From left, Craig Truax, director of corporate partnerships, Mid-Ohio Food Collective, and Andrew Royer, vice president of Ohio operations, Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts.
Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts has donated $1,830 to the Mid-Ohio Food Collective, which operates the largest food bank in Ohio.
Family-owned Connells Maple Lee earmarks $10 from each sale of its Admiration arrangement for charitable donations.
The Food Collective, which is based at 3960 Brookham Drive, Grove City, serves 20 counties.
“Mid-Ohio Food Collective distributes enough food daily to provide more than 182,000 meals,” said Craig Truax, director of corporate partnerships. “We wouldn’t be able to do this critical work without the support of our community and amazing partners like Connells Maple Lee.”
Tom Royer, CEO of Connells Maple Lee, noted that his company has enjoyed a long-time relationship with the Food Collective.
“We have great respect for the Food Collective’s mission and creative solutions toward ending hunger and building healthier communities,” Royer said. “We all benefit from those efforts, which is why we are honored to be associated with them.”
The writer Gertrude Stein’s line “a rose is a rose is a rose” is sometimes interpreted as meaning things are what they are.
But if you peel back the petals, figuratively speaking, roses reveal themselves to be full of intrigue. Not only are there more than 120 commercial varieties of roses, rose colors carry different meanings that lend themselves to widely varying intents.
Here are 10 colors and their myriad meanings:
Red: The most popular Valentine’s Day flower by far, red roses represent “love and admiration” of the romantic kind, ideal for a spouse or long-term partner.
“This may have started with Greek and Roman mythology—it was told that the red rose was created by the goddess of love, Aphrodite,” according to Parade. “The legend states that her tears and the blood of her lover, Adonis, watered the ground where roses appeared.”
Burgundy: Suggesting a passion even deeper than red roses, but also associated with loyalty and commitment.
Lavender: House Beautiful calls lavender “enchanting and magical” and arguably the most romantic roses of all. “They’re great for a budding romance.”
Orange: Friendship that is turning romantic. It’s an energetic and uplifting color, too, that can cheer up someone who is ill.
Yellow: Friendship, making it great for Galentine’s Day or generally brightening someone’s day.
Deep Pink: Gratitude and appreciation, deep pink is a gentler option than red, according to Reader’s Digest.
Medium Pink: Congratulations! “So if you have a daughter or friend who just accomplished something significant, medium pink roses could be the perfect gift,” Parade noted.
Light Pink: Appreciation or innocence, “perfect for giving to a friend or daughter ‘just because’ or with a ‘thinking of you’ note,” but also “a girlfriend in a new and budding relationship.” Meanwhile, House Beautiful said light pink roses also represent self-love, “making them a great gift to give yourself.”
Purple: Dual meanings: passion and infatuation, signifying the beginning of a romantic relationship; royalty, majesty and honor, appropriate for someone held in high regard.
White: Traditionally used in weddings and standing for “innocence, new beginnings and truth,” according to Parade. They are popular at graduations and baptisms.
Clearly, “a rose is a rose is a rose” is inaccurate when it comes to rose colors.
Whether you’re gifting roses for Valentine’s Day or another holiday, a special occasion, or some other reason, you’ll want to make sure that the color you buy sends the appropriate message.
Indoor plants make us happier and healthier, according to multiple studies. (Photo: Proven Winners)
A sense of gloom might hit you in the aftermath of the holiday season, but it’s probably not just because you put the string lights away.
There’s a link between shortened daylight hours in winter and seasonal depression. Some 4 to 6 percent of Americans suffer from seasonal affective disorder, according to Washingtonian magazine, while more suffer from a lesser form known as the winter blues or winter doldrums.
Experts say that seeking out sunlight, a healthy diet, exercise, rest and the support of family and friends are ways to combat the doldrums.
Another way to improve your mood – in the winter but really year-round – is to bring nature into your home or workplace in the form of houseplants.
