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This week’s episode is dedicated to my friend Lisa Waud and to the flower farmers and florists who created The Flower House. Here’s a recap, by the numbers:

1 Elderly home, circa early 1900s

15 rooms, closets, hallways and porches

30-plus floral designers

3 days

2,000-plus visitors

25,000 to 40,000 individual stems of flowers and foliage; the count keeps climbing and changing!

hundred of potted plants

dozens of American flower farms and farmers

180 Field to Vase Dinner Guests

And now that the Flower House event is over? There will be one glorious Detroit flower farm called Flower House Farm.

Last week I had the honor and privilege of returning to The Flower House, a project I visited the first weekend in May when creator Lisa Waud and her fellow designers decorated two rooms of an adjacent building, now called “the little house,” for a press preview to introduce the ultimate exhibition to come in October.

That event took place last weekend, a three-day, flower-themed wonderland that has garnered international attention, including a huge story last Thursday in the New York Times.

This podcast has the distinction of being the first media outlet to share the story of The Flower House when we aired the original interview with Lisa Waud this past February.

I now feel like the fairy godmother who granted a tiny wish to help Lisa get the word out — and look what a fantastic and beautiful dream it blossomed into!

Officially, I was at The Flower House in Hamtramck, Michigan, a hamlet just outside downtown Detroit, to co-host the final of 10 Field to Vase Dinners for 2015.

What a perfect way to go out with a huge bang — a floral fireworks show that sold out days in advance (for tour tickets and dinner tickets), making this the most successful Field to Vase Dinner of all.

I arrived at The Flower House late last Wednesday, having grabbed a lift from the airport with my Seattle flower gal-pal Bev Burrows. Bev is a Detroit native who works in the floral, events and visual display world here in Seattle and she simply could not stay away from the lure of The Flower House in her hometown.

We jumped out of her brother’s car and started hyperventilating as we saw florist friends new and old (a few of our friends from the PNW had flown in just to volunteer for a few days, Slow Flowers members Adria Sparkhawk of Thicket in Portland and Erica Knowles of Botany 101 in Seattle). Then I found Lisa and greeted her with hugs, smiles and a few tears of happiness.

There was much going on with the opening less than 36 hours away. Lisa was busily installing her 2-story display on the home’s upstairs and downstairs porches (see that portion above).

And 14 other spaces were in various stages of installation, too. Buckets of American grown flowers were stacked everywhere and the orderly chaos promised something huge was about to be unveiled.

Over the next several weeks I’ll be sharing clips from interviews with as many of the Flower House designers as have been able to record.

Today you will hear from designers of four of the rooms; I grabbed these conversations as the designers introduced me to the specific space they embellished with flowers, and as they described the inspiration, vision and design process.

There is one unifying thread that weaves together these stories. Each designer cares deeply about sourcing American grown botanical ingredients from local flower farms and from farms in other parts of the U.S.

They want to showcase the bounty and beauty of the season and help tell the floral industry and the floral consumer that it’s important to make a conscious choice when buying flowers.

First up, you will meet SALLY VANDER WYST of the MILWAUKEE FLOWER CO., a Slowflowers.com member who created a Wisconsin-filled kitchen called “Nature Takes Back.”

Then you’ll hear from SUSAN STUDER KING of BUCKEYE BLOOMS, Slowflowers.com member and a past guest of this podcast, and her collaborator, fellow Ohioan CAROLINE WALKER of PASSIFLORA STUDIO as they introduce us to the child’s bedroom entitled “Foraged Foliage.”

The third space I visited was entitled “Sweet Mossy Dreams,” a closet and tiny hallway decorated in a most fantastical way by Slowflowers.com member SUSAN KELLY of THREE SISTERS FLOWERS, based in East Palo Alto, California.

And finally, you’ll meet past podcast guests and Slowflowers.com members JENNIFER HAF and LARISSA FLYNN of BLOOM FLORAL DESIGN, based in Petosky, Michigan, as they describe the vivid and electrifying upstairs bedroom, “Wild, Floral Graffiti.”

I’ll introduce these Flower House designers individually at the beginning of each clip, so follow along and enjoy this first installment and virtual tour of the rooms within The Flower House.

