Coral pinks, rosy oranges, a touch of faded terracotta and some dark burgundy foliage.

The overall scheme of the flowers I played with this week is hard to name. I’ve come up with the following:

Terracotta Pink

Coral Pink

Peachy Apricot

Pinkish Orange

Faded Terracotta

I’m up for suggestions on how to describe these yummy colors!

Dan Pearson of Dan’s Dahlias grew the two types of dahlias – one leans more toward the pink end of the spectrum; the other is more like that faded terracotta color I mentioned.

The antique pink-hued Celosia were grown by Diane Szukovathy and Dennis Westphall of Jello Mold Farm.

As I was leaving the Seattle Growers Wholesale Market the other day, Janet Foss of J. Foss Garden Flowers handed me the bunch of alstroemeria as a gift. These little beauties have flecks of dark maroon on a pale orange-pink throat. I love the way they tie together the more solid colored flowers.

There is a peaches-and-cream (with rapsberries added) mood to this trio of vases.

I came home wondering what to do with these evocatove botanical elements. I pulled down three ivory vases – one is vintage Haegar; two are vintage Hull (from my recent trip to Iowa). It felt right to use these vessels, each of which has an eggshell-like color and texture.

I walked around my garden and snipped dark maroon foliage from the Ninebark shrub, which as you can see really helped to define the spaces between the flowers. I also snipped Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ in pinkish bud and a few sprays of an inherited chrysanthemum, the flower heads toned dark terra cotta.

A few more shots, showing the designs for my medium and small vintage pedestal bowls:

This little saucer didn’t have a lot of room for stems. So I used a hydrangea flower as a fresh “frog” to organize the other short stems.

A fabulous, creamy white vintage compote-style bowl, used with a cage-shaped flower frog for this color-intensive bouquet.

Everything seems to come together as a lovely gathering of a beautiful hue. The color of the moment!

Made – and Grown – in America

Two vintage vases with lovely matte glazes contain simple bouquets of ruby-red dahlias and calla lilies. The silvery Dusty Miller foliage ties it all together. 

This detail photo shows how the calla lilies and dahlias are in perfect harmony with the little strips of the love-in-a-mist.

Eco-technique

Green couture: More than ever, floral designers and their customers are adopting green practices, and the vase itself is one important way to be more sustainably-minded. For example, instead of using inexpensive, made-in-China glass floral vases, I opt for something unusual (and usually just as affordable).

 

Great vases can come from flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores and hand-me-downs from relatives. For less than $15 at a time, I purchase a case of one dozen made-in-the-USA Ball canning jars – ideal vases for last-minute gift giving. In fact, I’ve trained my neighbors to return their jars so I can reuse them for future bouquets.

 

 

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Diane Szukovathy and Dennis Westphall, photographed by Mary Grace Long (c) September 2012 at Jello Mold Farm in Mt. Vernon, Washington.

In this week’s podcast you’ll meet flower farmer Diane Szukovathy, the “cover girl” (along with floral designer Stacie Sutliff) of The 50 Mile Bouquet.

More than anyone I have met in the past five years, I credit Diane and Dennis Westphall, her husband and co-owner of Jello Mold Farm, with inspiring me and enhancing my understanding of what it means to be an American flower farmer. 

I’ve interviewed and written about Diane and Dennis many times, but in today’s episode, I wanted to zero in on some of the exciting news taking place at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. This is an innovative, farmer-owned cooperative that Dennis, Diane and several other pioneering flower farmers launched two years ago. Their tagline is: Farmer to Florist.

Listen to my conversation with Diane as we discuss the new supermarket/mass merchandising program called “By the Bunch.”

The flower-growers’ co-op provides great messaging and branding to educate customers at point of purchase.

Remember this cool logo: By the Bunch. It means these gorgeous bouquets are possible because their ingredients were grown by a bunch of awesome NW flower farmers

This is a cooperative-driven model that was designed to connect local flower farms with volume market opportunties like grocery store floral departments. Diane explains how this new program came to be and why it has so much potential to increase the income stream for people growing cut flowers.

Click here for more background on Diane and Dennis of Jello Mold Farm.

Click here for news about the 2011 launch of the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market.

Click here for an October 2012 report about the grant funding that was used to launch the new mass market program.

Click here for the post I wrote this past spring when the By the Bunch bouquet program launched.