Care & Handling

Amazing Cooler Buckets to Buy Right Now

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Over the years my shop has accumulated a ton of cooler buckets. Buckets from dollar stores, Home Depot, not to mention buckets from floral suppliers. They were all shapes, sizes and colors. Nothing quite matched, sizes were never just right for the flowers that needed to go into them. Then, Syndicate Sales came out with a new line of cooler buckets for florists a year ago that is a florist’s dream.

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Tired of dealing with all the mismatched cooler buckets, not to mention they were getting less and less attractive, besides getting harder to clean, these gorgeous containers had several characteristics that I was looking for:

• Color-Black, great elegant color that never goes out of style and can work for your back cooler as well as in your front display cooler

• Sizes-Comes in a wide range of sizes, including low wide buckets that are great for cash & carry bouquets as well as big tall buckets that are perfect for glads and other line flowers.

• Lip-All the buckets have a nice lip that you can grab to lift the bucket by one hand

• Grids-A unique feature of these buckets are the grids that come with the wider buckets that can be placed atop the containers to separate the flowers into different colors and varieties. I especially like them to keep glads, snapdragons and lilies from touching each other, so they don’t get bruised.

Question: What buckets do you use? Buckets from various stores, proconas?

Flowers, Knight's Flowers, Weddings

Walking on Sunshine

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If there were ever a flower that evokes the bright sunny outdoors it sunflowers. It’s one of the few posies that never go out of style. Sunflowers come in lots of different sizes. The mini sunflowers which are the size of baseball to huge sunflowers that are as big as a soccer ball. There are even little chrysanthemums called viking poms the size of a button that look just like a sunflower that are great in corsages and boutonnieres.

Some sunflowers have green centers and other have black centers. The petals can be bright yellow to a darker mustard yellow. Really cool are the two toned petals that are yellow on the edges and a rusty redish brown closer to the center. Also, sunflowers can be dyed with the most popular color being red.

Sunflower Varieties

Sunflowers are available year-around and at Knight’s we have them just about 50 out of 52 weeks a year. When someone wants an arrangement to cheer someone up and bring a little sunshine in a room you just can’t go wrong with these beauties.

When summer and fall comes around bridal couples just can’t get enough of radiant yellow sunflowers in their bouquets, reception flowers and for decoration. Doing an outdoor wedding, or barn wedding. oh my gosh, these settings scream sunflowers, with jute ribbon and a touch of greens you’ve got a classy country wedding. An added bonus is that sunflowers will stay fresh without wilting in the hot sunny outdoors!

We sell sunflowers from around $2 to $3 per stem and even better deals if you buy in bulk. Check us out.

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Check out our Flower Wedding package

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Local History

Little known facts about Anderson County Schools

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With school starting up it’s fascinating to realize there used to be 63 schools in Anderson County (1917). Whew! Back in those days schools didn’t have a name they had a number.  You went to school 45 or school 35. Of course, many of these schools were 1-2 or 3 room schools, but by the 1960’s it became obvious this wasn’t the best education environment for the kids and many of these were combined into the major schools we have today.

With all the talk about funding the schools today, did you know that one school in Anderson County didn’t cost the county a dime? A philanthopist in Knoxville decreed in his will that several schools in the surrounding counties would be built using money from his estate. 4 counties in the area all had brand new school buildings built all named after this philanthopist. The building in Anderson County has been razed and was last used in 1965.

Do you know the name of this brick school that was in the northern part of the county? Anyone around that graduated from this school?

Flowers, Knight's Flowers

An Amazing Flower to Take Your Breath Away

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One of the first flowers I fell in love with when I really realized I wanted to be a florist was the alstroemeria. I”ll never forget that day. I was working for a florist in New York in the late 1970’s and it was just around the time Holland flowers started having an impact in the United States.

charmeliaalstroe

Every week I would call my dad and we would just talk about what was going on in our lives. I would tell him all the cool things I was doing in New York and he’d be telling about what was happening back home. Maybe we’d talk about a ballgame we saw on t.v. or a current event. I remember one time I was telling him about the unbelievable flowers we got in from Holland. One was the alstroemeria. He had never heard of it. Of course, in the flower business today everyone has heard of it, since it is one of our most widely used flower. Back then in the late 1970’s it just started coming into the U.S. I told my dad how long it lasted and the fact that it had multiple breaks with lots of flowers on the stem. One of my favorite flower back then. Beautiful and unusual. I’m still in love with it.

 

Since my first introduction to alstroemeria this flowers had become super popular  with lots of colors, longer life and very affordable. Recently, my wholesaler gave me a sample of a new variety of alstroemeria to try called ‘Charmelia‘. It took everyone here at Knight’s breath away. Here are some of fantastic characteristics of this amazing flower:

  • Bloom count: unlike all other alstroemeria that have 4-6 blooms per stem, Charmelia has 20 or more blooms per stem!
  • Vase life: while many alstroemeria have a vase life of over two weeks, Charmelia lasts over 3 weeks.
  • Color: a gorgeous blush pink that keeps its color for weeks without fading
  • Bloom structure: trails up the break like freesia and unlike other alstroemeria all the blooms stay on the stem and don’t fall off after they die
  • Weddings: perfect for wedding bouquets and  blush pink and green color of the blooms will compliment many color palates

 

 

Musings about flowers, food and history.