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Learn about our collaboration with Reading District Libraries

Posted on by Amber

Books and flowers? Who doesn’t love being surrounded by either?

To celebrate Read Across America Day (March 3), we collaborated with Reading District Libraries, showcasing some of their children’s and teen books available at the Reading Public Library in downtown Reading, PA.

We paired three of our arrangements, “So Happy”, “Smiley Bowl” and “Best Friend Bouquet, Dog” with some of their books. 

They have many books about flowers at the library, including nonfiction titles like “What’s Inside A Flower” to help children learn about the science of flowers as well as fun flower-related books like “Don’t Touch That Flower!”.

We photographed the books and flowers in front of the library’s iconic “reading rainbow” to highlight the vibrant colors of our flowers.

The Reading Public Library just revamped its reading corner in the children’s section, which has a fun animal theme. It was the perfect location to photograph our bouquet that features a puppy palm pal stuffed animal. 

We paired the arrangement with books about dogs, of course! They had so many fun books about dogs, but we chose “I Want 100 Dogs” and “Love Tails”. 

The Reading Public Library also has an expansive teen space where older kids can come hang out with friends, read, and even play Nintendo Switch. We showcased some of their teen titles as well.

The book “Flowerheart” was a great choice for obvious reasons, but “Lore Olympus”, a very popular teen book, had a cover that blended perfectly with the colors in our “So Happy” arrangement.

How Fresh Flowers can affect reading

In 2005, researchers at Rutgers University published multiple studies that showed that fresh flowers can lead to increased happiness, memory, and social networking.

They found that people who worked in rooms with fresh flowers had an easier time retaining information than those who worked in rooms without flowers.

It has also been found that certain flowers can impact focus, meaning some of them can help those who struggle to devote their attention to a book. The scent of the flowers is what triggers this reaction.

Rosemary has been found to improve cognitive function by up to 75% just because of its scent. Lavender is well-known to reduce stress, which makes it easier to concentrate on tasks like reading.

So, if you have a location you typically enjoy reading in your home, such as your living room or a dedicated home library, consider adding a fresh bouquet of flowers to help you enhance your reading experience.

Happy Reading!

Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Men

Posted on by Amber

Many think of Valentine’s Day as a day for men to do romantic gestures for the women in their lives, but they deserve to be celebrated too.

To help you find the perfect gift for your significant other, we’ve compiled a Valentine’s Day Gift Guide for Men:

Flowers

Men like flowers too. Just because it’s traditional for men to buy women flowers, many also appreciate a vase of fresh flowers. If you’re looking for something “less feminine” try these options – 

Plants

Is your man a plant dad? Give him a new plant for his collection. These Valentine’s-themed plants are perfect gifts that will last well beyond the holiday when taken care of properly.

Chocolate

Who doesn’t love chocolate? We have plenty of options for the sweet tooth in your life.

These are just a few of the options we have in store and online to treat your guy for Valentine’s Day. 

If you choose to order flowers to surprise your significant other, we have a special offer this year!  Have the flowers delivered between Feb. 8-13 and your recipient will receive a coupon for a free dozen roses that is redeemable in-store from March 1-31, 2025.

Flowers and Coffee – What’s Not to Love?

Posted on by Amber
  • Tuscan Winter, Small & Hot Mocha Hazelnut Latte
  • Happy Hydrangea Bowl, Lavender & Lavender Mint Fog
  • Softly Spoken, Pink & Raspberry Italian Cream Soda
  • Peach Blossom & Iced Cookie Butter Latte
  • Peach Blossom & Iced Cookie Butter Latte
  • Simply Said, clear & Americana with Coconut

We recently collaborated with our Lebanon location’s neighbor, The Clay House Cafe, to highlight some of our arrangements and a selection of their drinks from their current menu.

They gave us a list of some of their current drinks from coffee to cream sodas and we chose flower arrangements we believed paired well with them. Because we believe everyone’s morning should start with sipping a cup of locally brewed coffee while admiring a beautiful flower arrangement.

