From left, David Carl, senior development manager, Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, and Josh Hemmann, director of marketing and e-commerce, Royer’s Flowers & Gifts.
Royer’s Flowers & Gifts has donated $5,000 to the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, enough to provide approximately 20,000 meals to people in need.
“As a company, we’ve enjoyed the gift of loyal support from our customers for more than 85 years,” said Tom Royer, CEO of Lebanon-based Royer’s. “It’s important to us to return that generosity to organizations such as the food bank that are providing such a valuable service to our communities.”
Royer’s operates 16 stores in Adams, Berks, Dauphin, Cumberland, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties.
“This generous gift from Royer’s Flowers & Gifts will help us meet our mission and provide healthy meals for our neighbors in need,” said Joe Arthur, CEO of the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank.
“This is especially true right now, when so many face tough choices between paying rent, gas and medical bills or buying food,” Arthur said, noting that as 2023 draws to a close, the food bank is serving its 27-county service territory at higher levels than at the peak of the pandemic.
If you’ve watched the classic TV version of “Frosty the Snowman,” your heart probably sank when he stepped out of the cold and snow into a warm greenhouse.
He melted in the heat, only to come back to life when Santa opened the greenhouse door and let a cold draft of air in.
What you may not have noticed was that the greenhouse was filled with red poinsettias. For them, a cold draft is a dangerous thing.
“Poinsettias don’t like the cold, so you want to keep them away from drafty doors,” said Geoff Royer, Royer’s vice president of central operations.
You must treat them as such if you want to get the most out of your poinsettia this holiday season.
National Poinsettia Day
Of course, December is synonymous with Christmas, but Dec. 12 is National Poinsettia Day. It commemorates the 1851 death of Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico and the man after whom poinsettias are named.
Poinsett introduced the plant to the United States in 1825, sending samples to friends in his native Charleston, S.C. Poinsettias made their public debut at a Philadelphia flower show in 1829.
For their first hundred years in America, poinsettias were mostly sold as cut flowers. That was until Paul Ecke, a southern California agriculturalist, created varieties that could be shipped in pots.
Poinsettias registered sales of $213.7 million last year, according to Axios, up 40 percent from 2020.
Care tips
But for all the popularity of poinsettias, how to care for them remains much less well known and bear repeating. In fact, we go over poinsettia care tips with our own staff in the lead-up to every holiday season.
Geoff Royer, vice president of central operations, Royer’s Flowers & Gifts.
Unless you want to end up on someone’s naughty list, here’s what else you need to know to ensure your Christmas Flower lasts well into the new year.
Average room temperature is fine. Poinsettias can’t tolerate cold (including icy water) and can suffer from droopy leaves (a condition known as epinasty) if exposed to cold temperatures.
Epinasty also can result from a build-up of ethylene gas. Big-box retailers are notorious for leaving poinsettias in plastic sleeves, which trap ethylene and essentially ruin the plant.
Bright, ample light is best for the plant, mimicking conditions in Mexico.
Keep the plant moist but not sitting in water. Like people, poinsettias don’t like wet feet. The frequency and amount of water will vary depending upon the amount of sunlight, humidity and pot size to which the plant is exposed.
Poinsettias are sensitive plants, so you want to avoid banging them into things as they can bruise easily.
We wish you and your family a Happy Poinsettia Day and a Merry Christmas!
If you’ve ever seen the movie “A Christmas Story,” (if not, TBS plays it 12 times in a row starting on Christmas Eve) you might recall the scene when the Parkers venture to a tree lot.
“This isn’t one of those trees that all the needles falls off, is it?” asks Mrs. Parker.
The salesman responds: “No, that’s them balsams.”
Balsam fir is one of the most fragrant of Christmas tree species, but as the line from the movie suggests, it has a warranted reputation for shedding needles.
In recent years, however, after noticing a decline in the quality of the balsam wreaths, we switched to noble fir wreaths. They vary in size and come undecorated or adorned with the likes of pine cones, red berries and juniper. Bows and balls can be added, too.
