Heirloom Soul Florals on WIVB Daytime Buffalo Farm to Fork Fridays

October 11, 2026

I had the pleasure of hosting Daytime Buffalo’s Executive Producer, Chelsea Lovell, and Farm to Fork Friday’s Patti Green to the flower farm a few weeks ago to chat about growing local flowers and creating easy table centerpieces for special events.

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Video Transcript:

The following segment of Daytime Buffalo sponsored by the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York.

Well, today we are on another farm with Patti Green. And this time we're not eating, but we are focusing on what is on top of the table. Right, Patti?

I love entertaining as you know. You do. I am the local what? Martha Stewart. You know I am Buffalo’s Martha Stewart.

But I wanted to bring you here to this amazing farm up north, maybe 35, 50 minutes from Buffaloto meet Fran, who has an amazing flower farm. Okay, Fran, tell us about your farm.

Thanks, ladies. The name of our farm is Heirloom Soul Florals and we grow over a hundred varieties of plants here on the farm, including flowers and foliage. And most of our customers order our flowers for weddings. We offer bulk flowers for anyone to DIY whatever they want. Any reason you'd need flowers at all, you can order them from us.

Okay. So, you are actually going to show us how we can put together our own floral arrangements, right? Yes. Okay. What do you have for us?

So, this is an example of a bulk bucket of flowers and a bulk bucket of greenery that someone might order in a fall bright fun color palette. So, so this is this weighs a lot. Well, it's full of water.

It has water in it cuz we need to make sure the stems are hydrated. So, so I I usually include like a bunch of different varieties of things. So, we have we've got burgundy nine bar. Ooh, we've got eucalyptus, which is really unique and beautiful that we grow in this tunnel over here. Is this the type that you're supposed to put in your shower? You can put it in your shower. Oh, it smells amazing.

It smells so good. This is African blue basil. This guy, we have to talk about this. This smells incredible. I've never heard of this before. Tell our viewers more about this. Yeah. So, this is a really unique variety of basil that is different from the typical Genovese basil that you'd make pesto with. I think you probably could make pesto with this, but it would just taste different. This is so fruity, very floral. It smells like melons. I I have a hard time cantaloupe. I have a hard time describing what it smells like.

Amazing. You've got to come and check it But it's one of my favorite things to put in arrangements because the first thing people do when they receive flowers is they stick their face in it because they want to smell them. None of the flowers in this bucket have any scent.

Oh, is that because of the season or because of the No, it's just because of the type of flower. None of them really have any scent. The marigold is astringent, but most people don't like the way it smells. So, I mask it with really delicious scented foliage. So, we grow lots of herbs for that reason. And then this is green ninebark, which is big brother to burgundy ninebark. And grasses are always a really fun way to make centerpieces really whimsical looking. So I love it.

Yeah. So we'll be using these some of these things to build a base for our centerpieces. In this case, I actually want to start with the hydrangea in this bucket. What we're going to do is each take a piece and we're going to fill in the base with the hydrangea. So when I cut, I hold the stem up to like where I want to put it in the vase and then any extra stem that's left over, I cut off.

Oh, I see. Okay, I see what you're doing.

Oh, okay. So, you did it actually at the bottom. I did it at the bottom.

If I wanted to start a garden, but I wanted a raised bed kind of garden. Is that possible to do flowers?

Yes. You need to make sure that you water it because raised beds dry out faster than soil in the ground.

Makes sense. So, you're gonna either want to put a sprinkler on it or some sort of soaker hose and turn it on every day. But, yeah, you can absolutely grow in a raised bed.

All right, what do we do now?

So, I'm trying to make this like sort of asymmetrical.

So, this is what I love about teaching flower arranging is everybody has a different eye and everybody does things differently. So, I love what you're doing. You love it.

Oh, well, these are hydrangeas. Oh, they're just a different kind. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't cut anymore.

I want that one. [laughter] Usually when I make an arrangement, my eye just sort of does this thing where I do tall stuff on one side and lower stuff on another side and it ends up being asymmetrical.

But when I'm arranging flowers with people, I always tell them like do what makes you happy. Do what makes you feel creative. It's an art form. It doesn’t matter as much what it looks like in the end as how it makes you feel while you're doing it.

So just a metaphor for life. Very low pressure.

It's not about the end, it's about the journey.

Yes. [laughter] It's not the destination, it's the journey. That's right. Okay. This is fun.

So after I sort of fill in my base, I'm going to go in with bigger flowers. And I'm going to cut them very short. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to fill in the arrangement with bigger flowers so that the base is all filled in. Do you have any do you hold classes to like make flower arranging? Yes, we do. We have flower arranging classes on the farm. I've done them in other places as well.

We make arrangements just like this. And I usually will demonstrate how I'm making an arrangement and I'll talk about it while I'm doing it. And people can either follow me exactly or they can just leave with their own beautiful creation.

And Patti, part of the reason why you wanted us to come out to a flower farm is to let people know that something like this exists and you can do better by going to a local flower farmer, right?

Yeah. You cut down on the carbon footprint. People don't realize that the flowers that you see in the stores, and I'm not putting stores down because it's definitely a convenience, but if you get flowers that are local, there really isn't a lot of pesticides or formeldehye put on them. There's nothing where other flowers might be treated with other substances.

Exactly. So on our farm in particular, we focus on regenerative growing practices, which means everything that we do on the farm, we do with nature in mind first. So we don't use any chemical sprays on any of the plants for bugs or weed control. And that means that everything here is completely safe. It's it's just totally a total non-exploitative product as opposed to flowers that have been grown with chemicals and flown in planes across continents.

I gotcha. And the nice thing, the another cool thing, Chelsea, is that her farm is surrounded by natural flowers and weeds, if you will, that protect the bees, the bugs, all those things that are needed to kind of nurture the flowers.

Actually, a lot of the weeds that you see, the goldenrod and the New England asters are actually native and they support native pollinators, which brings more birds to the farm and they actually eat all the bad insects for us. So, we have to do very little in terms of bugs here.

Now, if someone would like to get flowers from you for their home for their next event, how should they get in contact with you?

We have a really great website with a ton of information on it and it's www.heirloomsoul.com or you could Google search Heirloom Soul Florals and you'll look for the bulk flower page. There's a lot of links to it. And on that page, we have tons of pictures of example orders, every question you'd ever need answered. And also at the bottom there's an inquiry form where I'll ask you what's the date of your event, what's what's your color palette, how many buckets of flowers do you need, and that's where you'll get in touch with us and I respond via email and we have a conversation that way.

Beautiful.

Yeah, Patti Green, we've done so great with our floral arrangement so far.

Well, I'm saying I'm saying that. What do you think?

I love it. Does it make you happy?

It does make me happy.

That's all that matters. This seems like a little bit too much for you.

You do have some options for people though that are a little bit less intense, right?

Yes. So, you can actually create an extremely effective tablescape with just a few flowers in these really cute bud vases. So, for instance, if we imagine this is the center of a table or whatever you want to decorate, anything that holds water can also hold flowers, right? So lining the middle of a table with small vases.

Exactly. So, if you have a long tablescape, you can line it with small vases. Or if you have like a buffet table, you could also sprinkle in some flowers that way really easily.

I have ideas now for our brunch segments.

Okay, we're going to be making our own little spread for brunch using these flowers. But in the meantime, thank you so much for bringing us out here and showing us how to make these beautiful floral arrangements. It was so fun.

I think mine's the best. Okay, it's not a competition, Patti. We're going to go over into the kitchen and see what you did for us. You can find tips on creating centerpieces and more by visiting farmtofork716.com. This segment is sponsored by the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York.