Designing Christmas in Eighty-Five Degrees

Hey there!

I’m trying something new - writing a little (or knowing me, a lot!) wrap up summary at the end of each month—or the beginning of the next, which is probably more realistic—to let you all know what’s going on over here.

I’m not sure whether this is interesting or if it feels like one of those slightly strange end-of-year letters from people you haven’t talked to in forever that somehow make you feel like you’re intruding a little just by reading them. But you’ve been here with us for 15 years, so we thought we’d give it a try.

Let us know if you like it—or hate it. Really, we’d rather know if this isn’t landing!

And, of course for July, I’m already late. Not just a little, but middle of August late. Which probably tells you exactly how July went.

Summer is definitely the most beautiful time of year up here in Washington—at least I think so—and the Farmquarters sits in a gorgeous part of the Puget Sound, with water in nearly every direction. Naturally, I imagined summer here would be one long, lovely stretch of flowers, boats, and maybe even a few happy hours thrown in for good measure.

Turns out, that was entirely too optimistic because this July was buuuuusy.

And I don’t mean that as a complaint. I’m trying to complain less about being busy this year, because isn’t it such a privilege to get to be busy doing something you care about?

July is also the month when the Farmquarters finally starts to look like the place I imagined it would all winter. The dahlias are blooming, the hydrangeas are doing their fluffy hydrangea thing, the garden has officially exploded with color, and everything is green and so full that it almost distracts you from your to-do list. Almost.

So naturally, while everyone else was enjoying the very short and very beautiful Washington summer, we shut ourselves inside, pointed fans at our faces, and designed Christmas. And if that wasn’t enough, and because they both require SO many red flowers, we decided to tack on our Valentine’s Day collection for 2027. Yes, 2027. It feels slightly unhinged to type that, but the flower business requires you to live in at least three seasons and two calendar years at once. Does that count as being in two places at once? If so, check that box.

Part of the reason we work so far ahead is that by the time most people are thinking about a holiday, the growing decisions for it have already been made. Our farm partners need to know months in advance what to put in the ground. So if we want something specific in December, we have to have wanted it in July.

These sessions are some of my favorite weeks of the year. We bring in more flowers than any reasonable person needs, cover every available surface with stems, and start designing. We listen to Christmas music, drink peppermint lattes (thankfully, we designed inside a cooler!), and get to work. Then we edit, rebuild, debate whether something needs one more stem or one fewer to hit the price target, and become far too emotionally invested in a very specific shade of red. There are, it turns out, enough shades of red to threaten otherwise healthy working relationships.

There’s obviously a lot of creativity involved, but it’s also a giant, three-dimensional puzzle. The flowers have to look beautiful together, be available when we need them, travel well, fit safely in a box, work within the price point, and still look like something we would genuinely want to send—or receive. It’s a lot of practical problem-solving disguised as playing with flowers.

Christmas and Valentine’s Day are two of our biggest holidays, so there’s an enormous amount riding on these decisions. There’s definitely some pressure, but I’m really excited about where we landed. The collections feel special and unmistakably Farmgirl, which is always the goal.

We also hosted our first-ever Farmgirl Design Summit in July. We invited several of our U.S.-based farm and bouquet partners to the Farmquarters for a little training, a lot of relationship-building, and, because we’re still us, a lot of fun!

Here’s the part I’m proudest of, and I’m just going to say it out loud: this isn’t how our industry usually works. The relationship between a flower company and its farm and bouquet partners tends to be kept at arm’s length, and it tends to be mostly about price. You negotiate (sometimes over and over), place the order, and move on. You don’t usually invite them over—which, now that I’ve met more of them, makes very little sense because they’re exactly the people you’d want to hang out with. So that’s what we did.

They were also our very first official guests here, which made the whole thing feel extra special. We’ve spent the last couple of years imagining what the Farmquarters could become—not just a place where we work, but a place where we can bring people together to learn, make things, solve problems, and build stronger relationships.

Watching that actually begin to happen was one of those rare moments when reality looked a little like the picture I’d had in my head. It was our first time doing anything like this, so I was pretty nervous, but thankfully the Farmquarters mostly behaved for company. It ended up being such an amazing few days that we’re going to try to make it an annual event—which is the strongest endorsement I can give anything immediately after hosting it.

Elsewhere on the property, we started work on a new pavilion in the peony field. It’s still very much in its “please use your imagination” stage, but eventually it will give us a beautiful place to gather right in the middle of the field.

We also poured new steps in front of the design barn. New concrete steps may not sound especially exciting, but you’d be wrong because we are SO excited about them. Maybe this means we’re getting old? If so, sign us up, because we were so excited that we carved a little Easter egg into them. More on that later.

Right now, the new steps don’t technically lead anywhere—unless you count a giant patch of dirt where Gunnii Hill will soon be planted. But once you’ve spent enough time thinking about grading, drainage, irrigation, and how people enter the design barn, a properly poured set of concrete steps starts to feel like a major life event. I’ve apparently reached the stage of adulthood where concrete genuinely thrills me.

We also spent a few days photographing our new lineup with Albertsons Family Companies, which will be coming to stores closer to many of you this fall! We made DIY videos to go along with it so you’ll have ideas for how to take the flowers home, arrange them, and make them feel like your own.

To say we’re excited about this partnership would be a huge understatement. The fact that you’ll be able to pick up an entire Farmgirl bouquet somewhere near you during a trip you’re already making, for roughly what it costs just to ship one of our bouquets directly to your door, still blows my mind.

Farmgirl has been primarily an online business for so long, so the idea that more people will soon be able to find our flowers during a regular grocery run feels both exciting and a little surreal. I can’t wait to share more once the collection begins arriving in stores.

And then there are my eucalyptus babies.

I grew a slightly unreasonable number of eucalyptus plants from seed and continued potting them up throughout July so they’ll be ready to plant at the Farmquarters.

Are we planting them later than would have been ideal? Yes.

Are we planting them later than even I intended, which is saying something? Also yes.

Most are gunnii eucalyptus, along with some parvula, Silver Dollar, and Silver Plate varieties. If all goes according to plan, they’ll eventually create Gunnii Hill—which is the name we gave the Farmquarters before the hill actually contained any gunnii. We’re now essentially reverse-engineering the property to match its own name.

Our first test trees grew from quart-sized plants to roughly eight to ten feet tall in about two and a half years, so I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m also slightly concerned that we may soon live inside a eucalyptus forest, but that feels like a problem for future Christina.

And our farm team spent at least half the month working on irrigation. I tend to plant a zillion things, and then they do the considerably harder part: figuring out how to get water to all of them. We—and all of our plants—are incredibly grateful for them.

So July was full in the best possible way: designing for holidays that still feel impossibly far away, welcoming our first guests, photographing a brand-new collection, building new things, digging an unreasonable number of trenches to water an unreasonable number of plants, and doing our best to raise a few hundred tiny trees.

It was busy, a little chaotic, and not remotely restful—which, now that I think about it, is a pretty accurate description of nearly every month at Farmgirl.

Thank you all for your orders, for following along, and for being here with us!

Christina