Our pairings were as follows:

Tuscan Winter, Small & Hot Mocha Hazelnut Latte

We chose Tuscan Winter to pair with this drink because the warm yellow glow from the sunflower and the orange vase was connotative to mocha and hazelnut to us. The flowers and the coffee are both perfect to warm you up from winter blues.

Happy Hydrangea Bowl, Lavender & Lavender Mint Fog

Soft, purple tones were the theme here. The stark purple of our hydrangeas paired perfectly with the lavender in this drink. The mini green hydrangeas evoke ideas of mint and freshness, complimentary to the mint elements in this drink.

Softly Spoken, Pink & Raspberry Italian Cream Soda

Our Softly Spoken, Pink arrangement was a perfect match to the colors of The Clay House’s Raspberry Italian Cream Soda. The reddish-pink tint of the drink itself matched our pink roses and the white foam on top replicated the white mini calla lilies and the hydrangea.

Peach Blossom & Iced Cookie Butter Latte

If you taste the Iced Cookie Butter Latte, the pairing makes complete sense. The sweetness emulates the feeling the roses and mini carnations bring to the arrangement. The color of both the drink and the arrangement are evocative of a golden-hour glow as well.

Farmhouse Sunset, Small & Maple Freddo with Cold Foam (Shaken Espresso)

This drink gets swirled around to create its flavor with each element serving a purpose. Our Farmhouse Sunset features many flowers including roses, a green hydrangea, charmelia alstroemeria, a carnation and statie. Each of these flowers are different, vibrant colors, but together they create a beautiful bouquet, much like the drink.

Simply Said, clear & Americana with Coconut

Sometimes simple is best. This Americana’s star of the show is Coconut with the other elements complimenting the flavor. In Simply Said, clear the daisy poms and baby’s breath are a calming white, giving the carnation a chance to shine.

Why the Collaboration?

Royer’s Flowers and Gifts had humble beginnings in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. We began when Hannah Royer started growing African violets on her windowsill. Flash forward over 80 years later, and Royer’s has 16 locations across Central Pennsylvania. Royer’s continues to serve the community, including Lebanon, as a fourth-generation family-owned small business.

Supporting other small businesses and our community is an important part of our history and who we are today. 

The Clay House Cafe opened in Lebanon, just 3 minutes away from Royer’s Flowers, in September 2024. Since then they have been serving our Lebanon community with coffee and kindness. 

It’s been beautiful to watch our community grow.

We want to encourage everyone, whether their community is in Central Pennsylvania like us or somewhere else, to support local businesses. They are the backbone of this community.

We send a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has ever purchased from us or shared one of our posts on social media. Keep #supportinglocal

Plants that will bring you luck in the New Year

Posted on by Amber

A new year means a whole 365 days of new experiences and opportunities await. 

Of course, everyone wants to have a prosperous and successful year. According to certain beliefs, there are plants that can help with that. 

Growing and keeping these plants in your environment could supposedly make 2025 your luckiest year yet:

Peace Lily

Peace Lilies, which are not true lilies, are thought to bring peace to those who tend for them. Those who practice Feng Shui believe the Peace Lily harmonizes the energy whenever it is placed and gives feelings of hope to those in its presence.

Orchid

Orchids are hard to take care of. According to Southern Living, it is believed that caretakers of the plant will be rewarded with good fortune. Others say Orchids are a symbol of creativity and beauty, according to Good Housekeeping.

Philodendron

Feng shui practitioners believe having two philodendron plants in your home helps promote the balanced partnership you hope to achieve with those you live with, according to Good Housekeeping.

ZZ Plant (Zamioculcas Zamifolia)

The ZZ Plant is supposed to bring prosperity to its caretaker. In Feng Shui the ZZ Plant is said to elevate positive energy in relation to wealth and well-being. It is a very hardy plant and is nicknamed the “eternity plant” to symbolize endurance.

Consider adding one of these plants to your home or office to hopefully have your best year yet!

Ultimate Christmas Gift Guide Part 2

Posted on by Amber

Welcome to part 2 of our Christmas Gift Guide where we’re helping you find something for everyone on your list. 

Part 1, which features our first 12 categories, was posted on Dec. 16.

