We’re celebrating the start of a new school year with a free Royer’s Kids Club event Aug. 23 in each of our stores.
Children ages 5 to 12 will have an opportunity to create a daisy arrangement adorned with a “back-to-school” stick-in. Participants also will receive a free balloon.
Time slots are available at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. Registration is required by calling your nearest Royer’s store: click here for locations and contact information.
Royer’s Columbia store joins parade to kick off Mountville’s bicentennial celebration
Happy 200th Birthday to Mountville, Lancaster County!
The borough kicked off its weeklong bicentennial celebration with a parade on Aug. 2.
Our Columbia store, which serves Mountville, entered Royer’s classic 1969 Ford Econoline delivery van in the procession. Store manager Patti Barclay and her team walked beside the van and handed out 400 carnations to spectators.
With addition of PinnacleHealth, Royer’s serving 11 area hospital gift shops
In advance of opening West Shore Hospital in May, PinnacleHealth System sought a new floral vendor that could keep up with the growing volume of orders from its three hospital boutique gift shops.
Royer’s Camp Hill store won a multi-year contract to service the new hospital as well as the established Harrisburg Hospital and Community General Osteopathic Hospital. The partnership began April 1.
“It’s just been extremely good the whole time,” said Joan Line, manager for PinnacleHealth Auxiliary.
She works closely with the Camp Hill store’s Holly Newpower, manager, and Aimee Arrowood, assistant manager. Royer’s delivers flowers at various price points to the hospitals every week, but Line also has been impressed with how requests have been accommodated on weekends.
“If a family comes in and wants a special arrangement,” she said, “all we have to do is call Holly and Amy and they will bring it in.”
PinnacleHealth’s gift shops are open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
What’s more, PinnacleHealth Auxiliary’s website includes an online gift shop, and orders placed there are filled by Royer’s. Or if customers buy flowers on Royer’s website that are destined for a PinnacleHealth hospital, Royer’s gives a small percentage of each sale back to PinnacleHealth Auxiliary.
The nonprofit PinnacleHealth Auxiliary manages the three gift shops. All of the proceeds from the gift shops come back to the hospitals to support various programs and services.
Holly, Royer’s manager in Camp Hill, called the PinnacleHealth Auxiliary partnership “a huge deal” for her store.
“More than just selling flowers,” she said, “it’s benefitting the community, too.”
Added PinnacleHealth’s Line: “It’s just a good match.”
Meanwhile, six other Royer’s stores service eight other area hospital gift shops:
East York: Apple Hill Surgical Center
Ephrata: WellSpan Ephrata Community Hospital, Heart of Lancaster Regional Medical Center
Lancaster West: Lancaster General Hospital, Women & Babies Hospital
Lebanon: Good Samaritan Hospital
Reading: Reading Hospital
West York: WellSpan York Hospital
Ephrata’s Julia Longenecker wins Royer’s Kids Club birthday card design contest
Ephrata Middle School seventh-grader Julia Longenecker is a swimmer and a basketball player. She loves dogs and reading.
The daughter of John and Sandy Longenecker is pretty fond of drawing, too.
“She draws a little bit of everything,” Sandy said. “She likes to draw pictures of animals, flowers.”
In fact, one of Julia’s flower drawings has earned her another descriptor: winner of Royer’s Flowers & Gifts’ 2014 Royer’s Kids Club birthday card design contest.
Her drawing of a flower-filled vase will grace the electronic card that Royer’s Kids Club members will receive on their birthdays in the coming year. For her effort, she will receive a flower delivery on her birthday.
Royer’s tops ‘Best of Lebanon Valley’ for fourth year in a row
For the fourth time in as many years as the Lebanon Daily News has recognized the “Best of the Lebanon Valley,” the newspaper’s readers have voted Royer’s their favorite florist.
Royer’s has always called Lebanon home: Our family-owned business started there in 1937 and operates its flagship store at 810 S. 12th St., Lebanon, and 901 E. Main St., Palmyra.
Overall, Royer’s has 17 stores in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties.
“Best of the Lebanon Valley” comprised 114 categories and two rounds of reader participation. Results were announced on June 18.
5 things you should know about caring for annual plants
So you bought annual plants in a container at your local florist, garden center or home-improvement store.
