The everyday selection brochure, which highlights many new products, is finally here!
The 41-page booklet features photographs of our current selection of flower bouquets, arrangements, plants, gifts and more. It’s designed to help flower lovers find the perfect arrangement for every occasion and mood.
There’s many different collections featured including the nautical-inspired “Nantucket” and “Cape May” collections, the thoughtful “Memories” rose collection, the loving and cheery “Tranquility” collection and more.
The Nantucket Deluxe featuring hydrangea, two roses, delphinium, Bells of Ireland, football mums, carnations, daisy poms, viking poms, and solidago graces the cover, evoking memories of beach days from this past Summer.
Our direct ship options, which ship anywhere in the Continental United States and include the arrangement, vase and flower food, are highlighted within the book as well as our direct ship succulent container.
Some of our snack and tea offerings are featured, including the Chocolate & Mug Gift Set and the limited edition “Jubilee” tea collection from Tea Forte featuring 20 tea infusers comprised of 10 different blends. Some of the flavors include Strawberry Hibiscus (Oolong tea), Cherry Blossom (Green tea) and Mango Citron (Herbal tea).
Our funeral offerings and sympathy gifts are also included. There is a double urn arrangement showcased along with a red rose open heart standing wreath for funeral and celebration of life services. The double urn arrangement is in all whites including hydrangea, roses, stock, alstroemeria, carnations, and daisy poms.
There are also flowers specifically curated to be given as gifts to grieving families.
Gift arrangements for all of life’s occasions are also highlighted. The “Baby Girl” bouquet made of mini green hydrangea, charmelia alstroemeria, a football mum, carnations, daisy poms, baby’s breath is shown. The arrangement comes with a pink stuffed unicorn to help welcome the new baby girl. A “Baby Boy” version featuring a blue and white stuffed cow and a blue and white arrangement is also available.
The “Beary Happy Birthday Vase” arrangement is shown, which includes a “Happy Birthday” stick-in and a tan bear with a party hat. A general celebration arrangement is also pictured, which includes a party horn and noise maker, and is perfect for all of the happy moments.
Plant mom and dads can peruse our new plant offerings, including our vibrant Triple Orchard Planter and tropical-style Bromeliad Planter.
We hope the new look book helps you find exactly what you are looking for. These books can be picked up at your local Royer’s Flowers & Gifts and are complementary.
Exercise, eat healthy, get plenty of sleep. These are among the most common means of practicing self-care, even if many of us struggle to achieve them daily.
Did you know that an even easier way to boost your physical and mental health is by including flowers in your everyday life? Academic researchers have linked flowers to happiness.
“Flowers aren’t just for making emotional statements at holidays or milestone moments,” said Royer’s Flowers CEO Tom Royer. “Having them around on a regular basis improves our mental and emotional health.”
Researchers have noted that flowers can be a source of pleasure. Flowers are known to trigger the release of “happy” brain chemicals dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin.
While flowers won’t replace working out or eating well, they are beneficial to self-care.
Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey conducted a 10-month study of participants’ behavioral and emotional response to receiving flowers. Their report, “An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion: Flowers,” found that flowers improve mood, help people make deep connections, and have an immediate positive effect on happiness.
On the heels of the Rutgers study, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital looked at the “Home Ecology of Flowers.”
The research found that people living with flowers reported increased feelings of compassion and kindness toward others. By placing flowers in high visibility areas of their home, participants reported feeling less anxiety and worry.
Happiness at home carried over to the workplace, where the individuals were happier and felt more enthusiasm and energy.
It seemed like New Year’s Eve fireworks had barely faded from view when suddenly it was the waning days of winter.
Maybe you lacked the time or the willpower to sustain the resolve with which you vowed to exercise more, eat better and generally become a better version of yourself.
Never fear. For a renewed sense of purpose, look no further than nature and Easter, those perennial symbols of rebirth and reawakening.
Spring means more sunlight, which allows plants to produce more food. The more food it has, the more that a plant grows. And as temperatures rise, plants grow more quickly.
Indoor inspiration
Of course, you can bring the sense of endless possibilities that spring flowers inspire by bringing them indoors. Here are four favorites that you will find in our stores:
Daffodils – These are one of the first plants to emerge each spring. They represent rebirth, new beginnings and hope. At Easter, we carry the bulb plant. Our customers love the bright yellow flower. Daffodils are a favorite of churches for decorating at Easter.
Hyacinth – The most fragrant of spring flowers, this is another one we carry in bulb form at Easter, in colors of white, pink or blue. They are available as a single bulb or pots of multiple bulbs. Bulb plants are a fun addition to a child’s Easter basket, allowing them to watch a plant’s life cycle.
