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Decorating for Fourth of July – Embracing Americana

Posted on by Sophia

Whether you are hosting the Independence Day BBQ or simply want to create an Americana feel in your home for the Fourth of July, we have the floral arrangements and decor to create the look you’re dreaming of. 

Decor:

Wall Hangings

We offer three gorgeous wall hangings featuring the American flag design. One is a wooden American flag with a “Liberty” star for those looking for a rustic vibe. The other is a map of the United States overlaid with the American flag. The final option features the words “God Bless America” over top a flag-like design with stars and stripes.

Sitting Decor

If you’re looking to decorate a table spread or shelves, we have “sitting decor” options. We offer two wooden blocks with two different sayings, “America the Beautiful” and “Hooray for the U.S.A.” that are simple, but festive.

Keeping with the rustic look from earlier, we have a wooden star with the word “Liberty” with the letters “USA” in front and a small heart featuring a flag overlay. There is also a “Welcome” sign to greet visitors or party guests, with each letter featuring an American flag design.

Outdoor Decor

Something subtle to place outside is our metal American Flag on a pole. This is a great option, especially if you don’t already have a flag outside.

Florals:

Flowers can center a party, especially a table spread, and complete the look of a room. If you’re looking for the perfect finishing touch for Independence Day, we recommend these arrangements:

Star Spangled

An obvious choice for those really leaning into the Americana look for the 4th of July is our classic “Star Spangled” arrangement. Made of red carnations, blue dyed baby’s breath, and white daisy poms and featuring a patriotic star stick-in, it is the perfect addition to your holiday celebration.

Stars and Stripes

Another red, white and blue classic to celebrate is our “Stars and Stripes” arrangement. A patriotic tin holds a red rose, a blue hydrangea, a white football mum, alstroemeria, and red carnations to create the perfect 4th of July celebration piece. An American flag stick-in completes the arrangement and makes it pop.

Watermelon

Is it really a Fourth of July celebration without watermelon? Embrace the iconic summer fruit with our “Watermelon” arrangement featuring red carnations, white daisy, yin yang poms, and red alstromeria. The arrangement is created in a gorgeous ceramic watermelon container and completed with a rustic bow featuring a red and white gingham edge.

Country Picnic

The red and white of this arrangement make it a great choice for the Fourth of July. It has a “southern summer” charm and features a cute ladybug stick-in. It’s made up of white football mums, red carnations, and yin-yang poms. 

Shop these Items: https://www.royers.com/usrf.cfm?products=displaypage&category=independence-day

Fresh Looks, Everyday: How We Refresh Our Year-Round Floral Collection

Posted on by Sophia

When you think of summer, you might picture the beach, a boat, or a trail through the mountains. For us, summer means “design days”—a time to roll up our sleeves, get creative, and refresh our everyday flower lineup.

Our everyday product lineup—those go-to birthday, anniversary, thank-you, and just-because arrangements—undergoes careful review and refinement. While seasonal offerings come and go, everyday arrangements are the backbone of what we do. That’s why we take great care in keeping them current, creative, and customer-approved.

Much like our seasonal catalogs, we regularly evaluate which designs in our everyday collection are performing—and which ones need to take a final bow. An arrangement might be removed if sales have dipped or if the container is no longer available. Others are redesigned to reflect updated flower trends or color palettes.

Once we’ve determined what’s on the way out, our team gets to work dreaming up what’s next.

We draw inspiration from all corners of the floral world: new flower varieties, social media trends, gift and decor shows, trending color combinations, and even past customer favorites. If an everyday arrangement has seen strong demand in a specific season or holiday, it might be elevated into year-round rotation.

Our growers and suppliers are integral to this process. We seek out flower varieties that are not only beautiful, but available—day in and day out. We’re always testing new sources, exploring different regions, and ensuring the flowers we offer are fresh, consistent, and top-tier in quality.

This week, our designers collaborate to turn ideas into real-life arrangements, blending textures, colors, and containers to create something both beautiful and practical. These designs are then fine-tuned in a process we call “value engineering”—ensuring the final products offer both exceptional quality and fair pricing for our customers.

Once the new everyday arrangements are finalized, they’re professionally photographed and added to our year-round selection—both in-store and online in September.

And then? It’s your turn. Your orders, your reviews, and your responses help decide what earns a permanent place on our shelves. You shape the everyday lineup as much as we do.

So next time you browse our website or stop by a store, know that each arrangement has been thoughtfully chosen, tested, and tailored to brighten your everyday moments.

It takes us a whole year of planning to be ready for the holiday season

Posted on by Neal
The image shows workers crafting holiday arrangements in Royer's central design department.
Central design workers will handcraft 15,000 holiday arrangements and decorate 3,000 poinsettias and dish gardens.

Royer’s Flowers & Gifts begins to decorate its stores for the holidays right after Halloween.