With just a few days left until Christmas, we hope the rest of this guide eases some of your Christmas shopping anxiety. Here’s the final 12 gift guide categories:

The Christmas Obsessed (For the one who has had their tree up since Nov. 1)

Your Neighbor (Who you kind of know, but kind of don’t)

Your Boss (Who you need to approve your upcoming time off request)

The Workaholic (Who definitely won’t (wink) check their phone during Christmas dinner)

The Coach (Who has cheered on your kids all season, even while it was freezing outside)

The Plant Parent (Whose house is basically a greenhouse they happen to sleep in)

The Reader (Who keeps bugging you to read Fourth Wing)

The One Who Has Everything (And refused to make a wish list)

  • A Royer’s gift card

The Art Lover (Who always has their sketch book with them)

The Bird Watcher (Who can tell what type of bird it is based on it’s song)

The Rustic Look Lover (Who drives a vintage pickup)

The Snow Lover (Who still builds snowmen every year)

Get to know: Lancaster West designer Marcia Kuntz

Posted on by Neal
Marcia Kuntz is a designer at Royer's Flowers & Gifts' Lancaster West store. In this photo, she is holding a just-completed arrangement in a glass vase.

Living just six blocks from Royer’s Flowers & Gifts’ Lancaster North store, Marcia Kuntz became a regular customer. She often was accompanied by her young daughter, Gabrielle, who was bundled in her stroller.

“I was always hanging out there,” Marcia said, looking back more than 20 years.

When Gabby went to school full-time, Royer’s put Marcia to work, hiring her first as a seasonal employee for Valentine’s Day in 2003. That led to a hybrid sales/designer position and, for the past 15 years, a focus on design.

Marcia, now a fixture at Royer’s Lancaster West store, has a unique story, but her path to becoming a Royer’s designer is a familiar one. Most of the company’s designers work their way up from a seasonal or sales position, learning the business from the ground up.

All Royer’s stores have at least two designers; the larger stores have five or six, even more at holidays. Lancaster West has four.

An eye for detail and a commitment to safety and efficiency are common traits among Royer’s designers. Creativity is important, too, but within a structured system.

There is a Royer’s Way, after all.

‘Flowers in my blood’

Philadelphia born and raised in Bucks County, Marcia arrived at Royer’s by way of earlier jobs as a phone operator and supermarket baker.

“I was a baker that hung out in the floral department,” said Marcia, who is as quick with a quip as she is with a floral knife. She met her husband, David, when they both worked at a Giant supermarket in Lancaster.

With Royer’s, Marcia originally trained under the legendary Mary Jane Pavenski, who worked for the company for more than 40 years, or more than half of its existence.

Mary Jane, who passed away in 2015, conducted training classes at Royer’s corporate complex in Lebanon. Her influence spread throughout the company, much as laughter emanated from her classroom. Marcia also cited the guidance she received from Mary Jane’s training successor, Woody Felty, who is retired.

Fun notwithstanding, Marcia and dozens of other trainees took their lessons seriously. While Marcia said she had a special knack for the work given a life-long love of plants that her mother passed down to her (“Flowers are in my blood”), she had to learn the basics as taught by Royer’s.

For instance, flowers should be twice the height of the vase in which they are arranged. Marcia demonstrated with an ever-ready yard stick, indicating that the Tuscan, Small arrangement she was crafting called for an 18-inch flower.

Royer’s is known for offering fresh product at a great value, with an extensive selection of ready-to-order designs and precise “recipes” that guide the designers.

Marcia recalled Mary Jane sharing the story of one designer who, no matter the arrangement, left one flower sticking out. It was her signature look, the designer said. But it resulted in arrangements that didn’t match what customers saw in catalogs.

A consistent, streamlined approach helps explain much of Royer’s enduring appeal to customers and business success, including the rare achievement of reaching a fourth generation of family involvement.

Asking questions

A customer had bought one of the Tuscan arrangements, but Marcia made a second one while she had all the ingredients in front of her. It was an efficient use of her time, and she was confident that a cash-and-carry customer readily would choose it from the store cooler.

