Real Weddings: Jenny and Rick

Jenny and Rick were married on a beautiful spring morning in at Gertrude’s restaurant in the Baltimore Museum of Art. It was a perfect day for a wedding.

Jenny and her daughter carried bouquets filled with a beautiful pastel mix of Spring flowers  including tulips, hyacinths, lilacs, daffodils, solomon’s seal and deutzia. I absolutely loved this color palette. It was so perfect for Spring!

Jenny and Rick opted for untraditional centerpieces for their brunch reception: cakes! Each table had an absolutely beautiful and delicious cake from Graul’s Market. I decorated each of the cakes with beautiful flowers that matched those in the bouquets. They looked (and smelled!) great!

Thanks to Wollam Gardens, Plant Masters and Farmhouse Flowers for the amazing flowers! Thanks to Heather Stratton for the photos of the bride’s flowers, the bride and her daughter and the happy couple!

Congratulations to Jenny and Rick! Wishing you much happiness in the years ahead!

Real Weddings: Seth and Alyssa

Seth and Alyssa are a wonderful couple who were married at the Evergreen Mansion in Baltimore. Alyssa carried a a beautiful white bouquet filled with ranunculus, tulips, daffodils and hellebores. The bright splash of spring yellow was perfect for April!

The girls carried beautiful spring bouquets filled with hellebores, ranunculus, star of Bethlehem and tulips.

The wedding ceremony combined a traditional Jewish ceremony with a traditional Thai water ceremony. The traditional Jewish ceremony took place under a chuppah made from locally grown bamboo and ferns. It was decorated with forsythia and curly willow.

For the Thai water ceremony, Local Color Flowers made traditional floral leis for the couple to wear during the ceremony.

The reception table arrangements were made of an eclectic mix of recycled  jars and bottles filled with poppies, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, hellebores, ranunculus and forsythia all placed on wood slices from my yard.

 

Thanks to Plant Masters, Farmhouse Flowers and Wollam Gardens for these amazing spring flowers and branches. Thanks too to Jubilee Photography for the amazing pictures and Sky Blue Events for pulling everything together! To see more photos from Seth and Alyssa’s wedding, check out the post on Style Me Pretty (it’s awesome!!)

Thanks to Seth and Alyssa for letting us be part of their most special day! Wishing them much happiness in the years to come!

Book Review: The Nature Principle

Like many of you, I grew up in a city. In fact, I’ve lived in cities my whole life: Buffalo, San Jose, San Francisco and Baltimore. I’m pretty sure I have suffered from what author Richard Louv had termed “Nature Deficit Disorder”.  Nature Deficit Disorder is described as a lack of routine contact with nature. Louv argues that this disconnection from nature has alls sorts of negative consequences on us. For many of us, it manifests itself in a desire to get reconnected with nature-even in small ways-like planting a small garden or taking a walk outside.

In the Nature Principle, Louv makes a strong case that a connection with nature  (and all the plants and animals and creepy crawlies that live in it) is necessary for us to survive. It’s something deep in our psyche that we may not be able to explain-but we feel it. He also explains all of the great mental, physical and emotional benefits to spending time in nature.

I have thought for a while that this inherent desire to reconnect to nature is part of the  reason I started Local Color Flowers. There were lots of small steps along the way including planting a garden and working on a farm that got me started along the path.  Starting a business that allowed me to visit farms regularly, grow and pick flowers and share them with other people has been amazing. I also believe (and have been told this by clients) that this feeling is one of the reasons people want to work with us. People want to know where their flowers come from. They want to see pictures of the farms. They want to go to the farms. They want to connect with nature.

I loved reading the Nature Principle and would definitely recommend it. It was inspirational reading about the stories about how nature can positively influence our lives. It was also motivational because it reminded me that connection with nature does not have to be a 2 week camping trip at a National Park (although it could be). Reconnecting with nature can be as easy as going for a walk in the park or checking out all of what’s going on in my compost or gardening or picking flowers. Take some time today to get reconnected.

Real Weddings: Erica and Tony

I first met Erica (briefly) when she was a bridesmaid in her friend Shauna’s wedding. When we met for coffee two years later to talk about flowers for her own wedding, I knew we would hit it off. Erica has a great style and a wonderful eye for color. Her colors were shades of pink, bright green, turquoise and white. Her style was English Garden/Jane Eyre/Alice in Wonderland (with a dark side). Loved it! Our job was to translate this into bouquets and centerpieces that she and Tony would love.

Erica and the girls carried bouquets filled with tulips, ranunculus, hellebores, viburnum and piers japonica. Tony and the guys wore succulent and rosemary boutonnieres.

 

While the wedding was at the beautiful Carnegie Institute in DC, the wedding party chose some super creative DC spots for their photos!

 

Erica and Tony collected milk glass and depression era glass that we used in small collections on each of the reception tables. The varieties of blues, greens and whites looked awesome with the brightly colored flowers.

Thanks to Plant Masters and Farmhouse Flowers for the beautiful flowers!

Special thanks to Jocelyn Mathewes of Studio Mathewes for these amazing photos. We are always so happy to have the opportunity to work with Jocelyn. To see more photos from Erica and Tony’s wedding you can check out Jocelyn’s blog or our flickr site!

Congratulations to Erica and Tony! Much love and happiness to you both!

 

Good Bye Peonies!

The peonies this year have just been gorgeous! But…all good things must come to an end-at least for this year. We’ve done more weddings this year with peonies than we have ever before. Pure white, white with a fuchsia center (that surprised us every time), pale pink, deep, dark pink…

Thanks  to Wollam Gardens, Farmhouse Flowers and Plant Masters for this year’s late Spring beauties. We’re grateful to each of you.

Peonies By Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
   to break my heart
     as the sun rises,
        as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open--
   pools of lace,
      white and pink--
       and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
    into the curls,
      craving the sweet sap,
        taking it away
to their dark, underground cities--
   and all day
      under the shifty wind,
       as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
   and tip their fragrance to the air,
     and rise,
       their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness
    gladly and lightly,
      and there it is again--
        beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open.
    Do you love this world?
      Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
       Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
   and softly,
      and exclaiming of their dearness,
       fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
    their eagerness
      to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
        nothing, forever?

LoCoFlo’s New Intern!

We are so excited to welcome Anna Page to the LoCoFlo team! A MICA grad trained in painting,  Anna Page has a great eye for color, texture and form. Having grown up on a farm in Virginia, our fab intern has a love for flowers and all things natural.

On her first day at work, she created two beautiful arrangements using campanula, snap dragons, mini calla lilies, penstemon, peonies, delphinium, mountain mint and spearmint and a few other odds and ends.

Anna Page has great energy and ideas! We’re looking forward to a great summer!