Multiple studies have found that indoor plants make us happier and healthier. It can take fewer than 20 minutes in the presence of plants to make us feel more at peace, according to the Washington Post.
“In one experiment, participants who spent even five to 10 minutes in a room with a few houseplants felt happier and more satisfied than those in a room without plants. In another study, participants felt more peaceful and positive after spending 15 minutes in a room close to a tall plant (about five feet) compared with other objects.”
Even post-pandemic, we spend most of our lives indoors. Houseplants make us feel more connected to the world outside and help our mental and physical health in many ways.
Reduce stress and anxiety
Time reported on a study in which researchers asked participants to re-pot a houseplant or complete a computer-based task.
“After working with plants, people reported feeling comfortable and soothed, and their blood pressure dropped. The computer task, on the other hand, caused them to feel uncomfortable and ‘artificial,’ and was associated with a spike in blood pressure and sympathetic nervous system activity.”
The stress hormone cortisol, which is found in saliva, decreases when we are around plants.
Reduce depression
Houseplant sales spiked during the pandemic, helping people with their depression, anxiety and “sad days” of isolation, according to one seller of succulents and air plants. That sentiment jibes with a study conducted during stay-at-home orders in Bulgaria. People who had houseplants or a garden “experienced fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety than those who did not,” according to Time.
Introducing plants into your home enhances your mood and helps with loneliness and depression, NBC News reported, noting that “caring for a living thing gives us a purpose and is rewarding – especially when you see that living thing bloom and thrive.”
Improve air quality
Houseplants “essentially do the opposite of what we do when we breathe: release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide,” according to NBC News. “This not only freshens up the air, but also eliminates harmful toxins.”
NASA found that houseplants can remove up to 87 percent of air toxins in 24 hours.
Increase productivity
Multiple studies, according to Time, concluded that plants boost productivity: College students worked 12 percent faster when plants were added to a windowless computer lab; employees at a call center who had a view of plants made up to 7 percent more calls per hour than colleagues who couldn’t see plants; office workers were 15 percent more productive when plants were introduced into their workspace.
From Psychology Today: “Students and employees with a view of nature, either indoors or right outside their windows, were not only found to be more productive but also more alert, more attentive, more relaxed, in better moods, and less irritated by physical symptoms of allergies and asthma than their counterparts who had no views of plant life or other natural settings.”
Of course, winter eventually will give way to spring, but houseplants will ensure that you receive the benefits of nature no matter the time of year or the conditions outside.
They inspired a speculative financial bubble in the 1600s and a hit song in the United States three centuries later.
Still today, tulips remain one of the most popular flowers in the world and a sure sign of spring when they rise from the ground in all of their beautiful bounty.
If you need a reprieve from the winter doldrums, one sure-fire way is to bring fresh-cut, colorful tulips into your home or workplace. What’s more, for their association with love, tulips are a popular choice as a Valentine’s Day gift.
Tulip mania
Royer’s Flowers & Gifts sources tulips from growers in the Netherlands, the world’s largest commercial producer of tulips. The capital city, Amsterdam, celebrates National Tulip Day on the third Saturday of January. The 2024 theme: Let’s Dance.
If you experienced the fervor for Beanie Babies in the 1990s, you got a taste for the speculative fever, or tulip mania, that overtook the Netherlands, peaking in the winter of 1636-37.
Tulips with a “striated effect,” or that went from a single color to a feathery or flamelike pattern, became inexplicably valuable: The price of the most-prized bulbs matched the going rate for a nice house. It was only discovered in the 19th century that this unique feature resulted from a virus.
“But in the 17th century, this was still not understood,” according to the BBC, “and so, strangely enough diseased tulips, emblazoned with distinctive patterns, became more prized than healthy ones in the Dutch Republic.”
Tulip trickery
Tulip mania came and went, but tulips took root in the Netherlands. It’s what DutchGrown.com, a wholesale flower bulb exporter, credits to the country’s “beautiful sandy soil, and a century old tradition of being able to control water and make it do whatever we want.”