“Because it’s pretty,” she said. “It has a sunflower in it. It’s summer colors. And the price point is good” at $29.99.

Royer’s designers still get involved on the sales side, answering phones and taking orders, checking out customers at the front counter, even helping them carry purchases to their cars.

Of course, customers are always free to ask for custom designs, and Royer’s strives to accommodate them. In those instances, Marcia likes to ask lots of questions of customers to understand and guide them to their desired result.

The physicality of working in a flower shop, in any capacity, is not for shrinking violets. There’s constant motion, usually while upright. Marcia and other designers take some of the pressure off their feet by standing on rubber mats at their stations.

“Invest in good shoes,” Marcia advises, noting her black sneakers. She has worn nursing shoes, too. “Because it’s an investment in your body.”

Now 66, Marcia has contemplated retirement but concluded that she’d probably still work part-time.

“Just to keep busy,” she said, her thoughts quickly turning to the work and the colleagues she would miss otherwise. “And I would be wondering what these guys are doing … what are they up to?”

Get to know: Ephrata delivery driver Mike Rohrer

Posted on by Neal

Mike Rohrer, who joined the Ephrata store in January as a driver, was delivering flowers to a woman at the Brethren Village retirement community in Lititz.

“It’s my birthday,” the woman said expectantly, “and you’re going to sing to me, aren’t you?”

“I said, ‘You bet I am!” Rohrer recalled. “How could you pass that up?”

Singing birthday greetings has become Rohrer’s calling card.

Rohrer, 66, was born and raised in Manheim, Lancaster County. He spent 32 years as a Christian school administrator, first in Lititz and recently in southern Maryland.

The pandemic prompted him and his wife, Becky, to move to Ephrata and closer to family. They have three grown children; they are “Mimi” and “Poppy” to six grandchildren.

It was Becky who spotted the Royer’s job opening.

“She said, ‘I think you’d really like this job,’“ Rohrer said. “And you know what? She was right. I love the job.”

Rohrer has made it his mission to deliver kindness to customers along with rose bouquets. Of course, challenges exist, from slow traffic (including horse and buggy travelers) to hard-to-find house numbers to growling dogs.

But that doesn’t deter Rohrer.

“There’s a little verse in the Bible that says something like this: Be kind to one another,” Rohrer said. “And on any given day, I’m going to meet people who maybe have had a bad day. Maybe they’ve had a good day. Maybe they have health problems. Maybe they have financial problems. Maybe there’s problems with their families.

“I look at it as kind of a ministry to try to help meet their needs by making them have a good, fun day,” he said.

Rohrer works approximately 30 hours per week, typically making 20 to 25 deliveries each day.

‘It’s somebody’s birthday’

On a recent Tuesday morning, his first shift comprised five stops in Ephrata. First, he pulled up alongside parked cars on a narrow street, turned on his flashers, and slid the side door open. No one was home to accept the snack basket.

The second stop took him to Elite Coach, a charter bus company, where he delivered a Tranquility arrangement to a woman in the office. Next, he brought mixed flowers in a vase to a woman who said she was celebrating her 42nd wedding anniversary.

“Hey, I’ve got you beat,” Roher said in fun. “This year’s my 46th!”

The fourth stop brought him to a neighborhood where many of the streets are named after American presidents. This recipient lived on Garfield Drive.

The typed printout on Mike’s clipboard noted that it was a birthday delivery. Lest there be any doubt, “B-DAY” was handwritten and circled in pink highlighter.

“It looks like it’s somebody’s birthday,” Rohrer said to the woman answering his six knocks on the door. “Is it your birthday?”

“It’s my birthday, thank you!” she said, accepting the Jewel arrangement.

Without missing a beat, Roher broke into song.

“Happy Birthday to you-u-u!” he crooned.

