effort.
The first glimpse of that new look and feel began arriving in customers’ mailboxes this fall in the form of our year-round and fall catalogs.
Increasingly digital world
Go Welsh, our long-time design agency, is leading the rebranding.
“Whatever we do and propose,” said agency owner Craig Welsh, “it has to live in digital, but it can’t feel digital.”
At its heart, the rebranding addresses the challenge of promoting the organic feeling of flowers in an increasingly digital world.
More than half of our sales now occur online. All those swipes, clicks and taps come at a faster pace than the turning of a printed page, making it harder to capture the public’s attention.
The new catalogs feature a reworking of our logo, distilled from the long-stemmed flower it has been for decades into a clean, contained round icon that’s more recognizable across media.
On social media, Craig noted, an “icon becomes much more prominent in the expectation” among users. And with increased awareness, that icon can become the brand’s primary mark, lending itself to many more uses.
Mid-century modern
The icon makes for a “much cleaner brand presence visually,” Craig said, but the flip side is that the mathematical representation of shapes, lines and curves in the digital realm can overpower the organic world.
That’s why Go Welsh seized on the idea of bringing organic into the mix through inks made from flower petals and stems. Jenna Flickinger, a Go Welsh designer, keeps vials of ink at her desk, with labels such as lily, lavender and pansy, and clematis.
She boils the petals herself, adding salt (to release color) and gum arabic (a stabilizer) to create ink. She brushes the ink onto watercolor paper and then scans the washes into her computer.
Some of the colors and textures have been incorporated into the new catalogs, but the learning process continues. From vial to dried paper, the ink colors aren’t always predictable.
“Even though this was a pink carnation,” Jenna said of one example, “it still [dried as] this yellow color.”
Craig described the rebranding as a “mid-century modern aesthetic,” invoking a design style known for sleek lines connected to nature and a timeless essence.
“We’re trying to find a place where we can combine this organic sensibility with the vector, screen-based digital stuff, so we started looking at mid-century modern sensibilities,” Craig said.
It starts with the new catalogs, but you can expect to see many more representations in the year ahead.
To silver and gold, jingle and jangle, add another classic holiday pairing: “Berries & Boughs”
The last one is courtesy of Joanne Beasy of Grove City, the runner-up in our annual name-the-arrangement contest.
The contest winner was Jennifer Davis of Lebanon, Pa., with the name “Merriment.” Davis entered the contest through Connells Maple Lee’s sister company Royer’s Flowers & Gifts, which has 15 stores in Pennsylvania.
Beasy and Davis each will receive the new holiday arrangement as their prize.
The arrangement features carnations, poms and a rose with noble fir and boxwood, ribbon and berries, all in a silver and red tin. It will be available for purchase after Thanksgiving.
Congratulations to Beasy and Davis and thank you to everyone who participated. We look forward to doing this again next year!
Christmas in July is giving way to the holiday arrangement of August.
This year’s Conells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts name-the-arrangement contest focuses on a new holiday design.
The arrangement features carnations, poms and a rose with noble fir and boxwood, ribbon and berries, all in a silver and red tin. What it lacks is a name.
To view the arrangement and enter the contest, visit cmlflowers.com/contest. Limit one entry daily per email address, through Aug. 18.
One winner and one runner-up will be selected from entries submitted to Connells Maple Lee and its sister company in Pennsylvania. Both the winner and runner-up will receive the arrangement (retail value $39.99) as their prize.
Shea’s design will adorn the birthday card that all members receive in the coming year. The third-grader “just loves to be creative and outgoing,” her mother said.
In the year ahead, members of the Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts Kids Club will celebrate a “hoppy” birthday courtesy of Shea Berridge.
Shea, who is turning 9 and entering third grade, is the winner of this year’s kids club birthday card design contest.
Her design features a bunny wearing a flower tiera and will adorn the electronic card that kids club members receive in the coming year. Her prize is a free flower delivery.
She is the daughter of Shawn and Christi Berridge, who live in Lewis Center with Shea and her older brother.
“She just loves to be creative and outgoing,” Christi said about Shea, who is active in dance, cheer and the Girl Scouts.
The kids club is free for children ages 5 to 12. Parents may register their children at any Connells Maple Lee store or at cmlflowers.com/kidsclub. Kids club benefits also include a membership card, online activities and a quarterly e-mail newsletter.
If you have a question about flowers, don’t hesitate to contact your local store.
Besides providing the freshest, most beautiful product we can, Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts prides itself on delivering top-notch customer service before and after a sale.
We’re always happy to discuss a specific situation, but here are answers to some of the most common questions we receive from customers.
Q: I’ve heard of homemade flower foods, including mixing Sprite with aspirin or placing a penny in the bottom of a vase. Do these options work as well as your flower packets do in prolonging flower freshness?
A: No, our flower food is formulated with ingredients to help lower the pH levels, antimicrobials to help prevent stem rot, and sugar to provide energy for buds to open. Home remedies won’t achieve those ends.
Q: Is this item appropriate for this occasion?
A: We answer this question with questions of our own. For instance, will a recipient be home enough or attentive enough to care for a plant, or would fresh flowers be a better option requiring less of a commitment?
Funerals prompt many special requests, such as adding pictures or personal items to a funeral arrangement. We help families decide the best way to honor their loved one.
Q: What is wrong with my plant?
A: Most of the time there is an issue with either too much or not enough water. Other times the cause is with bugs or disease. We usually can figure it out with the help of a picture.
Q: Do you carry blue or black roses?
A: Unfortunately, neither grows naturally. Right now, we offer a blue rose that has been died and dried. We don’t recommend using floral spray to achieve those colors because the spray can shorten the vase life of the rose. We typically suggest complementing the rose with babies breath that has been sprayed blue or black or adding an accent ribbon in the desired color.
Q: What do the flowers (especially roses) mean?
A: A red rose symbolizes love; a yellow rose is for happiness/friendship; a pink rose is for admiration; a white rose represents peace, sympathy and hope. (You’ll find more on flower meanings here.)
Roses are available year-round, but they’re a particularly good value in June thanks to their natural growing cycle.
A rose farm typically harvests its crop every six to eight weeks, or about the amount of time between Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day in May. But while there’s another big crop of roses in late spring, there is not a corresponding holiday to absorb all of them.
The sale
That leaves a thorny situation in which supply outstrips demand, making roses more affordable for florists and, by extension, our customers.
Our sale comprises:
One-dozen rose bunch for $9.42 (in-store only)
A Rosie arrangement featuring one-dozen or two-dozen colored roses for $46.99 or $56.99, respectively
A Rose Delight arrangement with four-dozen colored roses for $99.99, or $15 off the regular price.
Three-dozen arranged long-stemmed red roses for $149.00, or $20 off.
Whether you’re giving them as a gift to someone else or showing yourself a little love, roses are ready and at an even better value through June 15.