From installing heavy bell arches and larger-than-life toy soldiers, string lights and Santa’s sleigh, the process consumes more than a week across 16 stores in seven counties. But that’s just what the public sees.

The truth is that for Royer’s, one of the largest florists in the United States, Christmastime is all the time, even if much of the work takes place behind the scenes.

“We actually start prepping for Christmas in January,” said Geoff Royer, vice president of production and product development. “So once we go through the Christmas season, we have a review of what worked, what didn’t work. It’s a year-round thing for us.”

January will take Royer’s buyers to a major trade show in Atlanta, for instance, where they order holiday giftware that will arrive in stores some 10 months later.

Orchestrating everything requires varying amounts of attention at points throughout the year. It reaches a crescendo in December when dozens of Royer’s employees, creating their version of Santa’s workshop, gather in teams in the company’s central design department in Lebanon.

Combined, they handcraft 15,000 holiday arrangements (centerpieces most of all) and decorate 3,000 poinsettias and dish gardens for distribution to the 16 stores.

Royer’s reaches far and near to source its products.

Flowers are grown in South America. Most of the greens come from the West Coast. Poinsettias, although native to Mexico, hail from greenhouses in Ephrata, Lancaster County, and near Philadelphia.

“But we also get white pine straight from out of the Poconos,” Geoff said. “We have a guy who goes out and cuts bundles for us. And he’s right here in Pennsylvania.”

Just as Royer’s works on the holiday season the whole year long, some customers might like it if holiday arrangements were available all 365 days.

“People will send them for get-wells, they’ll send them for birthdays,” Geoff noted. “So just because it’s a Christmas arrangement doesn’t mean it’s not appropriate for all occasions.”

Royer’s presents Red Cross with more than 3,000 holiday cards for area military veterans

Posted on by Neal
Laura Burke, executive director of the American Red Cross’ central Pennsylvania chapter,
and Amber Charnoff, marketing manager, Royer’s Flowers & Gifts.

From Oct. 14 through Nov. 16, all Royer’s Flowers & Gifts stores collected holiday cards and coloring pages from generous members of the public for area military veterans.

It’s a favorite annual tradition for Royer’s, which has a decade-plus affiliation with the American Red Cross “Holidays for Heroes” program.

In fact, Royer’s is the largest contributor among a list that also includes a senior-living center in Centre County, other corporate partners and school districts, said Laura Burke, executive director of the Red Cross’ central Pennsylvania chapter.

Amber Charnoff, Royer’s marketing manager, presented more than 3,000 cards and coloring pages to Burke on Nov. 20.

Next, Red Cross volunteers will review and sort the cards. They will be placed into totes destined for Veterans Administration hospitals, veteran homes and senior-living facilities within the 11-county chapter, which stretches from Centre in the north to Adams in the south.

Burke will be among the people making the deliveries in early December.

“I like to see how they’re received,” Burke said, “and it’s always met with gratitude and thanks. For people to just get a bundle of cards that have some personalized message in them, thanking them for their service, hoping they have a great holiday season, is always a meaningful thing.”

Burke said there’s a through line of support for service members and veterans from the Red Cross’ origin in 1881, in the aftermath of the Civil War, to Holidays for Heroes.

“Supporting our military community is a core of what we do as the Red Cross,” Burke said. “That carries through case work and helping veterans in distress and helping our active military on bases overseas. And also through supporting our veterans in giving them goodwill and well wishes during the holiday season. So it is a core of our mission.”

Catalogs usher in new season for our brand

Posted on by Neal
Royer's Flowers & Gifts Fall 2024 Catalog
Royer's Flowers & Gifts Year-Round Catalog, issued in Fall 2024

When you’re a fourth-generation family-owned business nearing its 90th year in operation, you cherish your company history.

But a hallmark of Royer’s Flowers & Gifts’ enduring legacy is honoring its past while still being willing and able to change course when circumstances dictate.

That agility has made Royer’s one of the most successful florists in the United States.

Sometimes change is thrust upon you suddenly, as it was during the coronavirus pandemic, an existential threat that forced Royer’s to rethink many of the ways it functioned. At other times, Royer’s has had to respond to structural developments in society, which brings us to our latest rebranding effort.

The first glimpse of that new look and feel began arriving in customers’ mailboxes this fall in the form of our year-round and fall catalogs.

Increasingly digital world

Go Welsh, our long-time design agency in Lancaster, is leading the rebranding.

“Whatever we do and propose,” said agency owner Craig Welsh, “it has to live in digital, but it can’t feel digital.”

At its heart, the rebranding addresses the challenge of promoting the organic feeling of flowers in an increasingly digital world.

More than half of our sales now occur online. All those swipes, clicks and taps come at a faster pace than the turning of a printed page, making it harder to capture the public’s attention.