I think it’s so exciting that you’ll be hearing from designers who hail from Wisconsin, Ohio, California and Michigan – they’re just a few of the many talents whose voices will appear here in the coming weeks.

I especially love the contagious passion and urge to create that exudes from this project. Whimsy, joy, wonderment, sentiment, poignancy, surprise — all combine in this dream of a project.

My hat is off to all of the designers and especially to Lisa Waud. Once the dust settles and Lisa has transitioned from her role as Flower House creator to urban flower farmer for her successful design business Pot and Box, we’ll invite her back for a recap of the project.

In the meantime, I leave you with this impression that Jen and Larissa shared. It has stuck with me as a perfect description of their room and many of the other rooms within the four walls of The Flower House: In designing their room, the women said they experienced a WILD CRAZY FREEDOM.

And I wish that sentiment for you to experience as well. It can happen when you connect with nature and with flowers that have been grown by the hardworking hands of American flower farmers.

Episodes of the Slow Flowers Podcast have been downloaded 68,000 times. I thank you and others in the progressive American-grown floral community for supporting this endeavor.

Until next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. And If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review. THANK YOU to each and every one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

The content and opinions expressed here are either mine alone or those of my guests alone, independent of any podcast sponsor or other person, company or organization.

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Andrew Wheatley and Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.

The flowers spoke to me. Especially that gorgeous dusky pink chrysanthemum, right?

I stopped by the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market last Wednesday to drop off some books and while there, Vivian Larson’s beautiful fall mums said, “Pick us!”

We’ve been swimming in dahlia season here in the Pacific Northwest, and no one lives dahlias more than I do. But the “next new thing” is always around the corner. And those of us who love everything that Vivian grows at Everyday Flowers in Stanwood, Washington, have been waiting. Patiently. For. The. Mums.

Mums are having a renaissance. I asked Viv if they are any harder to grow than dahlias? No, she said. So why aren’t more people planting them? I’m not sure, but I did tell Viv she needs to up her game next year. I want to have a “Specialty Mum Festival” at the SWGMC next fall, following the late summer Dahlia Festival we’ve hosted for the past 2 years.

Then I picked some other goodies to blend and balance with the unusual pink. What pulled it all together for me were the Queen Red Lime zinnias, which Diane Szukovathy and Dennis Westphall grow at Jello Mold Farm, not far from Viv’s place. That flower has a perfect combination of pink, reddish-maroon and lime green petals. So easy to pull together a palette of flowers and foliage when you can use something like Queen Red Lime.

For my greens, I added a variegated/scented pelargonium leaf, grown by Pam and Kelly Uhlig of Sonshine Farm on Whidbey Island, Washington. They are new growers whose talents are notable! And I grabbed some lime green amaranth, thanks, Jello Mold.

For my deep reddish-maroon elements, I grabbed a ball-shaped dahlia, grown by Dawn Severin of All My Thyme, in Mt. Vernon, Washington.

Dawn is a girly-girl grower. Everything I see from All My Thyme is feminine and romantic.

Reddish pops continued to catch my eye, including the charming little gomphrenas, grown by Sarah and Steve Pabody of Triple Wren Farm in Lynden, Washington.

Okay. Brought everything home. It was Wednesday afternoon.

I was scheduled to fly to Burbank on Thursday morning to give a talk at the Los Angeles Arboretum for the “Compulsive Gardeners” group, and I clearly did not save time to arrange and photograph my flowers for the (sadly, ignored) Slow Flowers Challenge.

What to do? Well, bring the flowers with me, of course.

Here’s what I did:

I shortened the stems so that everything fit into one black floral bucket and added about 3-inches of water. The bucket rests perfectly inside a vinyl grocery shopping bag. Of course, I dumped the H20 out of the bucket in order to get through security and then re-filled it minutes later. And that’s how these flowers accompanied me when I flew to Burbank on Thursday morning. I couldn’t have been  lucky since Alaska Airlines bumped me up to First Class and the crew made space for my bag of flowers in the First Class closet. They had a little bit of water and fared quite well on the trip.

