A STROLL IN THE GARDEN

This bouquet will forever transport me to my former garden in Ventura County, California, which we left in July, 2010. I created this bouquet from all garden ingredients the month before moving away.

I placed my beautiful bowl of zinnias on the kitchen counter, in front of a botanically-inspired tile triptych by artist Paula Gill of Red Step Studio

This bouquet, which is featured on page 77 of Slow Flowers (Autumn|Week 3), features a framed trio of hand-carved and colored tiles that I purchased from one of my very favorite Northwest artists, Paula Gill. Paula owns Red Step Studios, and anyone who has attended the Northwest Flower & Garden Show or San Francisco Flower & Garden Show over the years has inevitably fallen in love with her beautiful tiles. I have a collection of them and I’ve given them as gifts to many friends. Check out her work here: Red Step Studio.

After the book was published, I sent Paula a copy so she could see how her artwork looked with one of my arrangements. Out of the blue, a big envelope arrived in my mailbox recently – and much to my surprise, I found inside a set of hand-printed notecards from Paual. She wrote:

“Hi Debra, Your book was so delightful that I savored it over several days after you sent it. And then you inspired me! Your arrangements ignited a creative spark. These images were made with ‘stamps’ I cut from blocks. Thank you – and I hope you’ll enjoy. All the best, Paula”

Thank YOU, Paula~! You have, as always, a whimsical touch to your artwork. I love how you reinterpreted these vases and flowers of mine with new eyes, using distinct graphic shapes and a playful style. How can something two-dimensional look so three-dimensional! It must be the way you cut the little blocks and layered them as you made the prints. Oh, and your use of color is sublime!

I’ve got to share them here. These little works of art will put a smile on your face:

The back of each card has a little hand-lettered reference to “Slow Flowers”

So happy that Paula chose “Tulips & Twigs,” the first bouquet of Spring – and the cover art for Slow Flowers.

“Zen in Bloom” from Week 2, Spring, features daffodils in a charming block print.

Coral-red Icelandic poppies in my celadon-green pitcher, from Slow Flowers, Week 11, Spring.

American Roses with purple smoke bush, Week 4, Summer. Love the way Paula rendered my McCoy flowerpot.

Late season dahlias and hydrangeas from Week 5, Autumn.

Dahlias grown by my friend Dan Pearson in “Market Fresh,” from Week 7, Autumn.

Happiness is going on here at my house today, thanks to this generous and unexpected gift from a friend. Clearly, I am having selfish thoughts about NOT sending these cards to anyone, but perhaps I will frame them for my office wall. Isn’t that a great idea?

After I found this sign in a garden shop, I took the liberty to cross out the words “DO NOT” so the message better fits my philosophy of floral design!

I’ve been eating, sleeping, breathing, writing and speaking about SLOW FLOWERS for so long that it’s good to sometimes be reminded that not everyone understands what that phrase means. Recently, one of my flower farmer friends emailed to ask: Tell me again what Slow Flowers mean. I know it’s USA flowers but SLOW?

Fair enough. With all due respect to my fellow garden writer Felder Rushing, who coined the phrase “Slow Gardening,” let me outline my personal definition of SLOW FLOWERS. This is excerpted from my introduction to the book, Slow Flowers: Four Seasons of Locally Grown Bouquets from the Garden, Meadow and Farm (St. Lynn’s Press, 2013).

Thanks to the culinary pioneers who popularized the Slow Food movement, it now seems like you can put “slow” in front of any term to convey a different philosophy or approach to that subject. When I say the  phrase “slow flowers,” there are those who immediately understand it to mean: I have made a conscious choice. 

My blooms, buds, leaves and vines are definitely in season; not, for example, grown and brought in from elsewhere in the world during the wet, cold winter months in my hometown of Seattle. So, come December and January, my commitment to sourcing locally-grown floral materials sends me to the conifer boughs, colored twigs and berry-producing evergreens – and the occasional greenhouse-grown rose, lily or tulip, just to satisfy my hunger for a bloom. 

Slow Flowers (the concept and the book) is also about the artisanal, anti-mass-market approach to celebrations, festivities and floral gifts of love. I value my local sources. If not clipped from my own shrubs or cutting garden, I want to know where the flowers and greenery were grown, and who grew them. Having a relationship with the grower who planted and nurtured each flower is nothing short of magical. I call so many flower farmers around the country my friends. They are the unsung heroes – the faces behind the flowers we love. 

Finally, Slow Flowers reflects life lived in the slower lane. My family, friends and professional colleagues know that it’s almost impossible for me to do anything slowly. I’m the queen of multitasking; I just can’t help myself. There are too many exciting opportunities (or bright, shiny objects) that command my interest. But this “year in flowers” was altogether different. I can only compare it to the practice of praying or meditating. I didn’t realize that those few hours I spent each week, gathering and choosing petals and stems, arranging them in a special vessel, and then figuring out where and how to capture the finished design  through my camera lens, would be so personally enriching.

