Recapping Our Bogota Adventure: Highlights and Takeaways
With Lori away, Vonda brings in two special sidekicks — Audrey Kristoff and Ellie LaFever — for the full recap of the Flower Clique team's trip to Bogota, Colombia. From rose test gardens to the massive Proflora expo to watching their own bouquets assembled by hand, the three walk through a week that ended with all of them saying the same thing: the biggest highlight was the people.
Three farms in one long day
Bogota surprised the team from the start — only four and a half hours from Atlanta, one time zone away, and ringed by the Andes. Tuesday was farm-tour day: Alexandra Farms, where they walked the rose test garden and saw varieties not yet in production; Ayuda Farms, a generations-old family carnation operation (complete with horses and donkeys) whose owner led the tour himself and whose peach variety took SAF best in show; and Don Eusebio, which capped the day with Colombian coffee, a spread of exotic fruit, and a downpour that showed off the farm's rainwater collection and reuse systems.
The one downside: the bus rides. Ellie looked it up mid-trip and confirmed Bogota tops the global ranking for worst traffic — worse than Mumbai, worse than Tokyo. They experienced every bit of it.
First visit to the farm behind the bouquets
Wednesday brought the trip's purpose into focus: the team's first-ever visit to Natural Flowers, the supplier that produces Flower Clique's member bouquets. The farm employs over a thousand people, buses them to and from work daily, feeds them lunch, and provides uniforms — things the team had heard about for years but felt entirely different to see in person. The production manager walked the floor calling workers by name, and the culture read as tight, uplifting, and proud from the greenhouses to the office.
For Audrey, it was personal. After two years of email threads, she finally met the women who input Flower Clique members' orders and Carlos, who sends her the FedEx tracking information every week. "Now I feel like we have more of a relationship than just a working email thread," she says.
Proflora: creativity at full scale
The Proflora expo — a huge showroom of flowers grown in Colombia and Ecuador — "puts our little expo to shame," Ellie admits. Floral chandeliers, flower walls, flower-covered floors and arches, painted flowers, and variety after variety the team had never seen. Many booths proudly displayed sustainability certifications, a growing purchase factor for US buyers. Best of all, the team got to shop: walking the floor with Amy from Natural Flowers, flagging new varieties and color combinations they'd like to try in future Flower Clique bouquets for members.
Watching your own story get made
Friday's return to Natural Flowers felt like coming home to friends. Ellie's mission was to document the whole Flower Clique story — from Vonda's designs at the farm level all the way to the end consumer — and the team of assemblers (mostly women, trained specifically on Flower Clique bouquets) were ready for their close-up, makeup on and smiling like the movie stars they were that day.
The process itself impressed everyone: semicircular design tables laid out with each recipe's flowers, every stem inspected, bad petals and leaves removed, flowers placed in a precise order and carefully wrapped. And then the detail that made it emotional — order labels with Flower Clique members' names on them. These bouquets weren't inventory; they were being made to order for specific shops back home.
The people were the point
All three came home saying it: the Colombian people — at the farms, the hotel, behind the wheel — were kind, warm, hardworking, and proud. Despite the warnings friends offered about traveling to Bogota, no one felt unsafe for a moment. Ellie and Audrey are both brushing up their Spanish (Duolingo counts) before the next trip, because the conversations are what they want more of. The team came back with creative juices flowing, new varieties in mind, and plans to build new bouquets — and to go back.
Key takeaways
- Knowing your supply chain firsthand changes everything — meeting the people who grow and assemble your product turns transactions into relationships.
- Care for workers shows up in product quality: the farm's culture of pride and respect was visible in every meticulously inspected stem.
- Sustainability certifications are increasingly displayed at the farm level — worth asking about when you source.
- Expos and farm tours are creative fuel: new varieties and display ideas you simply won't find at home.
- Document your story — showing customers where their flowers really come from is powerful content.