I arrived at the home of my host and friend Cheryl Bode on Thursday afternoon. While we were chatting in her living room, I spotted this art-glass vase on the bookcase. “Can I use that piece of glass to make you a bouquet?” I asked.

Cheryl indulged me and I set up a flower-arranging bar outside on her potting bench. Her garden is truly world class, a plant geek’s oasis.

I’ve written about Cheryl and her wife Robin Colman’s garden for the Los Angeles Times and for Horticulture magazine, so you can only imagine.

“Is it okay to clip a few of your Los Angeles plants to add to these Seattle goodies?” Again, she said, “Yes.”

So here’s what I created. The bowl is perfect in scale and shape for a low centerpiece. I didn’t want to scratch the inside of the blown glass piece so I opted not to use chicken wire. Instead, I started the arrangement by crisscrossing the scented geranium and amaranth foliage, creating a matrix to sustain the other blooms. It worked out pretty well, I think.

When I left Cheryl last Friday, this arrangement remained on her dining table. I’m so pleased that I could bring these blooms with me to her home – and use one of her own pieces to design my Slow Flowers Challenge bouquet for the week.

Here’s hoping you’re still enjoying the last flowers of summer and that Jack Frost doesn’t show up until November 1st at least!

 

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Please meet Riz Reyes, horticultural wunderkind, floral designer extraordinaire and all-around positive influence in the gardening and botanical community here in Seattle and beyond – across North America and internationally thanks to his active presence on social media.

Riz credits an early curiosity about fruits and flowers for turning a young boy from the Philippines into an award-winning garden and floral designer in the Pacific Northwest.

His true interest in gardening began as a seven-year-old watching public television to learn English and gaining an appreciation for the natural world where the art and science of growing plants captivated him.

Riz turned a childhood hobby into a career by earning a BS in environmental horticulture and urban forestry from the University of Washington. Riz gardens in an environment that unveils an overwhelming diversity of plants each season, thanks to the Pacific Northwest typically moderate climate and cultural conditions.

After graduation, Riz logged several years working for the University of Washington Botanic Garden’s Center for Urban Horticulture, as well as running RHR Horticulture, his own horticultural enterprise, where he designs, consults, and maintains gardens he helped create.

Just a few months ago, Riz joined the McMenamin’s Hospitality group as the Gardens Manager at the about-to-open McMenamin’s Anderson School, a hotel, brewery and pub in Bothell, north of Seattle, where I predict the gardens will wow guests and those plants to which Riz tends will very soon make their way into vases of his own creation.

Riz supports and collaborates with local cut flower growers and designers to create unique floral installations for venues and special events. He is a regular speaker and writer for various local and national organizations and publications.

In 2013, Riz was highlighted in Ken Druse’s Organic Gardening article “The New Generation,”  which captured the stories of six notable young horticulturists. Ken described Riz as:  a rising star in the firmament of plant explorers and innovative nurserymen.”

If that wasn’t enough, Michael Tortorello last year interviewed Riz for a New York Times’ story about plant selection, not bad, huh?

Riz earned a Gold Medal and the popular People’s Choice award at the 2013 Northwest Flower & Garden Show with his amazing display garden and the following year, with his collaborator Nicole Cordier Wahlquist, he won People’s Choice Award for a floral display.

Just a few weeks ago, Riz presented at the national Garden Writers’ Association symposium in Pasadena on the topic, “Floral as a Gateway to Horticulture.”

I sat in the front row of that presentation, a huge grin on my face, following along on Riz’s personal journey that has brought him — full circle — back to flowers.

As I say during our interview, I’ve wanted to record an episode of the Slow Flowers Podcast with Riz forever. Listening to his presentation at Garden Writers was the incentive to schedule time together to do just that after we both returned to Seattle from Pasadena.

More places to connect with Riz:

Riz’s web site, RHR Horticulture. You can subscribe to Riz’s newsletter here.

Riz/RHR Horticulture on Facebook

Riz on Twitter

Riz on YouTube

Riz on Instagram

Details on the October 22nd Farm Dinner at University of Washington Farm

Episodes of the Slow Flowers Podcast have been downloaded more than 66,000 times. I thank you and others in the progressive American-grown floral community for supporting this endeavor.

