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.
