The Floral classrooms are once again busting at the seams with students! We have three very full sections of Floral 1 and a completely full section of our combo Floral 2/3 class. Over the summer the Floral room got a much needed makeover and received a new floor and we upgraded the chairs for the students. Funding for class materials throughout the year continues to be a challenge, but we are trying a new approach next year. The Floral 1 class is applying for $5,000 of CTEIG funding that will provide all 120-ish students with materials to build five essential arrangements throughout the year. These arrangements are simple, but focus on essential skills that I have found are most useful for a Floral 1 student. Because the materials are being provided by state funds, I still need to charge students if they want to take materials home, but I can offer them to students at a very low cost.
Our program will also be running a number of different fundraisers throughout the year. Fundraisers are always better than grant money because then I can provide the materials to students without having to charge them at all when they take their arrangements home. If anyone would like to help with fundraising please let me know! I will send an email out to everyone to let you know when we hold our first fundraiser :)
The Floral 2/3 will be very busy this year for sure! We have been given the opportunity to design all of the floral arrangements for the Homecoming Court this week, and throughout the year this class will also be designing the Single Rose Wraps that are presented to all the Senior student athletes.We will also be designing the centerpieces for the CCBD dinner in a few weeks. We are currently pre-selling a September arrangement to start building up our floral acct for the year and we are also pre-selling a Fall Semester Subscription Package. Both of which you can find information on at our website linked below. Lastly our Floral 2/3 class has a small wedding booked for one of our LHS staff at the beginning of November.
Our program established a relationship with Lillards Lavenders, a lavender farm on Virginiatown Rd. They will be speaking to our Floral classes on Sept 30th and hopefully that will spark interest in some students to transition into a student internship at their farm this year. I am always looking for more internship opportunities for Floral students, so if you hear of any, please reach out to Mrs. Armistead.
The Floral program has also begun to dabble in the horticulture area a bit. We spent a week cleaning out the Greenhouse on campus and are currently working on a repair in the roof and making sure the controls and irrigation are all working properly. Our goal is to have the house operating by Christmas Break and start planting in January/February for a Spring Plant Sale. Any Industry advice that can be provided in this new venture would be GREATLY appreciated by Mrs. Armistead!
Lastly we are planning to officially “break ground” in the new production garden area. We started last year with a CA native plant hedgerow. We laid about 500 ft of drip irrigation around the edge of what was the old sheep pasture and planted around 50 CA native plants from Xerces. We found that flooding is definitely an issue in that area and we did seem to lose a good amount of plants over the winter, but we have a lot of plants that are now doing quite well. We shared the irrigation space with the LEAP program pumpkins over the summer and after their harvest we will start clearing the ground in the center of the garden and the Welding program will be fabricating us some raised garden beds from our supply of I -beams. Our vision for this space is an outdoor classroom garden space. Designed to produce vegetables, and cutting flowers and possibly some fruit trees. With the student numbers growing in the Floral pathway, my hope is that the Floral 3 class will be a stand-alone section and be a course held at the farm focused on maintaining and cultivating the garden not only to produce food, but cutting flowers for the floral program. Again, any industry advice on this venture is GREATLY appreciated by Mrs. Armistead!