ABOUT US
In my early thirties, I had two long sought after children. I was in
heaven, living a very organic lifestyle with my husband in a small rural
village nestled in a mountainous valley in central Vermont. We were working
on our real values of life; family, organic vegetable gardening, community
and work. The focus then seemed to be on becoming aware of our own
resourcefulness, discovering the earth and its miraculous manifestations;
putting up frozen vegetables, pickling and preserving, raising our own meats,
etc. Family life and work entailed using the earth, and food was the main
purpose behind that effort. Harvesting pumpkins and squash and digging potatoes
with sweet anticipation of finding bushels of them was akin to the satisfaction
of finding gold. Suddenly the earth made the world a different place. The
earth could produce miracles from tiny little seeds, and we had discovered
a connection with life that awakened a new creative drive which brought us
deep satisfaction.
One day, when my girls were one and two years old, I was visiting a
friend who exemplified the 'organic' lifestyle in the tasteful expression
of her aesthetic values. I eyed a wreath on her wall that instantly captured
me. It was made of hay. That was it, just hay, with a pretty blue ribbon
woven around it. I don't know if it was the simplicity, or the concept of
the symbolism of the circle that seemed to entrance me, but at that moment
I seriously fell in love with both it and the pleasure it brought me to look
at it. Something stirred deep within, as if I had seen something from a distant
past that I had long ago forgotten, or something from the future calling
to me. At any rate, the feeling of joy and inspiration I felt prompted me
to rush home and immediately secure some hay, and proceed to make as many
hay wreaths as I could; each with a different ribbon and bow. I would then
rush to all my friends and give them away with great enthusiasm assuming
I had just created great works of art.
The following winter, I became more aware of dried flowers as a way
of decorating the hay wreaths. So I began another love affair with flower
catalogs. The next summer we planted our usual vegetable gardens, but we
also tilled up a new patch of grass for the planting of flowers to dry. These
were, in my thinking, 'experiments' to determine what dried flowers were
all about. I ordered five seed packets of different everlastings and planted
long, one-hundred foot rows of each of them. Needless to say, our experiment
yielded hoards of flowers and, having become so 'resourceful', had to figure
out what to do with them as I was not inclined to let them go by. So I sat
on my living room floor with piles of flowers all around me, put together
thirty or so bouquets, signed up for a local farmers market in Montpelier
VT, and grabbing one little girl under each arm, headed for the market with
a car full of flowers. The year was 1982, and most people had never seen
such color in dried flowers before, and being priced at $3.00 each, I sold
out before the market officially opened at 9:00 o'clock. That was it. From
that point on I would spend Fridays making bouquets and come home on Saturdays
with some much needed cash. So not only was I in love with dried flowers,
but I could make money at it.
My love progressed rapidly. I grew and dried every flower I could start
by seed to research first of all, which flowers would grow in such a short
season and cold climate, but also to determine which ones would dry well.
I literally planted hundreds of varieties of flowers over the years and air-dried
them all. Those that held their color and didn't shatter when dry, I grew
again. The family was also involved. We went for countless drives searching
fields and woods for natural flowers, picking them together. The girls delighted
in scouting out the best patches. From farmers markets to craft fairs, Andree
Frazier Dried Flowers evolved over the years and the focus became growing
and drying the largest, most spectacular and colorful flowers possible for
placing in wreaths and arrangements. Drying peonies represented one of the
greater challenges of my life. It was as if fate had decreed that I would
be presented with so many obstacles and failures that I felt like I was being
tested to see if I REALLY wanted to dry them. But we hung in there and
persevered, and eventually started to see small successes. One of the things
I learned over the many years of growing and drying peonies is that not all
of them dry well. And since there were no books written on air-drying peony
flowers, I had to experiment with many different cultivars which took years
as it sometimes takes two or three years for a peony plant to flower.
The end result is very beautiful dried peonies of exceptional quality
and form. We now only grow and dry one flower; the magnificent peony.
View our Gardens. Visit us at
Frazier's Greenhouse each spring for
a nice selection of peony plants, roses, annuals and perennials for your
garden.
Enjoy your visit to the Vermont Dried Peonies website.