Easter lily – The pure white flower symbolizes purity, rebirth and new beginnings and most often is associated with Christ’s resurrection. For those reasons, there’s a long tradition of giving Easter lilies as gifts and decorating churches with them. Although we don’t carry the Easter Lily plant year-round (and it typically isn’t used as a fresh-cut flower), we offer the white stargazer lily, which is similar in shape and sweet fragrance.
Tulips – This plant/flower symbolizes perfect and deep love. We carry the potted bulb during Easter, but we also offer fresh-cut tulips generally from January through April. Tulips are one of the few flowers that continue to grow after being cut and can stretch up to six inches or more.
If your New Year’s resolutions didn’t take hold, no worries. Spring and Easter can get you back on track, offering a sense of renewal.
Roses are red, my love, the old Bobby Vinton song begins.
But while red still rules for Valentine’s Day, roses come in a rainbow of colors. Rosier still is that when celebrating the holiday of love, flower, plant and gift options abound and at price points to satisfy any budget.
ROSES
Red roses signify love and admiration, so it’s no wonder that they are the quarterback in what is the floral industry’s version of football’s big game. Pink, white, mixed and yellow roses comprise the other most popular colors for Valentine’s Day, according to the Society of American Florists’ website aboutflowers.com.
Also note that roses can be purchased in varying quantities, sizes and presentations, offering customers a great deal of choice.
OTHER FLOWERS
Besides roses, popular Valentine’s Day flowers include tulips, carnations, alstroemeria, lilies. Royer’s offers a mixed bouquet comprising roses, mini hydrangea, daisy poms, carnations, mini carnations and caspia wrapped in a sleeve. Or consider garden mixes in shades of lavender, pink and white.
Succulents are drought resistant and fleshy for storing water, combining a striking appearance with minimal care. Dish gardens feature several different plants in a single container.
CHOCOLATE
The ancient Aztecs believed chocolate was an aphrodisiac. The first heart-shaped box of chocolates debuted in 1861. Given that history, it’s easy to understand why chocolate is associated with love and romance and remains a popular Valentine’s Day option.
PLUSH AND BALLOONS
Soft and cuddly, classic and timeless, a symbol of love and affection, these are among the attributes that make a teddy bear or other stuffed animal a great Valentine’s Day gift for children and children at heart.
Another way to make hearts and spirits soar is with a colorful, fun and entertaining balloon. Some will even sing for you!
If you can’t pick just one option, Royer’s offers a combo featuring a plush white bear, heart-shaped mylar balloon and chocolate-covered pretzels.
FIGURINES
Another enduring expression of love, figurines are small carved or molded figures, collectible and a popular way to personalize a gift, often as an add-on to flowers.
Whatever your Valentine’s day needs, your florist will be happy to help. It’s always best to act early to ensure the most abundant selection.
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?”
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 Royer’s designers Kim Orris and Steven Shughart, colleagues at our Carlisle store, 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.
Lisa Birkholz of South Lebanon Township, Lebanon County, always is eager for autumn.
“Fall’s my favorite time of year,” she said.
And with even more reason this year. Her submission in Royer’s Flowers & Gifts’ annual name-the-arrangement contest – “Fall Hues” – was selected as the winner among more than 500 online entries.
Kathy Kissling’s entry “Fall’s Delight” (one of six she contributed overall) was the runner up. Birkholz and Kissling, also of South Lebanon Township, each will receive the all-around arrangement (retail value $34.99) as their prize.
The arrangement features an autumnal color palette: lavender glass vase, orange rose and orange carnations, purple statice, red alstroemeria, sunflower. It measures 14 inches high and 11 inches wide.
The arrangement will debut this fall and will be available in all stores and as part of Royer’s direct-ship program serving the Lower 48 states.
The promise of summer warmth and sunshine arrives in early spring at a 20-acre farm in the village of Penryn, Lancaster County.
It comes in a five-gallon plastic bucket via a package-delivery service. The bucket contains 100,000 seeds that will provide locally grown sunflowers to Royer’s customers from June to October.
“One seed equals one flower,” said Daniel Lapp, the owner of Elm Family Flowers.
Approximately a dozen years ago, Lapp called Royer’s CEO Tom Royer in search of a customer and has been supplying Royer’s stores ever since. The hybrid seed Lapp uses produces beautiful flowers that are also pollenless, which means they won’t leave a mess in someone’s home or draw insects.
Not only do sunflowers have a solar-like appearance, but they actually turn toward the sun while growing, a process known as heliotropism. It’s little wonder, then, that no other flower is more closely linked to summer.
It’s a vibe that customers also want in the doldrums of winter, which is why Royer’s offers sunflowers year-round, both loose and in 15 to 20 arrangements. Lapp harvests until the first frost in October, at which point Royer’s turns to a grower in Peru to fill its need until the next spring.