Specifically, it requires a bit of “tulip trickery,” making “bulbs believe they have been through a hot, dry summer and an arctic winter” and replicating their native habitat.
Tulips technically are perennials, but they struggle to act that way in the warmer United States.
“Plant a bulb in fall and even a novice gardener can expect to see a beautiful flower come spring,” according to AmericanMeadows.com. “But getting a tulip to perform well in the second or third year is another story.”
Because tulips are one of the easiest flowers to grow in a garden, most American consumers replant bulbs every year.
Several other tidbits about tulips:
Even as a cut stem, tulips will continue to grow in water, lasting seven days after they have bloomed.
They do best in full sun and, like sunflowers, are heliotropic, bending toward light throughout the day.
They come in a variety of colors rich in symbolism: pink, happiness and confidence; purple, royalty; yellow, cheerful thoughts; white, forgiveness.
Red is the symbol of everlasting love, which strikes at the heart of the 1929 chart-topping song, “Tiptoe through the Tulips,” which appeared in a movie called “Gold Diggers of Broadway.” (Cult artist Tiny Tim would turn it into a hit again in the 1960s.)
“And when I kiss you in the garden in the moonlight,” the song says, “Will you pardon me and tiptoe through the tulips with me?”
If you’ve watched the classic TV version of “Frosty the Snowman,” your heart probably sank when he stepped out of the cold and snow and into a warm greenhouse.
He melted in the heat, only to come back to life when Santa opened the greenhouse door and let a cold draft of air in.
What you may not have noticed was that the greenhouse was filled with red poinsettias. For them, a cold draft is a dangerous thing.
“Poinsettias don’t like the cold, so you want to keep them away from drafty doors,” said Geoff Royer of Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts.
You must treat them as such if you want to get the most out of your poinsettia this holiday season.
National Poinsettia Day
Of course, December is synonymous with Christmas, but Dec. 12 is National Poinsettia Day. It commemorates the 1851 death of Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico and the man after whom poinsettias are named.
Poinsett introduced the plant to the United States in 1825, sending samples to friends in his native Charleston, S.C. Poinsettias made their public debut at a Philadelphia flower show in 1829.
For their first hundred years in America, poinsettias were mostly sold as cut flowers. That was until Paul Ecke, a southern California agriculturalist, created varieties that could be shipped in pots.
Poinsettias registered sales of $213.7 million last year, according to Axios, up 40 percent from 2020.
Care tips
But for all the popularity of poinsettias, how to care for them remains much less well known and bear repeating. In fact, we go over poinsettia care tips with our own staff in the lead-up to every holiday season.
Geoff Royer of Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts.
Unless you want to end up on someone’s naughty list, here’s what else you need to know to ensure your Christmas Flower lasts well into the new year.
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.
We wish you and your family a Happy Poinsettia Day and a Merry Christmas!
If you’ve ever seen the movie “A Christmas Story,” (if not, TBS plays it 12 times in a row starting on Christmas Eve) you might recall the scene when the Parkers venture to a tree lot.
“This isn’t one of those trees that all the needles falls off, is it?” asks Mrs. Parker.
The salesman responds: “No, that’s them balsams.”
Balsam fir is one of the most fragrant of Christmas tree species, but as the line from the movie suggests, it has a warranted reputation for shedding needles.
While Connells Maple Lee doesn’t sell Christmas trees, we offer a wide range of fresh Christmas wreaths. Traditionally, they were made from balsam fir and delivered a solid value for our customers.
In recent years, however, after noticing a decline in the quality of the balsam wreaths, we switched to noble fir wreaths. They vary in size and come undecorated or adorned with the likes of pine cones, red berries and juniper. Bows and balls can be added, too.
Connells Maple Lee also offers silk balsam wreaths that are priced comparable to the old fresh balsam wreaths.
Cheryl Brill, Connells Maple Lee’s chief operating officer, said that the balsam wreaths were not constructed as well as they had been, perhaps because of a shortage of labor that required earlier and earlier production schedules.