Royer’s also offers silk balsam wreaths that are priced comparable to the old fresh balsam wreaths.
Cheryl Brill, Royer’s chief operating officer, said that the balsam wreaths were not constructed as well as they had been, perhaps because of a shortage of labor that required earlier and earlier production schedules.
“And there’s been an awful lot of drought,” she said. “Evergreens don’t respond well to that. When you cut them extra early to produce wreaths and then you’ve been having a drought situation, you end up with naked wreaths by the end of the season.”
‘Noble in stature’
If you aren’t familiar with noble fir, consider that it has been referred to as “the Cadillac of Christmas trees” and “the king of holiday greens.”
Here’s how The Real Christmas Tree Board, a national promotion and research organization funded by North American Christmas tree growers, describes the noble fir:
“Noble in name and stature, this stately tree features short, blue-green needles. The Noble fir has some of the best needle retention among Christmas tree species, with stiff branches and an attractive form to handle heavy ornaments. You’ll also find it used as greenery for wreaths and garland.”
To understand why noble fir is superior to balsam fir in needle retention, it helps to understand where the trees grow.
Balsam fir is grown in Canada, the northeastern states, the upper Great Lakes and Pennsylvania, according to The Real Christmas Tree Board; most noble fir is grown in the Pacific Northwest, at a significantly higher altitude than balsam. Continental Floral Greens, the maker of our noble wreaths, harvests the trees on the slopes of Mount St. Helens.
Nobles must be sturdy enough to withstand high winds. They also face 60 inches of rain annually and plenty of frost, which are key factors in their superior moisture and needle retention.
The noble wreaths are more expensive than the balsam wreaths, which reflects the longer growing time for noble and the shipping distance from Washington State.
While switching from traditional balsam wasn’t an easy decision, Brill noted that it was motivated by a desire to offer a better-constructed, longer-lasting option to customers.
“The main thing is their longevity,” she said of the noble. “And they are a very pretty wreath. The fir is fluffier because the needles are kind of rounded. It’s not a flat branch like a balsam is. So it has more dimension to it. They’ve always been my favorite.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
You can serve your country with just a few crayons.
The Royer’s Kids Club is participating in the American Red Cross “Holidays for Heroes” program, which collects coloring pages and holiday cards for service members and veterans.
Children of an earlier time did the monster mash. The Royer’s Flowers & Gifts Kids Club has an updated take on Halloween: spooky succulents.
The kids club is celebrating the season with its first virtual event, offering free take-home kits that will allow children ages 5 to 12 to decorate a Halloween tin with a succulent plant.
Kits include a tin decorated with a jack-o-lantern, mummy or Dracula; two-inch succulent; cellophane for lining the tin; instruction sheet with QR code linking to a video with assembly and plant-care tips; and a Halloween coloring sheet.
Kits must be reserved at royers.com/kidsclub while supplies last, limit three per family. In-store pickup of the kits will be available Oct. 19-24.
Royer’s is encouraging moms and dads to send photos of their child’s completed project to kidsclub@royers.com for sharing on social media.
Royer’s Flowers & Gifts will continue an annual tradition by collecting holiday cards and coloring pages for service members and veterans from Oct. 16 through Nov. 14.
Royer’s has partnered with the American Red Cross “Holidays for Heroes” program for more than a decade.
The Red Cross offers these guidelines for preparing cards:
Use generic salutations: “Dear Service Member” or “Dear Veteran”
Be thoughtful with messages, expressing reasons why you are thankful for the service members/veterans; if you have a personal connection, such as a family member who served, consider adding that
Try not to be overtly religious, but messages such as “Merry Christmas” or “God Bless You” are acceptable
Do not include inserts such as glitter, photos, business cards
Do not include personal information such as telephone number, address or email
Sign your name
The American Red Cross prevents and alleviates human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors.