While the South American sunflowers are of high quality, it takes five or six days for a shipment to arrive. By contrast, Lapp is 20 minutes from Royer’s in Lebanon, shortening the amount of time from farm to customer and all but eliminating travel-related duress for the flowers.
“It’s very convenient,” Royer said. “They last a long time.”
In fact, Lapp’s sunflowers can provide customers with two to three weeks of enjoyment.
But growing sunflowers, like any crop, is wrought with plenty of challenges, mostly having to do with the variable of weather. Going into any growing season Lapp knows that 40 percent of his seeds are unlikely to germinate.
April 15 is associated with Tax Day, but it’s also a benchmark for Lapp’s farm: It’s when his first weekly sunflower planting begins. Six weeks in, this year’s first crop was rising in four rows of green splendor. But the second planting was yielding little.
Biggest challenge
“I probably didn’t even have 1 percent of them come up,” Lapp said, blaming cold, wet weather.
“Here’s the third (planting),” he continued, moving to his right. “This wider one is the fourth one. Here’s the fifth one; that’s coming up. The sixth one here practically didn’t come up at all yet because we didn’t have any rain.”
Lapp’s teen-age son James was working on the seventh planting under bright sunshine on a day when the high temperature was expected to reach the low 80s without precipitation.
“He’s trying to plant them a little deeper right now because it’s so dry,” Lapp said.
If spring can prove too cold or too wet, summer can deliver too much heat and too little rain. Germination is his biggest challenge, Lapp said, followed by the risk of cool, wet weather making the plants susceptible to a fungus called botrytis.
The farm (it also grows vegetables and is certified organic) grows sunflowers on one and a half to two acres. A walk-behind precision seeder opens the soil, plants a seed and covers it.
The goal is to plant the seeds a half-inch deep, but that will be adjusted to one inch in the summer if necessary to protect the seed against heat and get it closer to moisture.
But Lapp must be careful not to put the seed too deep in the ground as a heavy rain can pack the soil so hard that the seed can’t come up. Heavy rain followed by sunshine can turn the soil into a crust.
If germination is light, those seeds that do come up tend to be taller with thicker stems because they have more room to grow.
“Which sometimes a bunch of five you can’t even hold in one hand, which isn’t ideal,” Lapp said.
Wetter weather produces taller, fatter stems; if the weather is drier, stems are shorter and thinner. Thick stems can take up too much space in a bouquet, and the flowers can get too big.
A stem with a half-inch diameter is ideal, Lapp said. For Royer’s, his only sunflower customer, he bands them in bunches of five, 12 to 15 bunches to a bucket.
Germination and weather also determine the quantity of the crop.
Harvest time
“Once we’re harvesting, I report to (Tom Royer) every week to give him an idea what I’m going to have the next week,” Lapp said.
As much as they try to coordinate supply and demand, Lapp said Royer’s has accommodated fluctuations.
“Tom’s been really good at moving them,” Lapp said. “If we get a flush of them, he’ll try to run a sale or a special” to help move the excess inventory.
Come harvest time, Lapp first strips the mature plants of their leaves. Then he cuts the stems with a sickle until he has five in one hand.
If sunflowers are an embodiment of sunshine, banding them is a time for his son to shine.
“James is pretty good with the harvesting part of it,” Lapp said against the backdrop of the clicking precision seeder, which James is operating.
“He’s figured out a way to get that rubber band on his hand before he reaches for the sunflowers,” Lapp said.
Father and son pile the banded sunflowers in the paths between each planting until they are finished with each harvest.
The sunflowers will be moved to buckets filled with water until later that day or the next one when Royer’s makes one of its three weekly pickups throughout the season.
Flowers are beautiful all on their own, but it takes talent, dedication and resources to hand-craft an eye-catching, long-lasting floral arrangement and deliver it to a recipient’s home or place of work.
In its newsletter, the Royer’s Flowers & Gifts Kids Club regularly showcases the tools and tricks of the trade that our florists draw upon to do the very best work for our customers.
We’ve compiled some of them below. We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look into the dynamic nature of a flower shop.
Apron
Superman wears a red cape on his back. Royer’s Flowers designers have something similar, except they wear it on the front.
It’s an apron, and its pockets hold all the tools they need to be floral super heroes: a knife to cut flowers; scissors to cut thicker stems or ribbon; calculator to add flower prices; pen/pencil to take notes from a customer; highlighter to mark special delivery times and other can’t-miss information; permanent marker to identify the contents of boxes before they are packed away; even a mini-screwdriver in case something needs tightening.
Aprons are embroidered with the Royer’s Flowers logo and have a place for a name tag so customers can identify the designer and how long he or she has been with the company.
Tape Grid
The tape at the top of these vases looks like a game of tic-tac-toe, doesn’t it? It’s a tape grid, and it helps us space flower stems evenly. It also provides support to the stems so they stand tall and look their best.