Until next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. And If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review. THANK YOU to each and every one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

The content and opinions expressed here are either mine alone or those of my guests alone, independent of any podcast sponsor or other person, company or organization.

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Andrew Wheatley and Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.

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Fall is here and news from our Slow Flowers Tribe is exploding!

There are so many things to discuss and update you about this week. You’ll find that news at the bottom of this post, after I introduce you to Rain Drop Farms.

The heart of the Slow Flowers Podcast are my weekly conversations with inspiring voices in the American flower farming and floral community. Please meet today’s guests, Erin McMullen and Aaron Gaskey, the dynamic duo behind Rain Drop Farms. Based outside Corvallis, Oregon, in Philomath, this husband-wife team of farmers grows a wide array of perennials and annuals on three acres of healthy soil. Allow me to bring Raindrop Farms  — and the sunshine they spread — to you, with the story of lovely, local, Oregon flowers and how one family makes a beautiful and creative living from their land.

Situated in the foothills of the Oregon coast range, Rain Drop has been providing fresh, local, specialty flowers to the Willamette Valley since 2000.

Passionate about growing flowers, Erin and Aaron count dahlias among their favorites. They grow more than 75 varieties and are always searching out more, as well as a wide variety of perennials and many different annuals.

Theirs is a working family farm. As Erin writes on the web site: “We live here, grow here and play here.  Our children have grown up digging in the dirt and chasing rainbows here.  As stewards of this beautiful place we strive to maintain and promote the diversity here.  We use organic and sustainable practices throughout our farm.  It is our belief that growing this way is just the right thing to do. It is the best for our farm, our family and flowers.”

I adore this couple. We’ve met in person on a few occasions, most recently when they took what I call a busman’s holiday to drive from Philomath up to Mt. Vernon, Oregon, (about 325 miles away) to spend a few days volunteering at the Field to Vase Dinner held on Sept. 12th at Jello Mold Farm. I simply couldn’t let the opportunity pass and am so thrilled that Erin and Aaron agreed to record this conversation.

Last week, Erin shared with me a fascinating conversation she had with a Farmers’ Market customer and I think it sums up what so many of us have experienced:

“We have had so many people ask us this year if we grow all of the flowers.  Of course we say ‘Yes!  Every last one!’ We are always surprised by how many people seem surprised by this!  Yesterday we had a guy come up and ask if we grew all the flowers; the conversation progressed and he tells us that he works with flowers in LA and didn’t realize that there were people like us who actually grew flowers like these domestically.

His business is selling flowers at college graduations and he said that they buy most things from Ecuador and South America, basically saying that domestic flowers were just too pricey.  

Aaron told me later that he could see me high jump onto my soap box, but I let (the customer) know what I thought of that excuse and that supporting American farmers is a more sustainable long term economic strategy.  

He actually took pause and then asked for our contact info and for the name of the Slow Flowers website again, saying that he was intrigued and would like to learn more.  

I’m telling you this story, though I’m sure you hear this kind all the time, because it was so refreshing to me.  Also, because of you and your efforts, I have become more well informed and confident about my convictions that American flower farmers deserve a chance to thrive in a domestic marketplace.  So, thank you!  So glad that we met and that we’ve had an opportunity to get to know each other a little better!  :)”

Thank YOU both Erin and Aaron! I couldn’t agree more.

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More news to share!!!

Here is a just-released clip about The Flower House, created by Hello Future Films, that shows recent footage captured during the installation of the preview exhibit earlier this year – it’s being shown to stimulate ticket sales for The Flower House show dates, October 16-18. If you’re anywhere near Detroit, hop on over to see this amazing display!

And then, with much fanfare, I’m so pleased to share with you “Field to Vase: Santa Cruz,” a 7-minute, 39 second documentary produced, filmed and edited by my friends Haejung Kim and her husband Moon, a LA-based couple of creatives whose probono efforts have beautifully captured the story of American grown flowers and the renaissance we are all helping make happen. Click here to read my recent Q&A with Haejung and Moon.