So I guess you can also say that the idea of “Slow Flowers” is also a resource that I hope many will find useful. Here is the description of this project:

A Certain Vintage

Ruffly ‘Green Spice’ heuchera foliage pulls together the mocha-colored vintage vase and the deep burgundy sweet William flowers

Ingredients:

A Bit of Purple Heaven

A wistful arrangement of blue, purple and plum flowers looks awesome in a chartreuse vase.

Ingredients:

The little “dancing” bottlebrushes are called burnet, or Sanguisorba menziesii.

5 stems dark purple lilacs (Syringa vulgaris), grown by Sunshine Crafts and Flowers

Pitchers of Poppies

Why do we love poppies so much? Perhaps it’s because of their pure, vibrant petal colors with the charming button-like centers.

This arrangement, in a clear glass vase, showcases yellow Icelandic poppies, paired with variegated Astrantia and apple mint foliage.

A Softer Side of Green

An unexpected combination, inspired by the pale ‘Supergreen’ hybrid tea roses given to me by the grower

This sweet detail shows the delicate features of the apricot verbascum and the varietgated Star of Bethlehem

Ingredients:

FIRST PEONIES OF THE SEASON

These luscious red peonies from a local grower reflect the garnet-colored art glass and complement two forms of ornamental allium.

The lady’s mantle foliage is absolutely the BEST for spring bouquets. And if your garden is like mine, it’s super abundant right now!

Ingredients:
10 stems red peonies, grown by Ojeda Farms
7 stems each ‘Purple Sensation’ and ‘Cowanii’ ornamental alliums, grown by Choice Bulb Farms
12 stems lady’s mantle foliage (Alchemilla mollis), harvested from my garden

Vase:
9-inch tall x 5-inch diameter hand-blown glass vase

Design 101
Create a collar: You can use flowers or foliage to ring the base of a bouquet or arrangement as a finishing detail. This technique is usually done as the bouquet’s last step. For this arrangement, I pre-cut the greenery and then added it beneath the peonies, slightly overlapping each stem as I worked around the circumference of the bouquet. Here, the lady’s mantle visually separates the dark red peonies from the wine-red vase.

Lots of news to share, including this very timely interview that Seattle’s NPR station KPLU-FM aired today. Environment reporter Bellamy Pailthorp contacted me to discuss “sustainable flowers for Mother’s Day,” and thanks to her incredible interviewing and editing talents, a 25-minute conversation turned into a 4-1/2 minute segment. You can listen to it here.

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

The interview gave me a chance to talk about the excitement at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market – a just-launched supermarket bouquet program called “By the Bunch.” The beauty of this program is that it produces a sizeable income stream for every farmer-member at the SWGM Cooperative. Together they are so much more than the sum of their parts (or their flower fields, for that matter).

Today, the Thursday before Mother’s Day, was perhaps the most insane work day ever experienced by the Bouquet team, including managers Kristen Parris and Nicole Cordier, along with their new design team members, Carly and Michelle.

But in order to produce a staggering number of bouquets today – something like 700 bunches – flower farmers Diane Szukovathy and Vivian Larson had to show up and volunteer their time as bouquet-makers. I stopped by at around 9:30 a.m. to catch the activity.

SWGMC Front-Desk Manager, talented designer and inspiring leader for the local flower movement, Nicole Cordier.

Oh, bouquet-making sounds so romantic, doesn’t it? But by 7 p.m., when I had to bring by supplies for a special event tomorrow morning, Kristen and Nicole were still there, finishing up the final 100 bunches. Ever-positive, but clearly exhausted, these women believe so much in getting sustainable and locally-grown blooms into the hands of Seattle area consumers that they are willing to go without food and breaks just to achieve the goal. As I told them: If you can get through Mother’s Day, you can do anything. (They probably didn’t need to hear it from me!)

Read more about the By the Bunch program here. The brand development, graphic design and packaging is supported by a USDA Multi-State Specialty Crop Block Grant through the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

My photos from today’s visit will wow you. If you haven’t figured out what to give Mom for her special day on Sunday, May 12th, stop by these outlets for LOCAL, SEASONAL Bouquets – straight from Northwest fields: PCC Natural Markets, Town & Country Markets and Madison Market.

My camera snatched some of today’s delicious springtime beauty to share:

Sweet peas – so yummy in color, fragrance and form~

For the most perfect “fresh” green color of springtime, snowball viburnum. Aaah!

Just-picked floral elements await inclusion in mixed bouquets. Ranunculus and cherry blossoms

At 9:30 a.m. today, Michelle was ready to wheel an entire cart of bunches into the cooler. So exciting to have her on the SWGMC team!

The combination of green and pink petals make this the most sublime tulip I’ve ever seen.

A moment to smile, and who wouldn’t? Creating bouquets for Mother’s Day is a special job – and Diane Szukovathy of Jello Mold Farm (and SWGMC president) was on hand to help designer Carly and the rest of the team this morning.

Buckets of flowers, ready to gather into sweet Mother’s Day bouquets

Two of the founding farmers of SWGMC, Diane Szukovathy and Vivian Larson, spent the morning making bouquets with the team.

Later this morning I stopped by my local PCC Natural Market to see the By the Bunch floral display. Gotta love this messaging~

For every mother out there, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY ~ and may you enjoy your garden, your flowers and your families.