Mum grower Frysville Farms near Ephrata is almost as old as America

Posted on by Neal


There’s a bar in the East Village of Manhattan that opened its doors in 1854. A sign in the window greets patrons young and old with a pointed message: “We were here before you were born.”
In northern Lancaster County, Pa., Frysville Farms bests the bar by three-quarters of a century, tracing its origin to practically before the United States of America was born.
“We’ve been here since 1785,” said Simon Fry, who with brothers Tony and Vincent represents the eighth generation of continuous family operation of the farm. A ninth generation is now involved.
Simon oversees sales and shipping logistics; Tony is the chief greenhouse grower; Vincent is the chief mum grower. Simon noted that they help one another out in all facets of the business.
Frysville Farms produces 80,000 mums each year for customers in a three-hour radius that stretches from northern New Jersey to Maryland and Virginia. Customers include garden centers and groceries and organizations that sell mums as fundraisers.
Royer’s Flowers & Gifts, itself a fourth-generation, family-owned business, has been a Frysville Farms customer for years. Its mums arrive in stores in early September.

10 acres for mums and fall products

Although Frysville Farms has been growing flowers since the 1960s, they represent but the latest evolution in the family’s august entrepreneurial history.
That began 200 years earlier, when ancestor Hans Martin Fry set up a grist mill in 1760 along the Little Muddy Creek in what is now East Cocalico Township, several miles upstream from Frysville Farms, Simon said.
Hans’ son Johan Martin Fry, after fighting in six battles in the American Revolution, purchased the farm at sheriff’s sale in 1785. It already had a grist mill, which today, with its exposed timber walls and ceiling, serves as the company’s main office.
When a larger grist mill was built next door, the original one became a saw mill. Downstairs were, at various times, a distillery and a creamery.
With the grist mill’s closing in 1920, the family focused on farming. In 1955, Frysville Farms began growing hybrid poplar trees, according to the company’s website, and in the 1960s it progressed to the greenhouse production of annuals, perennials, vegetable plants and hanging baskets.
Today, approximately 10 acres are devoted to growing mums and other fall products outside. Some two acres are “under plastic,” as Simon referred to the 15 greenhouses used mainly for growing spring crops and poinsettias for Christmas.

Potting in May and June

The cuttings arrive over time starting in late April, as Frysville Farms grows early-, mid- and late-season mums that bloom in early August, late-August/early September, and mid-September, respectively.
Just as candy corn sometimes arrives on supermarket shelves in July, mums aren’t limited to fall. Customers have different preferences, which extends the selling season.
“Some people want their mums early,” Simon said. “We’ll oftentimes have people calling in here, ‘Do you have mums ready,’ and that’s the beginning of August.”
The cuttings are green, just a piece of plant that is stuck in soil in plug trays. Nestled in misting beds in a greenhouse, the cuttings establish roots over three or four weeks.
Frysville Farms depends on labeling and individual packaging from its suppliers to know what color the cuttings will grow into. There will be mums of red, pink, yellow, bronze, orange, purple – in various shades of each.
“And we take great care in making sure to not mix them up,” Simon said.
The first plugs are potted in late May, early June.
Simon broke from an interview to take a phone call. He joked with the wholesale customer on this hot, sunny Friday afternoon.
“You’re going fishing, I know you,” he said.

Stack of white gloves

After the call, Simon related across desks to Tony that the customer wanted all of Frysville Farms’ remaining echibeckia (a cross between coneflower and black-eyed Susan that has a starburst appearance).
Not only do the brothers work together, they (and a sister) all have homes on the sprawling farm.
“Yeah,” Simon noted, “but not right on top of each other. Tony’s right here, I’m up on the other side, my brother Vince is down the road. So we all live separate lives. I think that’s how you’ve got to do it. You can’t be in each other’s hair all the time.”
He added:
“Occasionally I have to fuss at one of them for walking into my hunting spot while I’m sitting there,” he quipped. “ ‘Hey, I’m sitting here, you’re scaring all the deer away. Come on!’ ”
Before taking a visitor into the fields, Simon conducted a brief tour of the office, which also serves as a museum of sorts. In cabinets with glass doors are old mill ledger books dating to 1799; family bibles; books written by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Norman Mailer; medical and legal books. A stack of white gloves is available for anyone handling the delicate pages.
“The Frys were prolific readers,” Simon said.
Outside, he got behind the wheel of a Dodge Caravan and took his guest to the fields and greenhouses, with stops for photos, to check on the irrigation system and to show early-stage mums and poinsettias in a misting house.
Simon marveled at the nimbleness of deer that cause surprisingly little damage to the mum pots. They might occasionally knock over a pot or kick out a watering line.
“You’d think they’d be in here browsing and munching all this nice tender green stuff, but no,” he said.
In another couple weeks, the mums would start to reveal their colors. Then it would be time to start delivering them to customers.
“We’d rather that they color up at your place rather than mine,” he said.
 