“And there’s been an awful lot of drought,” she said. “Evergreens don’t respond well to that. When you cut them extra early to produce wreaths and then you’ve been having a drought situation, you end up with naked wreaths by the end of the season.”
‘Noble in stature’
If you aren’t familiar with noble fir, consider that it has been referred to as “the Cadillac of Christmas trees” and “the king of holiday greens.”
Here’s how The Real Christmas Tree Board, a national promotion and research organization funded by North American Christmas tree growers, describes the noble fir:
“Noble in name and stature, this stately tree features short, blue-green needles. The Noble fir has some of the best needle retention among Christmas tree species, with stiff branches and an attractive form to handle heavy ornaments. You’ll also find it used as greenery for wreaths and garland.”
To understand why noble fir is superior to balsam fir in needle retention, it helps to understand where the trees grow.
Balsam fir is grown in Canada, the northeastern states, the upper Great Lakes and Pennsylvania, according to The Real Christmas Tree Board; most noble fir is grown in the Pacific Northwest, at a significantly higher altitude than balsam. Continental Floral Greens, the maker of our noble wreaths, harvests the trees on the slopes of Mount St. Helens.
Nobles must be sturdy enough to withstand high winds. They also face 60 inches of rain annually and plenty of frost, which are key factors in their superior moisture and needle retention.
The noble wreaths are more expensive than the balsam wreaths, which reflects the longer growing time for noble and the shipping distance from Washington State.
While switching from traditional balsam wasn’t an easy decision, Brill noted that it was motivated by a desire to offer a better-constructed, longer-lasting option to customers.
“The main thing is their longevity,” she said of the noble. “And they are a very pretty wreath. The fir is fluffier because the needles are kind of rounded. It’s not a flat branch like a balsam is. So it has more dimension to it. They’ve always been my favorite.”
At the top of this year’s Christmas list, let’s take some of the hectic out of holiday decorating.
’Tis the season to be jolly, but it also can be a time of great stress. While Hallmark movies and Pinterest boards can be great sources of inspiration, don’t underestimate your own style and creativity when it comes to design and budget.
You can do it yourself and do it your way.
That’s the message from company designers Kim Orris and Steven Shughart, who shared their secrets for less restive, more festive holiday home decorating.
Span the holidays
Santa rides in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. You might put your Christmas tree up before taking the first bite of Thanksgiving turkey. The two holidays flow into one another like gravy across a scoop of mashed potatoes.
In that spirit, you can use a pine wreath as a Thanksgiving centerpiece before hanging it on your front door during Christmas. Wreaths also can be hung inside on a door or wall.
Borrow from nature
To enhance a centerpiece, consider taking a walk. It’s not only good for mind and body, but you can find branches, leaves, pine cones, acorns to bring the outside inside.
“You can go on a walk and clip a branch and put it in a vase,” Steven said. “You see that in almost any magazine anymore.”
“And along with our gift items, it looks gorgeous,” Kim said.
Embrace what’s free
What’s more, what you find outside costs nothing.
“Sometimes the free stuff is what really makes a house feel lived in, like it’s collected,” Steven said.
You also can save money by using items you already have, such as filling a vase or bowl with Christmas balls.
Improvise
“You don’t have to have the oval centerpiece with the two candles,” Steven said.
“Or you can have that and add to it with the branches or the balls or the greenery just spread around,” Kim said. Or run a small set of battery-powered lights down the table.
If you’re having a holiday party, consider buying a handful of flowers and spreading the heads on the table.
“It doesn’t have to be designed,” Kim said.
Ultimately, there is no single way to deck the halls. You should find comfort and joy in doing what pleases your eye.
Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts will give away red, white and blue bouquets to military veterans on Nov. 11, Veterans Day.
The 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. You’ll find store hours here.
“This is one of our favorite events each year,” said Tom Royer, president and CEO of family-owned Connells Maple Lee. “It is our honor and privilege to recognize the men and women who give so much to protect our freedom.”
