Summer Bouquet Class

Summer Bouquet Class: By Carling A.W. Elder

Friday morning, I got to do something really fun. I got to go to my work, and not work at all! Yesterday morning, I was lucky enough to attend a Summer Bouquet class at Local Color Flowers taught by my talented boss Ellen Frost where I got to sit back, play with some beautiful local flowers, and revel in being a student again.

I’m always quick to tell anyone who asks that one of the best things about designing with local flowers is the ever changing variety and availability of the flowers. Each week, there are different colors, textures, shapes, and scents to examine and explore, and it keeps floral design from ever becoming boring or static. I love the challenge of working with new materials each week, and I always feel it’s my responsibility to the growers to make their flowers shine in each design.

For the class this week, there was basil, celosia, mountain mint, lisianthus, gomphrena, zinnias, sunflowers, and marigolds to choose from. The mint and basil smelled fresh and sweet, and the multicolored zinnias lit up the studio table with their brilliance. We each got a silver or white, low footed bowl to use as a vase, and quickly filled it with a ball of chicken wire to create an eco friendly support structure for our arrangements.

As Ellen explained the basics of floral design, we passed a golden marigold around the design table and stuck our faces into it, delighting in its earthy scent. I watched the excitement on the faces of my classmates as they learned how to cut stems on an angle, the importance of foliage and texture, and the benefits of buying local flowers. As I choose green and orange flowers for my design, I watched others gravitate towards their favorite colors of purple, red, and yellow. Once we had chosen our flowers, we each grabbed a pair of clippers and, as Ellen likes to say,  “Dove in!”

 

My friend Julie accompanied me to the class. When we got home, she asked me “Was it useful for you?” wondering if I found the class helpful since I’ve been doing floral design for a few years. I answered with a resounding “YES!” At yesterday’s class, Ellen’s teaching, summer’s  fresh flowers, and the basic elements of floral design, gave me a deliciously strong shot of inspiration. While creating our summer bouquets, I saw my classmates awaken to the joys of floral design, and I thought about the many reasons I love floral design so much.

At yesterday’s design class, I realized that no matter how good a designer I ever become, my goal is to always approach floral design with a beginners eyes:  with enthusiasm, with curiosity, and with a desire to learn. 

In other words, I will forever strive to be a student of my favorite artform, floral design.

Making A Pomander-Without Floral Foam

As some of you know, Local Color Flowers made a New Year’s resolution to give up floral foam this year. Last week, we had a new floral foam free design challenge-flower girl pomanders.

A floral pomander, or kissing ball is a basically a ball of flowers that is carried on a ribbon “strap” like a purse. Normally, we would use a little floral foam ball, soaked in water, filled with flowers with a ribbon attached.

The end result would look something like this.

To tackle this design challenge, I first posted a note on the Flower Farmers facebook group. This is a relatively new group made up of flower farmers, designers and enthusiasts. My post elicited lots of suggestions and comments which was super helpful. I was surprised and how many people had tried inventive, creative ways to make pomanders.

I took the ideas to the studio with me and posed the challenge to Carling and Irene. Our idea was basic-find something round that we could poke flowers into or glue flowers to.

 

This hodge podge group of materials represents some of the items we tried: an apple, a tulip bulb, a ball of boxwood rigged together and a wired ball of moss.

After a couple attempts, we settled on a little ball of crumpled up soft, aluminum wire stuffed with moss. we then used oasis floral glue to glue the ranunculus on to the moss.

The end result looked great!

For improvements, I think we would try to just use a ball of moss or something that could be totally composted.  Overall though, I think we were excited about the results.

If anyone else has made pomanders without using floral foam, I’d love to hear about your experience and any suggestions you have for floral foam free projects.

2013: The Year Local Color Flowers Gives Up Floral Foam

You know when you set a goal for yourself (run a marathon, loose 20 lbs.) but you don’t want to tell people, because you’re afraid you’ll fail? That’s a little bit how I felt about giving up floral foam. After reading Debra Prinzing’s book the 50 Mile Bouquet, I was inspired to make the change. I loved reading about west coast designers that rejected floral foam because of poor environmental and health impacts. But I felt nervous…committed for sure…but nervous.

It’s not like we even use floral foam a lot. We don’t. But we have used it. We used it for floral wreaths, pomanders, centerpieces in shallow vessels and more.  Floral foam is great at what it does, keep stems in place and hydrated.

When I’ve mentioned to people in the past few months that we’re going to give up floral foam, they inevitably ask WHY? (and give me a kind of crazy look) There are two main reasons we’re doing this:

• Floral foam contains formaldehyde and other carcinogens
• Floral foam is not biodegradable, recyclable or compostable
• Floral foam is expensive and not reusable.

As a company, we want to use LESS harmful materials, generate LESS waste and spend LESS money on “stuff”.

I knew there were alternatives to foam, especially for centerpieces, but I didn’t really understand all of them and still don’t, but I’m ready to learn.

Our first lesson came from Carol Caggiano when she came to do a training for us back in February. Carol showed us how to use curly willow and soft aluminum wire as a base to hold our stems in place.

Just crumple it up…and voilà!  the wire is reusable and the curly willow is compostable.

Since then, we’ve used it a few times in situations where we would have used foam.  It worked great, including in this large arrangement with a very wide opening and a very shallow base.

It also worked great with this tiny crystal, footed bowl.

Over the next year, we’ll do a series of blog posts any time we’re faced with a design challenge where we would normally use foam. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and our creative solutions to eliminate floral foam. Write or comment and tell us about your green practices!