I have a cameo role in the film, but please don’t take this as blatant self-promotion. It’s all about the cause of promoting American flower farms, American flowers and the florists who create such beauty with intent. You’ll also meet flower farmer Paul Furman whose family owns California Pajarosa Roses and Slow Flowers member Teresa Sabankya, of Bonny Doon Garden Co., who was the guest designer at the Field to Vase Dinner held at Pajarosa Roses this past June. The film is beautiful, poignant and I encourage you to watch it and share it widely.

Martha Stewart American Made Taps Two Slowflowers.com Members

I want to showcase the many people in our community whose work has earned them FINALIST status on the Martha Stewart American Made 2015 campaign.

I am especially excited that Susan McLeary of Passionflower, a Slowflowers.com member based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a finalist – the only floral category finalist – in the Design Category. Check her out here. 

And flower farmer Wanda Fox of Illinois-based Fox & Co. is a finalist in the Craft Category for her beautiful charcuterie boards made from salvaged and reclaimed black walnut lumber. Check her out here.

I also want to put in a plug for my friend Andy Chapman of Stumpdust. Andy is a finalist in the Design Category for Gardening & Outdoor Living, for his unique garden stakes and tools fashioned from salvaged wood. Andy’s work is exquisite and he is the genius behind my American Made shadowbox that I used to display my 2015 Northwest Flower & Garden Show floral entry. You can see photos of that beautiful work here. And please check out Andy & Stumpdust on MSL here.

Get Your Hands on Floral Soil!

Another Slow Flowers Podcast friend who is near and dear to my heart is Mickey Blake of Floral Soil, the innovative, plant-based, 100% biodegradable alternative to formaldehyde-based flower foam.

Mickey has just introduced a fun new product called “Floral Soil Cupcakes,” a perfect gift or DIY project that is one of the perks in her two-week Indiegogo fundraising campaign that continues through October 10th. Many of us have been waiting for Floral Soil to kick into full-scale production because we can’t wait to get our hands on this earth-friendly design product. By supporting the Floral Soil Indiegogo campaign, for as little as $15 you can get your hands on a cute cupcake-shaped base for planting succulents or arranging flowers – and you can help push Floral Soil to the next level where commercial production of those must-have bricks will begin before the holidays.

Episodes of the Slow Flowers Podcast have been downloaded more than 66,000 times. I thank you and others in the progressive American-grown floral community for supporting this endeavor.

Until next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. And If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review. THANK YOU to each and every one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

The content and opinions expressed here are either mine alone or those of my guests alone, independent of any podcast sponsor or other person, company or organization.

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Andrew Wheatley and Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.

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I jumped on the phone a few days ago with Lisa Waud of pot & box, the botanical genius and visionary of The Flower House, the floral art installation that will open to the public in mid-October.

Listeners of this podcast heard my original interview with Lisa this past February when the plans and ideas for The Flower House were in their beginning stages. Since then, The Flower House news has been shared widely, but we can proudly say we heard Lisa’s personal story here first on the Slow Flowers Podcast.

Lisa reminded me of the amazing piece created by Hello Future Films, depicting her vision for The Flower House. I want to share it here for you to watch again. I find it so moving, and it makes me so proud to know and support Lisa and this phenomenal project.

Since doors to The Flower House open in exactly one month, on October 16th, Lisa agreed to chat with me for a few minutes to share her updates as preparations are revving up for this phenomenal, must-attend floral event.

We thought this would be a quick 10-minute interview, but the conversation was so engaging and Lisa and I were having so much fun discussing The Flower House that we spoke for a half hour.

Consequently, we’ve adjusted our program lineup and today’s episode is completely devoted to The Flower House and the very special Field to Vase Dinner that takes place on October 16th.

Lisa painted a beautiful picture of what’s to come . . . and here are a few beautiful bonus photographs taken by her cohort Heather Saunders, the official photographer of The Flower House. Your imagination will be stimulated, I promise!

Here is the link to purchase your ticket to tour The Flower House, Oct. 16-18.

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VOLUNTEER at The Flower House

Now is the time to put an X on the calendar and check out flights to travel from your home town to Detroit!