Non-veterans may purchase the bouquets for $2.20 each.
Children of an earlier time did the monster mash. The Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts Kids Club has an updated take on Halloween: spooky succulents.
The kids club is celebrating the season with its first virtual event, offering free take-home kits that will allow children ages 5 to 12 to decorate a Halloween tin with a succulent plant.
Kits include a tin decorated with a jack-o-lantern, mummy or Dracula; two-inch succulent; cellophane for lining the tin; instruction sheet with QR code linking to a video with assembly and plant-care tips; and a Halloween coloring sheet.
Kits must be reserved at cmlflowers.com/kidsclub while supplies last, limit three per family. In-store pickup of the kits will be available Oct. 19-24.
Connells Maple Lee is encouraging moms and dads to send photos of their child’s completed project to kidsclub@cmlflowers.com for sharing on social media.
A truck set out in early August on a journey into the future of foliage plants.
It’s destination was a 200-acre farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Virginia, in the town of Stuarts Draft. On that farm lies a five-acre building that from above looks like nothing so much as a gigantic Lego piece (photo, below).
It’s a state-of-the art greenhouse where The Plant Co., which was birthed during the pandemic, is drawing on one family’s decades of floriculture experience and the latest technology in a quest to “reinvent the houseplant industry.”
Connells Maple Lee, along with its sister company in Pennsylvania, are the first florists to carry The Plant Co.’s products.
“It was amazing to see how many of our own people purchased the Proven Winners plants as soon as they came in,” said Cheryl Brill, Connells Maple Lee’s chief operating officer.
Connells Maple Lee first got to know The Plant Co. this spring when they attended the International Floriculture Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Within weeks, the two companies were trading visits, including one to the massive greenhouse in Virginia, which opened in 2020.
Tissue culture
“This is all great stuff,” recalled Connells Maple Lee CEO Tom Royer, upon seeing the plants.
Royer noted that in the past 30 years, mass marketers began offering foliage plants. Florida growers either catered to those customers, turning plants into mere commodities, or went out of business altogether.
The result was plants that weren’t as special as they once were. That left fertile ground for The Plant Co., the brainchild of founders and brothers-in-law Jason Van Wingerden and Frank Paul.
Just as four generations of Royers have made the family name synonymous with flower shops, the Van Wingerden family is deeply rooted in the greenhouse trade. It began with Aart and Cora Van Wingerden, who arrived from Holland in 1948 and started a greenhouse business in New Jersey, spawning many other similar enterprises.
Jason Van Wingerden, a grandson of Aart and Cora, worked at Green Circle Growers in Oberlin, Ohio, which Jason’s father started in 1968. Green Circle comprises 150 acres of indoor growing space, making it one of the largest greenhouses in the United States. Frank Paul was Green Circle’s former head grower of orchids.
The brothers-in-law settled on western Virginia for its climate, proximity to interstates 81 and 64, and high-quality well water, said Ben Wright, The Plant Co.’s national account manager.
The elevation in the Blue Ridge Mountains means warm days, cool nights and “good, consistent quality growth year-round,” Wright said.
The Plant Co.’s products begin as tissue culture in test tubes, arriving from labs around the world, before they are rooted in soil in the greenhouse. Tissue culture makes the plants cleaner and less prone to disease.
Ease of care and use
The greenhouse’s 21-foot ceilings keep plants cooler, as do metal poles that are powder coated white to absorb less heat.
Thirteen layers of sand and gravel sit below capillary mats. Plants are watered from below through the mats, then the water drains back into holding tanks so it isn’t wasted.
Carbon dioxide from the greenhouse’s high-efficiency natural gas boilers is captured and pumped into the greenhouse to encourage plant growth.
The plants are promoted for their quality but also for their ease of care and use. The plants are sold with tags that include the variety name, genus and species and information about where to use them within a room and how to care for them.
The goal is to embolden consumers who haven’t had success with plants in the past.
“And so they kind of discover that green thumb,” Wright said.