 
 
 
 

Royer’s introduces fresh gathered bouquets

Posted on by Neal


Do it yourself doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
A case in point: Royer’s new fresh gathered bouquets.
Available in 13 different options (with the promise of more to come), the bouquets sell for $19.99 or $29.99 including delivery. They arrive in a brown craft paper sleeve tied with raffia, giving the package a “rustic, farmers market feel,” said Cheryl Brill, Royer’s chief operating officer – retail.
The small ($19.99) version of the Tuscan bouquet, for instance, comprises mini green hydrangea, alstroemeria, daisy poms, viking poms, carnations, mini carnations, caspia, and tree fern. The larger ($29.99) version adds two roses to the mix.
Increasingly, flower buyers like to purchase loose bouquets they can arrange themselves, often using favorite containers, Brill said.

Hands-on

Yet customers can take comfort in knowing that each fresh gathered bouquet is professionally designed with complementary colors and textures (caspia and tree fern, for instance) in mind and then hand-assembled in Royer’s stores.
This removes some of the guesswork for customers while allowing them to be hands-on at home.
Brill said she took one of the bouquets home, trimmed the stems to the appropriate length, and dropped the bouquet into a vase.
“I couldn’t be happier with how that turned out,” she said. “And if customers can do that at home, I would think they’d be very happy with that, too.”
Many customers like to purchase for themselves. Of course, as with any other Royer’s product, the fresh gathered bouquets can be sent to someone as a gift.
While fresh gathered bouquets currently are available only in Royer’s market area, Brill delivered this tidbit: soon customers will have the opportunity to ship them almost anywhere in the United States.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Valentine’s Day: from field to front door

Posted on by Neal

Making a rose arrangement in central design department in Lebanon.

Whether you’re a planner or procrastinator, online or in-store shopper, you can expect the same high-quality product and customer service from Royer’s.
We really shine at Valentine’s Day. It’s our busiest time, and we enjoy the challenge of rising to the occasion. If a customer buys flowers once per year, it’s probably for Feb. 14. And with matters of the heart, the pressure really ramps up to deliver in a special way, for lovers and florists alike.
We handle a similar volume of orders during the Christmas season, but that’s over a month or longer. By comparison, the Valentine’s Day “season” squeezes a similar volume into several days.

From South America, with love

But behind the scenes, Valentine’s Day is months in the making, and it takes us thousands of miles from our stores.
You see, we don’t just place a phone call and wait for roses to come to us. We go directly to the flower farms in South America, where we can see firsthand the crop that’s being grown just for our customers. This way we can make sure everything is to our satisfaction. If there are problems, then we have more time to correct them.
Once the Valentine’s Day crop is harvested, it is flown to Miami, where it is inspected by U.S. customs officials. From there, we move the flowers to a refrigerated tractor-trailer for their journey to Royer’s corporate complex in Lebanon.
The truck is unloaded at our distribution center. The flowers are either picked up by drivers from our stores or, more likely, headed to the back of the building and our central design department.

Central Design: heart of the operation

The demand is so great at Valentine’s Day that our stores simply can’t accommodate all the work. They get a big assist from central design, where teams of workers gather around long tables to package roses in boxes or turn them and other flowers into beautiful arrangements.
Whether you give or receive Valentine’s Day roses, or both, we want to make sure you get the most out of them. In fact, with the right amount of care, you should be able to keep your roses looking just rosy for a week.
Click here for specific care instructions, which differ depending on whether your roses arrived in a vase or loose in a box. Either way, it’s best to keep them cool and, of course, sufficiently watered.
From the farm to your front door, we love making Valentine’s Day special for our customers.
Thanks for letting us show you how.