Annual plants – such as petunias, geraniums and begonias that complete their life cycles in one year – pose perennial challenges once you bring them home.
Here are five things you should know about caring for your annuals:
1. You have to add nutrients: Your plant didn’t come in nutrient-rich soil. Rather, it’s a potting mix that includes peat moss. This mixture is inert, meaning that it doesn’t contain the nutrients found in soil. So you have to add the nutrients by applying fertilizer on a regular basis.
2. Fertilizer is soluble, so you have to keep adding it: Regular watering of your annual plants will wash out the added nutrients if the container has drainage holes on the bottom.
3. Don’t add too much fertilizer: One of the ingredients in fertilizer is salt. Too much fertilizer – and with it, too much salt – can damage plant roots. The salt in the fertilizer will remove whatever moisture is left in the roots and burn them.
4. Cut the amount in half: Whatever dosage the fertilizer manufacturer recommends, consider cutting the amount in half and fertilizing every time you water. This way you have less of a chance of burning the roots, and your plant gets a continual supply of nutrients rather than peaks and valleys.
5. Give them a pinch: Remove the old blooms and pinch a plant’s tips, which will force out new growth. An occasional light trim will keep a plant bushy and blooming.
With proper care, your annual plants will bloom beautifully for you this summer.
Royer’s brings annual food drive to Fox 43 Morning News
It’s summertime and the living is easy, the song lyric goes. But life isn’t easy if there isn’t enough food to eat at home.
Royer’s annual food drive — Royer’s Stems Hunger — began in 2011 as a way to address some of that need. The food drive, which this year runs June 20-28, benefits the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank and the Greater Berks Food Bank.
Barry Spengler, Royer’s vice president of operations, visited Fox 43 Morning News today to explain how Royer’s Stems Hunger works. It’s pretty simple: give a nonperishable food item, get a free carnation (up to six per family per visit). Barry told Fox 43’s Amanda McCall that food donations are welcome no matter the quantity.
“Just a little of something is great,” Barry said. “We’ll give you a carnation. Some people say, ‘I don’t even want the carnations.’ Take the carnations. It’s bright for your house.”
To help kick off the food drive, the Royer’s Kids Club is holding a free event on Saturday. Participants ages 5 to 12 will get to make an arrangement — in an empty food can. Call your nearest Royer’s to register; time slots are available at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Barry showed off some other projects that children can make with flowers at home this summer.
The segment is available here:
2014 Royer’s Kids Club birthday card design contest runs through July 12
For children, summer is for getting out of school, swimming, going on vacation.
And entering the 2014 Royer’s Kids Club birthday card design contest, which is open to children ages 5 to 12 in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties.
The deadline to enter is July 12.
The winning design will be featured in the email birthday card that every kids club member receives on his or her special day.
The winning artist will receive a free flower delivery on his or her birthday.
The entry form may be downloaded at www.royers.com/kidsclub and dropped off at the nearest Royer’s store.
Royer’s Kids Club event June 21 to help kick off annual food drive
Royer’s annual food drive – Royer’s Stems Hunger – will take place June 20-28. The Royer’s Kids Club will help out with a special event on June 21 for children ages 5 to 12.
They are asked to donate a non-perishable food item as the price of admission and to bring an empty food can that they can fill with flowers to take home.
Participants also will receive a free balloon and have an opportunity to enter the kids club’s birthday card design contest for a chance to win a flower delivery.
Time slots are available at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. at each of our 17 stores in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties. Registration is required by calling your nearest Royer’s store; click here for locations and contact information.
Royer’s Stems Hunger benefits the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank and the Greater Berks Food Bank.
Royer’s Stems Hunger food drive returns June 20-28
Royer’s annual food drive – Royer’s Stems Hunger – will return June 20-28 to collect non-perishable food items for the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank (see video below) and the Greater Berks Food Bank.
Customers are asked to bring nonperishable food donations to any Royer’s Flowers & Gifts store and place them in a collection barrel. For each food item, they will receive a free carnation, up to a maximum of six carnations per family per visit.
In its first three years, Royer’s Stems Hunger has collected nearly 5,000 pounds of food for the two food banks.