The new catalogs feature a reworking of our logo, distilled from the long-stemmed flower it has been for decades into a clean, contained round icon that’s more recognizable across media.

On social media, Craig noted, an “icon becomes much more prominent in the expectation” among users. And with increased awareness, that icon can become the brand’s primary mark, lending itself to many more uses.

Mid-century modern

The icon makes for a “much cleaner brand presence visually,” Craig said, but the flip side is that the mathematical representation of shapes, lines and curves in the digital realm can overpower the organic world.

That’s why Go Welsh seized on the idea of bringing organic into the mix through inks made from flower petals and stems. Jenna Flickinger, a Go Welsh designer, keeps vials of ink at her desk, with labels such as lily, lavender and pansy, and clematis.

She boils the petals herself, adding salt (to release color) and gum arabic (a stabilizer) to create ink. She brushes the ink onto watercolor paper and then scans the washes into her computer.

Some of the colors and textures have been incorporated into the new catalogs, but the learning process continues. From vial to dried paper, the ink colors aren’t always predictable.

“Even though this was a pink carnation,” Jenna said of one example, “it still [dried as] this yellow color.”

Craig described the rebranding as a “mid-century modern aesthetic,” invoking a design style known for sleek lines connected to nature and a timeless essence.

“We’re trying to find a place where we can combine this organic sensibility with the vector, screen-based digital stuff, so we started looking at mid-century modern sensibilities,” Craig said.

It starts with the new catalogs, but you can expect to see many more representations in the year ahead.

The history of Grandparents Day

Posted on by Amber

Grandparents Day is a time to celebrate our mom and dad’s parents and the significant impact many of them have had on us. 

On Grandparents day people often visit their loved ones, give them a phone call or send them a card. Others use the time to reminiscence about their late grandparents, possibly remembering the days cuddled in their laps listening to their stories.

According to Reader’s Digest, Marian McQuade of West Virginia created the holiday in 1956 after realizing a lot of senior citizens in her local nursing home were not visited by family while she was trying to plan a community celebration of the elderly.

McQuade then made it her mission to ensure they were not forgotten by creating Grandparents Day. It became an official holiday in 1978 when it was signed into law by former President Jimmy Carter.

However, the purpose of the holiday is not meant just for grandchildren to celebrate grandparents, but also the reverse. The National Grandparents Day Council says that the holiday is also meant for grandparents to celebrate their grandchildren.

The holiday is always celebrated on the Sunday after Labor Day in the United States. This year the special day is on September 8. 

This year the official theme is “Grand Minds: Learn, Love, Legacy”. Generations United is encouraging people to #DoSomethingGrand this year with their grandparents and have a list of activity ideas on their website.

Grandparents Day Gift Ideas

We put together a Grandparents Day gift basket for those looking for ideas for Grandparents Day. Check out our basket below!

Here’s the items we included in our basket:

Royer’s Flowers & Gifts donates more than $11,000 to four mid-state nonprofits

Posted on by Neal
  • From left, Sharon Cash, donation coordinator; Jean Ussery, resident support and recovery coordinator; and Tymia Green, executive director, Shalom House, with Josh Hemmann of Royer’s Flowers & Gifts.
  • Mary Quinn, president and CEO, YWCA Greater Harrisburg, which manages Dress for Success, and Josh Hemmann, director of marketing and e-commerce, Royer’s Flowers & Gifts.
  • Members of Girls Who Code Central PA flanked by Josh Hemmann of Royer’s Flowers and Lin Taylor, Girls Who Code advisor.

Royer’s Flowers & Gifts has announced a new round of charitable donations totaling more than $11,000 to four mid-state nonprofits.

The recipients and their awards:

  • Girls Who Code Central PA, with clubs in Harrisburg and Hershey, $1,350;
  • Shalom House, a shelter for women and children in Harrisburg, $2,000;
  • Dress for Success South Central PA, $2,000;
  • Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, $5,740.

Family-owned Royer’s earmarks $10 from every sale of its Admiration arrangement for these donations. In the past decade, the arrangement has fueled donations of nearly $53,000.

“We’re grateful for our loyal customers whose support makes it possible for us to give back to these incredible organizations that work every day to improve lives in our communities,” said Tom Royer, president and CEO of Royer’s Flowers.

Royer’s Flowers presents American Red Cross with holiday cards for veterans and service members

Posted on by Neal
  • Josh Hemmann, Royer’s Flowers director of marketing and e-commerce, and Laura Burke, executive director of the American Red Cross’ central Pennsylvania chapter.

Royer’s Flowers & Gifts has presented 2,300 holiday cards and coloring pages to the American Red Cross for distribution to area service members and veterans.

Royer’s collected the cards and coloring pages from the public in each of its stores from Oct. 16 through Nov. 14, continuing a decade-long affiliation with the Red Cross “Holidays for Heroes” program.

