Category: Flowers

  • Oh, Atlanta, we hear you calling

    We don’t procrastinate when it comes to holiday shopping. In fact, no sooner is one Christmas in the rearview mirror than we start planning for the next one. It’s not that we’re eager for the passage of time. Rather, we’re beckoned by AmericasMart in Atlanta, which describes itself as the nation’s leading gift, home furnishings…

  • Entries due July 31 for this year’s name-the-arrangement contest

    One of our new arrangements, debuting this fall, has all kinds of color, thanks to two short-stemmed orange roses, a mini green hydrangea, a hot pink rose spray and purple statice. But what the arrangement doesn’t have is a name. This is where you come in. Royer’s is holding an online name-the-arrangement contest, with the…

  • Plants and pets: know the facts to keep dogs and cats healthy

    No plant says Christmas quite like the poinsettia. But nary a holiday season goes by without poinsettias being negatively associated with pet health. Yet the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says poinsettias “may be the most misrepresented plant when it comes to toxicity. Since 1919 poinsettias have been called lethal if ingested…

  • Revive your roses with these easy steps

    Even when handled with great care, the heads of your beautiful roses could drop over within a few days of receiving a bouquet. It’s not that the flowers are old. Rather, it’s likely that an air bubble got stuck in the stem, preventing water from getting in. With these easy steps, you can bring the…

  • Our flowers are rooted in many places around the world

    North America to South America. Europe, Africa and Asia. Oh, the places we’ll go to procure high-quality flowers. We’ve previously told you about our regular trips to Bogota, Colombia, which has an ideal climate for growing roses, for instance. Here’s a sampling of other flowers and the couuntries from which we source them: Carnations/alstromeria: Bogota,…

  • The making of our ‘Thoughts of You’ arrangement

    Among the thousands of Valentine’s Day arrangements we’ll be making this year is one called Thoughts of You, which this team was handcrafting in our central design department in Lebanon. This arrangement features shades of pink comprising a rose, alstroemeria, carnations and mini carnations, as well as lavender button poms and stems of bupleurum, all…

  • Postcard from South America: Day 3

    Day 3 found Tom Royer and Geoff Royer again in Bogota, again inspecting Valentine’s Day roses, this time at the Multiflora farm. “The quality was very good from what we saw,” Geoff said. “It’s impossible to look at every bunch we get, but we make sure we go through the process with them about the…

  • Postcard from South America: Day 2

    We started Tom Royer and nephew Geoff Royer’s trip to Colombia, South America, in the city of Medellin. Day 2 found them some 335 miles southwest in Bogota, the nation’s capital. Bogota sits in the center of Colombia, on a high-altitude plateau that provides year-round steady temperatures that help make it one of the world’s…

  • Postcard from South America: Medellin flower farms

    While they’re getting ready to play a big football game in Houston, Royer’s is gearing up for its version of the Super Bowl with our annual pre-Valentine’s Day trip to South America. Tom Royer, our senior vice president and chief operating officer, has been making the trip for decades. In recent years, he has been…

  • ‘Freedom’ on the march when it comes to roses

    We’ve all heard the line from Shakespeare: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” Far be it for us to quibble with “The Bard,” but names do matter when it comes to distinguishing among rose breeds. This certainly is the case with our standard red…