Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Spreading the “Buy Local” Love to Halten Garden Club in Ruxton

Today, Marina and I spent a lovely morning talking to the women of the Halten Garden Club. Halten Garden Club is part of the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland. We were invited to Halten, after our Spring talk at the District 3 Regional meeting.

Today’s talk focused on why buying local is a great idea, where you can buy locally grown flowers and how to design with locally grown Fall flowers.

Marina made some gorgeous arrangements including the ones below.

This little cube was full of burning bush, pee gee hydrangea and crocosmia pods which were supplied by the members combined with dahlias from Belvedere Farm and Wollam Gardens.

IMG_1638 

This beautiful arrangement was made in a ReCreations recycled fiber pot and was full of beautiful dahlias, snap dragons and lisianthus. We were trying to show off some “green” vessels including this compostable pot.

IMG_1639

I think the pumpkin arrangement was my favorite. We just carved out a pumpkin, stuck a vase inside of it and marina designed a beautiful, seasonal centerpiece full of hydrangeas, nandina dahlias, lisianthus and zinnias.

IMG_1641

All of the arrangement and extra flowers were raffled off to club members at the end of the talk.

Marina and I both agreed how much fun it is to talk to gardeners about our work. They appreciate the challenges in growing flowers. They are super creative when the go out to the garden and pick a little of everything to design with (alot like we do! ). And they were so excited to talk about flowers!

We stayed and had a lovely lunch and talked more about opportunities that they saw for LoCoFlo to grow. How fun, to have an impromptu brainstorming session with such wonderful, knowledgeable women!

This was also the first time Marina and I have gotten to work together since she moved. We had a great time together-laughing, working, catching up. It was a truly wonderful day!

8 comments:

  1. Love the arrangements! I especially like the use of the burning bush and the pumpkin. (Plus I loved seeing Marina and Finn, albeit briefly). PS - Marina, Finn apparently adores the Mary Poppins song Supercalafragalisticexpialadocious?!?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Jen and Stephanie! We had a lot of fun today!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I had such a great time! All the flowers and "greens" were sobeautiful! I love fall colors! Thanks Ellen for the opportunity to come up to work with LoCoFlo!

    Stephanie, thanks for helping me help Ellen!

    ReplyDelete
  4. We loved your talk and inspiring designs.Thanks for sharing your time and talents.
    Julie- a Halten member

    ReplyDelete
  5. Everyone loved your use of recyclable containers as well as locally grown flowers that are so "green and enviromentally correct"!

    Nancy

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks everyone! Hope to be able to work with you in some way in the future!

    ReplyDelete