Add a visit to The Flower House and reserve a seat at the table for The Field to Vase Dinner on October 16th. Ticket details are here – and remember that listeners can claim a $35 discount by using the SLOWFLOWERS promotion code upon checkout!

Make the pilgrimage – it’s one of those experiences you won’t want to forget. Florists and flower volunteers, your talents are needed, too! As Lisa noted, there are many opportunities to get involved in this floral event of the year. I’ll be there and I hope you are, too!

Episodes of the Slow Flowers Podcast have been downloaded more than 64,000 times. I thank you and others in the progressive American-grown floral community for supporting this endeavor.

Until next week, you’re invited to join me in putting more American grown flowers on the table, one vase at a time. And If you like what you hear, please consider logging onto Itunes and posting a listener review. THANK YOU to each and every one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

The content and opinions expressed here are either mine alone or those of my guests alone, independent of any podcast sponsor or other person, company or organization.

The Slow Flowers Podcast is engineered and edited by Andrew Wheatley and Hannah Holtgeerts. Learn more about their work at shellandtree.com.

This was a red-letter week! For so many wonderful reasons, which all involve flowers, farming and gardening. Rather than write too much, I’m going to let the photos do the talking:

WHITE HOUSE KITCHEN GARDEN

On Tuesday, four of us achieved one of those “bucket list” goals!

Yes, we received permission to photograph the White House Kitchen Garden and its champion, Deb Eschmeyer, head of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” program.

I am so grateful for the people who helped make this happen, including my friends at Certified American Grown and the First Lady’s communications and Let’s Move staff.

With James Baggett, editor of Country Gardens; Nick Crow, the magazine’s art director and photographer Bob Stefko, like me, a frequent freelance contributor to the title, I spent an amazing two hours at this very important kitchen garden. Look for my story in 2016 in the pages of Country Gardens!

FARMER-FLORIST PHOTO SHOOT WITH ANDREA GAGNON

On Wednesday, Nick Crow and Bob Stefko joined me at LynnVale Farm + Studios, a Certified American Grown flower farm where we photographed a story with farmer-florist Andrea Gagnon.

It was such a fantastic opportunity to capture Andrea’s farming and design talents. I can’t show you the beautiful bouquets she created because we’re saving them for the print story in Country Gardens, but I can share some lovely flower and farm pics with you. This will be an inspiring and instructional story – you’ll see it in a future issue of the magazine!

READ MORE…

Everybody loves the ‘Cafe au Lait’ dahlia for its showy yet ephemeral beauty, right? This week, I met Miss Cafe’s richer-toned cousin, ‘Sierra Glow’.

My new love has petals that have hints of copper, coral, melon and amber, all rolled into one yummy hue. Dan Pearson of Dan’s Dahlias describes it this way on his website: “Large orange-bronze blooms on strong stems. Very impressive in the garden.”

I picked up a plump bunch of ‘Sierra Glow’ dinner-plate dahlias grown by Jello Mold Farm this week and from there, all the pieces fell into place with the moody late-summer/not-quite-fall palette.

With our recent move and purging of “stuff,” I’ve discovered that many of my wonderful vases and containers are boxed up in the storage unit. But this cool brass planter, from Goodwill, serves the purpose perfectly.

Here’s the recipe:

Supplies: 1 brass planter, measuring and 1 vintage cage-style flower frog

Botanicals:

Smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple”), grown by Jello Mold Farm

Milkweed (Asclepias sp.), grown by All My Thyme

Velvety coxcomb celosia in pale apricot, grown by Peterkort

Calendula in the most perfect milky-gold hue, grown by Ojeda Farms

Upright bunches of golden amaranth, grown by Jello Mold Farm

‘Sierra Glow’ dinnerplate dahlias, grown by Jello Mold Farm

The yellow flowers spoke to me when I was perusing among hundreds of exquisite botanical choices this week! 

When I visited the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market, I started with the amazing crabapple branches, harvested from Jello Mold Farm and sold by the single stem. You certainly don’t need many, but adding two stems laden with immature crabapples to an arrangement is a sure-fire way to up the interest level.