Tape
We use three types of tape depending on the color of the container: clear tape for glass, white tape for white containers, and green tape for baskets and other dark non-glass containers.
The reason for the different colors is that we want our customers to focus on their beautiful flowers and not the tape.
Floral Foam
Those green blocks in the photo are called floral foam. The foam holds cut flower stems in place to make arrangements look pretty. It also holds water so the flowers last as long as possible.
Scissors
If you use scissors for craft projects at school or home, you might have a future working in a flower shop! We use several different types of scissors in our stores. Some are just for cutting flowers, some are made to cut thicker stems such as evergreens or lemon leaf, and others are just for cutting ribbon. We never use ribbon scissors on flowers because the blades would get dull and wouldn’t cut the fabric straight.
No matter what you do with scissors, it’s always important to use them safely.
Uniforms
If you play soccer or baseball or another sport for a team, then you probably wear a uniform. Maybe it includes a shirt with your team’s name on front and your number on the back.
Royer’s employees are part of a team, too. They might not be kicking or throwing balls, but they are constantly in motion. They practice how to make beautiful arrangements so they are ready for their big games, such as Valentine’s Day or Christmas.
They wear uniforms, too. They wear the Royer’s logo on their shirts because it helps to make each employee feel and work like part of a unified team. It also makes it easy for customers to know who they can ask for help.
Plastic Wrap
When we sell flowers, we put them in pretty plastic wrap. It’s kind of like when you wear a coat or sweater: the wrap helps keep the flowers warm and protects them from the wind when they go outside. The wrap also makes the flowers look extra special, like a gift.
Delivery Vans/Drivers
Our delivery vans and the men and women who drive them are crucial to the success of our business.
Once one of our designers creates a gorgeous flower arrangement, it’s up to our drivers to deliver them safely and on time. Of course, the flowers have to look as good as they did when they left the store, which can be a big challenge when it’s really hot or cold or stormy.
Our drivers might be the only Royer’s Flowers employee that customers see if they ordered over the phone or online. So we have to hire people who are safe drivers but also happy and friendly and keep their uniforms and vans clean because they represent our company.
Drivers have a lot of responsibility, but they also have the good fortune to deliver presents of flowers to people.
Working, commuting, paying bills, and tending to family demands. If there’s too much on your to-do list, you might want to scrap it altogether and start over with a single item: get flowers.
“The findings show that people who lived with flowers in their homes for just a few days reported a significant decrease in their levels of stress and improvements in their moods.”
One-third of people are stressed every day; women are particularly affected, with one in four of them experiencing stress multiple times daily.
“Our findings are important from a public health perspective,” said lead researcher Erin Largo-Wight, associate professor in the university’s department of public health, “because adding flowers to reduce stress does not require tremendous effort to generate a meaningful effect.”
Helpful Tips
The Society of American Florists offered these tips for using flowers “to help relax and rewind”:
Experience flowers: Walk into your local florist and take a look around. Just the sight and smell of the natural beauty of flowers will put you at ease. Ask your florist to show you what’s in the cooler so you can learn about new varieties, colors and design styles.
Find peace: If you are having a bad day when it seems like nothing is going right, try flowers in soothing, tranquil colors, such as blues, lavenders and pale greens. Place a small arrangement on your nightstand or in your bathroom, so you can experience the stress-relieving benefits of flowers right before you go to bed, and right when you get up to start your day.
Help others: Sometimes the best way to relieve stress and the pressures of the day, is to do something nice for someone else. Here’s an idea: Go to your florist and buy two bouquets. Keep one for yourself, then take the other bouquet and “petal it forward” to a stranger on the street. You’ll be amazed at the reaction to your random act of kindness.
Give yourself some joy: One great way to reconnect with joy and feel less stressed is to surround yourself with simple things that make you feel happy and loved, like a colorful bunch of flowers or a blooming plant. Flowers have the power to open hearts, and when your heart is open you are more likely to focus on the positive points in your day.
Be a friend: Do you have a friend or loved one who could use a boost? Have flowers delivered unexpectedly to their door, and watch their ordinary day become extraordinary. It will make you smile, too.
Color your world: Color therapists say colors really do affect our moods. The happiest color? Orange. It promotes optimism, enthusiasm, and a sense of uplift. Choose orange flowers — roses, gerberas, lilies, ranunculus, alstroemeria, tulips — to put on your kitchen counter or your work desk, and see your mood soar.
Pepper your house with small doses of calm: When bringing home flowers from your florist, have a couple of small vases and containers available so you can place a few flowers in different parts of your living space. You’ll be amazed how many small arrangements you can get out of a single bunch of flowers, and you’ll have constant reminders to “stop and smell the flowers.”
The 2018 research from the University of North Florida builds on other university studies suggesting that flowers can help make people happy, strengthen feelings of compassion, foster creativity and boost energy.