Eight Days of Christmas: Royer’s decorates 16 stores for the holiday season

Posted on by Neal
  • Noah Gingrich of Royer’s wholesale department installing string lights on one of two giant sycamore trees in front of Royer’s Lebanon store.
  • It takes two people to carry sections of the bell arch.
  • Noah Gingrich with one of the bell arch sections.
  • The bell arch being installed on the front of Royer’s Lebanon store.
  • From left, Barry Spengler, chief administrative officer, and Noah Gingrich, from the wholesale department, secure a trumpeting soldier statue under the bell arch.
  • Lebanon driver Brenda Yordy removes last year’s lights from garland.
  • Hershey assistant manager Alexi Strine, left, tries out the newly installed selfie station with the help of sales associate Paige Blankenhorn.

Noah Gingrich went trick-or-treating with his young cousins on Halloween night.

By the next morning, temperatures having devilishly dipped into the 30s, he was placing a sleigh and two reindeer in front of Royer’s flagship store in Lebanon. It was the start of an eight-day process of decorating the company’s 16 stores in seven counties for the holiday season.

An employee in Royer’s Flowers wholesale department, Noah has been the lead holiday decorator for the past three years, readying store exteriors with toy soldier statues, wreaths and garlands, string lights on bushes and trees.

Two of those trees are mighty sycamores that flank the Lebanon store’s driveway. On the left side, staple gun in hand and ladder at the ready, Noah wound nine courses of lights around the trunk.

“And there’s one tree,” he pronounced as the final staple clicked into place.

Standing out

Decking the halls is a decades-long tradition for family-owned Royer’s, now in the hands of its third and fourth generations. One of the latter is Geoff Royer, vice president of central operations, who oversaw the work in Lebanon and that afternoon at the Hershey store.

“It definitely dresses the stores up for the holidays,” Geoff said. “And nobody really does this any more to the scale that we do it, so it does make us stand out.”

It’s a significant undertaking, involving other members of the wholesale department and employees at every store.

Before Noah arrived, the stores were tasked with stripping old sets of string lights from garland, attaching new ones and generally fluffing greenery that has been in storage for the previous 11 months.

Brenda Yordy, a Lebanon driver, working at an outside table, used a pair of wire cutters to extract the lights.

“Easier than untangling them, right?” she said. Later, she was joined in the task by store manager Melissa Fahr.

It took two people to carry each of four sections of a metal bell arch from storage to the front of the Lebanon store, on South 12th Street.

“It’s a beast,” said chief operating officer Cheryl Brill.

In previous years, the arch spanned the doorway, attached to decorative wooden beams. This year, with the beams newly clad in metal, no one wanted to risk scratching them.

So, the team instead affixed the arch, with its bells of red, green and white, above the Royer’s sign to the left of the beams, securing it with hooks and wire to the red-brick building. They placed a trumpeting soldier statue beneath the arch.

Selfies in Hershey

By afternoon, Noah and Geoff were working their Christmas magic 12 miles west at the Hershey store, which enjoys a prominent corner spot on West Chocolate Avenue, downtown’s main thoroughfare.

Several stores have enough storage space to hang on to their large exterior decorations year-round. For those that don’t, such as Hershey, their larger pieces are kept at Royer’s headquarters in Lebanon and delivered to them by Noah in a box truck.

Hershey store manager Andrea Campbell and assistant manager Alexi Strine were excited about turning their store’s sleigh into a selfie station. They moved the sleigh closer to the front door than in past years to make it more accessible to customers.

To be sure, the holiday season requires weeks of hard work, store decorating being just the start. In the floral industry, Christmas sales are on a par with Valentine’s Day but spread out over a period that’s three times longer.

Poinsettias require prudent watering, low centerpieces with shallow water wells can be sloshy, and fresh evergreen branches can be sticky. And glitter is seemingly everywhere.

“But we’re making everyone really happy,” Andrea said. “We make so many people so happy.”

One customer has followed Andrea from her first stint in Hershey, to the Harrisburg East store, back to Hershey. Every Christmas, the woman brings in silver pedestal bowls to be filled with greens, berries and roses that she gifts to family members.

“There’s a lot of sentimental things that are happening,” Andrea said. “Then you really feel like you are part of this super-special moment for this family. And I think that’s cool.”

Royer’s Flowers saluting veterans Nov. 11 with free red, white and blue bouquets

Posted on by Neal

Royer’s Flowers & Gifts will give away red, white and blue bouquets to military veterans on Nov. 11, Veterans Day.

The bouquets – featuring a red carnation, a white carnation and a blue bow – will be available in-store only at each of Royer’s 16 locations in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties.

“This is one of our favorite events each year,” said Tom Royer, president and CEO of family-owned Royer’s. “It is our honor and privilege to recognize the men and women who give so much to protect our freedom.”

Non-veterans may purchase the bouquets for $2.20 each.