August 2008 Archives

   It's been well over 6 years since I last visited Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA  with my wife Carrie, before Max was even born. It was a spur of the moment decision on an early summer sunday morning, after hearing from my brother how much fun he had the other day at Longwood. So I asked my son what he wanted to do today.

  This story kind of relates to my "Kids Love Flowers" blog too. I gave Max two choices on what we could do today. We could go to Longwood Gardens & look at beautiful flowers, or we could go to Dave & Busters & play video games all day! His first answer was, "I know..... first we can look at flowers, and then we play video games!" After explaining to him, that he could only choose one, I was amazed at his answer, which was, "Lets go to Longwood Gardens, we can play video games tomorrow!" 

I wanted to share some photos of our fun filled beautiful day in the gardens. I would highly recommend a trip here to anybody in the area who appreciates gardens and beautiful landscapes.

The two pictures above were taken in the Flower Garden Walk

The Pictures below were taken in the Conservatory 

  What a great combination! I never really gave it much thought until my son was born in 2004. He spends an enormous amount of time at the flower shop along with my niece, Carly. They truly love flowers and enjoy making arrangements to take home to their mommies.

  At first, it was Carly, now 14, who took an immediate interest in creating with flowers back in 2004. One day at the shop, after playing with her dolls, she decided to fill a vase with water and asked me if she could have some flowers to put into the vase. I thought, wow, this is great! "Of course", I said, and grabbed her a bunch of assorted color short stem roses. It was a bit awkward for her at first, & of course Uncle Adam was nervous too, since she was using my sharp clippers to cut the flowers! I told her over & over to be careful with the clippers, & I also showed her a few tricks. After a few attempts at it, she created her first arrangement! 

We named it Carly's Rose Special   

 Look at the expression on her face when I shot this photo right after she just finished it. She was so proud of her first creation, and couldn't wait to do another one!

Over the next few years, usually in the summertime, Carly would invite some of her friends to come up to flower shop & make some more bouquets. Here are a few pictures of them below.

You can also view our "kids love flowers" gallery.

I truly believe kids can have a lot of fun with flowers & there are so many creative & unique things you can come up with using flowers!

I'm surprised more schools weren't incorporating it into their arts & crafts programs, or even as a class on its own. I then learned about a great program out there called flowers for kids! I plan on participating the next time it is available in our Philadelphia area!

Check out more about Flowers For Kids.