Alpine Kolibri

How an Urban Flower Farm Uses Rubber Stamps for Packaging and Branding

Meet Lauryn, co-founder and owner of Alpine Kolibri, an urban flower farm located in the Sierra Nevadas. In 2023, Lauryn’s passion for flowers overflowed into a flower business. Now, she supplies local farmers markets, florists, and customers with fresh cut flowers.

When starting Alpine Kolibri, Lauryn and her family decided to use rubber stamps for their flowers’ branding and packaging. We, recently, interviewed her to learn more about her business and how she uses her custom logo stamps. So, let’s get into it!

Where did you get your passion for flowers?

My passion for flowers actually came originally from books I would read. I would imagine my own secret cottage garden where I could go and be alone, enjoying the beautiful flowers and wildlife who would come join me to bask in their beauty. As I grew, my grandmother really harbored a lot of my ongoing interest in flowers. She would also make a special trip in the spring to get her home ready for flowers. She had a huge magnolia tree growing in her front yard that I would always admire. We have a magnolia tree in her loving memory growing with us now.

Can you tell us a little about your business and how you got started in the flower industry?

Our business is called Alpine Kolibri, as it is a play on our familial initials, along with where we grow. Colibri is actually French for hummingbird, which is significant to our family, and we changed the spelling to reflect our familial initials.

Alpine Kolibri is a small family run operation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The urban farm truly is mainly myself, along with my spouse and two children (a teen and a toddler). My primary job is a therapist, and my spouse is a software engineer. We started this business with a passion for flowers and grew when we saw the connection that flowers had with our friends and family members who we shared our blooms with.

Our main focus is on providing easy to understand education around the ability to grow flowers in small spaces. You don't need a huge amount of land (or even land at all) to have some beautiful flowers in your life. All you need is a little bit of determination and perseverance and you could easily grow some beautiful blooms in your life.

We also gladly supply our local stem bars, farmers markets, and florists for their floral related projects as well. We adore seeing the effect that our blooms have on people and we can't wait to continue to share more with our community in the coming growing season.

What services do you provide at Alpine Kolibri?

We are a small scale urban cut flower grower. The main services we provide are growing flowers for our community. We supply florists, stem bars, farmers markets, and community members. Anyone can order directly from us, and we can even facilitate delivery in some cases.

What is a favorite moment of yours from running Alpine Kolibri?

Probably my most favorite moments so far are the connections I am gaining with my spouse and my children, as this is something we are growing together and working together to make work. Everyone in our family is invested and has their favorite flowers and favorite flower related activity.

In regards to the connection with the customers, there are many different ways that we are engaging our community. My favorite way is showing people that growing flowers and having flowers in the home doesn't have to be seen as a tedious chore or an unattainable luxury. Flowers are for everyone, as they often mark significant moments in our lives.

How did you get the idea to use rubber stamps for your business?

I was looking for ecological ways to brand our items that didn't involve a lot of haste and waste. While we do also have stickers and love stickers, using stamps felt like a more organic way to beautifully mark our items, while also minimizing paper and plastic waste.

How do you use the rubber stamps for Alpine Kolibri?

We use the stamps to mark our bouquet wraps, our kiddie flower grow kids, our tuber bags, and our seed packets. We have also used the stamps to mark our packaging when we are shipping items as well.

Of course, stamps have been helpful! When we first started considering what we were wanting our branding packaging to look like, stamps were always on the list. Again, they allow us to be able to effectively brand our packaging without having too much plastic or paper waste.