Presenting

Feature June | 2023 I n March, I traveled to Colombia, to discover a piece of the country's 20,000 acres (8,000 hectares) of land devoted to cut fl ower cultivation. at piece was Alexandra Farms, a boutique grower specializing in nostalgic, romantic, fresh-cut garden roses and Dahlia. e company comprises two beautiful farms, El Jardin and San Ignacio, which occupy nearly 50 acres (20 hectares) of prime land on the savanna of Bogotá, high in the Andes Mountains, where the warm days and cool nights are perfect for growing fl owers. Founded in 2005 by Jose "Joey " R. Azout and named after his daughter—Alexandra Lydia Azout, who was born in 2004—Alexandra Farms has grown into an industry leader bringing beautiful cut fl owers to the world. I accompanied the winners of Alexandra Farms' 2022 "Garden Rose Design Contest," along with other fl oral retailers and event designers, fl ower wholesalers and importers, and media. During our visit to the El Jardin farm—the larger of the two farms—we toured the testing greenhouses, which are full of varieties being considered for future release. Our group was presented with several of the new varieties being testing, and we were asked to give our opinions. It was interesting to hear everyone's varying perspectives: Wholesalers shared their knowledge of what they thought they could sell, and the designers provided input on trends and the likelihood of wanting to design with specifi c varieties in their markets. Azout shared with us that the company is currently testing 246 new rose varieties—almost 20,000 plants. "We have tested about that number of varieties every year for 15 years," he says. " at is more than 3,000 tested varieties, with only 67 of them making it to production. at is a bit over 2 percent. It takes three to four years for a variety to make it through the trial process and be chosen to go to market." In 2021, the company introduced nine new garden rose varieties, followed by six in 2022 and seven in 2023. e San Ignacio farm hosts the company's post-harvest facility, where all of the cut fl owers are graded and packed by hand. Interesting to note is that of 300 people employed by Alexandra Farms, 250 are women. It was powerful to see so many women in both higher management and farm-level positions. For the past couple of years, Alexandra Farms has employed about 75 percent women and 25 percent men. A special surprise was an opportunity to design arrangements using fl owers from the farm. We let our creative sides go wild; it was like a bunch of children in a candy store. All of the employees were excited to see us create fl oral magic with the product they see every day. Taking a trip to a fl ower-growing operation like Alexandra Farms should be on the bucket lists of everyone in the fl ower industry. You, too, could win a trip to Alexandra Farms in 2024 by entering the company's 2023 "Garden Rose Design Contest." You can fi nd details online, at alexandrafarms.com/ garden-rose-design-contest. If you enter and your designs take fi rst place in either of the categories, you will be awarded the trip of a lifetime to two of the most amazing fl ower farms on the planet. M Magica Ti t Alexandr Farm By Nita Robertson, AIFD, CFD

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