True confessions: I’m overwhelmed these days. The epic move last month from a huge house to a small condo (what to do with all that stuff?), combined with an intense travel schedule and a few overly voracious consulting projects . . . and I am scrambling to catch up. I can’t quite see the end of this tunnel until 2016.

The good news, however, is that flowers keep blooming and defining each season whether I clip and arrange them – or not!

Please accept this entry in the Slow Flowers Challenge, Week 31. We’ll just have to write off Week 30 as a lost cause (maybe I’ll double-up sometime soon to redeem myself)!

This past weekend I participated along with four other talented plantswomen and designers in an event called Dunnton Abbey Garden Party.

The play on words with the popular PBS series “Downton Abbey” was intentional, as the folks at one of Seattle’s most lovely private estate gardens, The E. B. Dunn Historic Garden Trust, held a lawn party inspired by the gentile fetes we’ve watched on Downton Abbey over the years.

It was all quite fitting, as Dunn Gardens date back to 1915, a contemporary period from Downtown Abbey’s first episodes.

Croquet, musicians, a vintage car show, people in period garb, a cake walk and many more activities were on hand. It was lovely and I especially enjoyed seeing everyone unplugged from modernity (although many did have their cell phones out to snap photographs, I’ll give you that).

Grace Hensley of eTilth, a Slow Flowers friend here in Seattle, coordinated the floral design demonstrations. She invited Lacey Leinbaugh of Blue Lace Design; Melissa Feveyear of Terra Bella Flowers; Jennifer Carlson of Haven Illustrated and me to present “Edwardian Floral Design.”

We each were given a generous budget to shop for locally-grown flowers at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. A few weeks prior, we did a walk-through of the grounds at Dunn Gardens with co-curator Charles Price, pointing out stems, leaves and flowers that caught out eyes.

Charles judiciously cut those elements for us, too, so when I arrived with my own “bucket” of items from the Growers Market, there were dozens of other buckets overflowing with the truly local, of-the-moment, garden harvest. That added hydrangeas, phlox, ninebark, sambucus, rodgersia, ferns, hostas, fuchsias, monarda, meadow rue (Thalictrum sp.), crocosmia and more to the mix!

What is Edwardian floral design, anyway?

I honestly didn’t have time to do research in advance, but by the time I started my bouquet, I had a few thoughts to share.

I told the audience that the Edwardians were the original “Slow Flowers” florists because they only used local and in-season flowers, probably clipped from their own gardens.

Whether you were a member of the “upstairs” class relying on gardeners and hothouse blooms or a member of the “downstairs” class cutting from the edge of a meadow or woodland, the flowers reflected what nature had to offer.

The other idea I shared had to do with palette, and this was inspired by my textiles background. At the time, chemical textile dyes were not yet as popular or widespread as natural, plant-based dyes. And to me, that notion reflects a softer, muted, less vivid color scheme in textiles for apparel and interiors.

The tea-stained, sepia-toned palette of my imagined Edwardian bouquet was reflected in the flowers and foliage. I began with a blush-and-faded mix of ‘Limelight’ hydrangeas taking on a slightly pink tinge; not-quite-pink lisianthus blooms; pale terracotta draping amaranthus, and strawberry-colored gomphrena.

The darker accents lent a moodiness to the arrangement: Deep maroon dahlias; dark purple sedum heads; purple sambucus foliage; and berry-black Rex Begonia foliage, variety ‘Shadow King Rothko’.

Whether it’s truly Edwardian or not, the bouquet felt like a period piece in the black-and-silver Goodwill vase!

Here is a list of the ingredients, with my thanks to each farmer who grew them:

From Diane & Dennis at Jello Mold Farm, Mt. Vernon, Washington:

• ‘Limelight’ hydrangea blooms
• Amaranthus
• Dark purple sedum

From Vivian at Everyday Flowers, Stanwood, Washington:

• Gomphrena
• Lisianthus
• Maroon dahlias

From the Dunn Garden Borders: Sambucus foliage

From Seattle Wholesale Growers Market: Rex Begonia, variety ‘Shadow King Rothko’

Enjoy these photos from my fellow designers, each of whom did a magnificent job!