Week 23 // Slow Flowers Challenge

June 13th, 2015

Sea holly (Eryngium sp.) looking dazzling!

This week’s arrangement comes to you courtesy of a special event in which I participated to benefit the King County Library Foundation.

Called an “Author Salon,” the private gathering was one of several offered at the Library Foundation’s recent annual Literary Lions Auction. Library supporters  Elaine & John Hogle  and  Felicia Dixon & Lucas Hoban  hosted the Author Salon last weekend at theBellevue Botanical Garden – one of my very favorite public gardens in the Seattle area. Landscape architect Liz Browning of Swift Company also participated by leading a tour of the newest garden BBG installations area designed by her firm.

The Author Salon team, standing, from left: Felicia, Liz and Elaine; I’m seated in front.

What a beautiful venue! I was asked to talk about Slow Flowers, the book, as well as the slow flowers movement to source domestic and local flowers rather than rely on imports.

Local flowers and the Slow Flowers book go together well!

My publisher, St. Lynn’s Press, generously donated copies of Slow Flowers so that everyone in attendance took home a signed copy. And all the proceeds of the afternoon benefit the King County Library Foundation. Cindy Sharek and Andrea Quigley of the Foundation ensured that we had a lovely reception to hear the message of supporting literacy education!

And about the flowers you see here. I asked – and received special permission – to cut from the famed Perennial Border at the Bellevue Botanical Garden for my demonstration.

While you might think I focused on which blooms to choose first, it was the oak leaf hydrangea that caught my attention before anything else.

My vase had a fairly wide opening of about 7 inches, so I needed larger, structural branches and leaves as my design’s starting point. Plus, I absolutely love the hydrangea’s stage right now. The leaves are large and supple and the flowers are still in bud so they’re the same color green and the foliage.

Susy Hutchison took home the Slow Flowers bouquet.

See my entire plant list below. As I was basically designing on the fly, (I only clipped the blooms 30 minutes before the event!), it occurred to me that I had three primary hues and three secondary hues of blooms — and naturally, that gave me an organizing structure to discuss a bit of color theory.

I had a few longtime friends in the audience who surprised me by attending, people I hadn’t seen for years!

How cool that my friend Susy Hutchison, former news anchor for KIRO-TV (CBS affiliate) won the doorprize to take home my arrangement. Seriously, it was not a fix!

Susy reported to me that the bouquet was “still going strong,” one week after she brought it home. Yes, folks, that’s another great reason for sourcing locally – your arrangement’s vase life will be extended!

The finished “color wheel” bouquet – clipped just steps away from our event.

Three sets of complements: Blue & Orange; Purple & Yellow; Red & Blue (with lots of green thrown in for good measure)

Three sets of complements: Blue & Orange; Purple & Yellow; Red & Blue (with lots of green thrown in for good measure)

Here’s that essential oak leaf foliage

Here is the recipe, with all ingredients from the Perennial Border at Bellevue Botanic Garden:

• Oak leaf hydrangea foliage & flowers (Hydrangea quercifolia)
• Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis)
• Red/Maroon: Astilbe
• Green: Allium ‘Hair’ (a mutation of  A. sphaerocephalon)
• Orange: Geum (Geum chiloense) possibly ‘Totally Tangerine’
• Purple: Catmint (Nepeta sp.)
• Yellow: Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
• Blue: Sea holly (Eryngium amethystinum)
• Bonus stems: I added a few beautiful stems of pale orange and yellow foxglove

The lady’s mantle and oak leaf hydrangea blooms add a touch of lime.

Posted in American Grown, Blog Posts, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Landscape Design, Plants, Slow Flowers Challenge | No Comments »

Learn About British Flowers Week with Helen Evans of London’s New Covent Garden Flower Market (Episode 197)

June 10th, 2015

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British-grown sweet peas, available to London’s florists in May.

This week we have lots of great news to share and I hope you find the episode stimulating as you think of ways to promote your own floral endeavors.

First up, this week I’m unveiling the second infographic in the Slow Flowers series. This piece is called “Get Your Local On,” and it endeavors to capture our philosophy of domestic flower sourcing in a single snapshot. I don’t believe in the black-and-white of things; life is just more chaotic than that, especially when you’re dealing with Mother Nature, climate, environmental forces and living plants.

However, this visual guide explores the continuum from local and regional sourcing to national/domestic sourcing. As I’ve said many times (and I can’t take credit for this but I do like to repeat it), I recommend taking a pebble-in-the-pond approach to floral sourcing. Start close and work your way from there when needed. But please support America’s flower farms!

“Get Your Local On” couldn’t have become such a visually effective piece without the design magic of Willo Bellwood and I want to acknowledge her talents here! If you have a use for this graphic in your own business, please feel free to download the digital file to produce your own copies.

June is here and I wanted to share my personal invitation for you to join the third Field to Vase Dinner, which Slow Flowers is co-hosting at flower farms across the country.

This month’s event will take place on Friday, June 19th at Pajarosa Flower Farm in Watsonville, California. Rose farmer Paul Furman is our host and Teresa Sabankaya of Bonny Doon Garden Co., a past guest of this podcast, is the celebrity floral designer who will use all local flowers to install an insanely beautiful tablescape for the meal.

Tickets for this amazing, floral-centric experience are $175 but I want to offer the listeners of this podcast a special promotional code to save $35 off of the ticket price. Click here to reserve your tickets and use SLOWFLOWERS during checkout for the discount.

And don’t worry if you can’t make it to Monterey Bay in June. There are dinners scheduled on flower farms coming up now through October, so check the full schedule for dates that will celebrate local flowers in Colorado, New York, Washington, D.C./Virginia, Washington State, Oregon, California and Michigan.

Here I am with Helen Evans of London’s New Covent Garden Flower Market.

Okay, now to our guest today. Please meet Helen Evans, director of business development and support at London’s New Covent Garden Market.

When I was in London last month, Helen graciously toured me through New Covent Garden, the premiere center for wholesale cut flowers and plants in London’s Vauxhall district.

New Covent Garden Market is the largest fruit, vegetable and flower market in the UK, claiming on its web site: “We are passionate about food and passionate about flowers and pride ourselves on being the focus for food and flowers in London.”

With over 200 businesses, employing over 2,500 people, the Market supplies 40% of fresh fruit and vegetables eaten outside of the home in London and is used by 75% of London florists.

Helen is one of the key persons behind the very exciting program called British Flowers Week, which will enter its third campaign beginning next Monday, June 15th. Listen along as we discuss the state of domestic flowers in the UK – and you’ll find many parallels to what’s happening in the U.S.

Seasonal Flower Chart of British Flowers — a very useful marketing tool!

On our early-morning visit, while walking through the floors of the enormous warehouse, I learned from Helen that only 10 to 15 percent of flowers sold here are British Grown. Yet the demand and the quantities to supply them are increasing as the wave of homegrown sentiment sweeps through the country, much as we’re seeing with American grown products.

Slow Flowers Members Jimmy Lohr (left) and Jonathan Weber (right) joined me on the tour of New Covent Garden Flower Market.

It was completely fortuitous that two Slowflowers.com members joined us that morning. Jimmy Lohr and Jonathan Weber of GreenSinner in Pittsburgh were on their own Chelsea-London excursion. Helen graciously included them in the visit. When we sat down for tea and I turned on the recorder, it led to a completely impromptu interview. You’ll hear Jimmy and Jonathan’s voices jumping in to comment – and that added to the fun of the conversation.

I love how Helen describes the ambitious vision for New Covent Garden Market, to become a destination where people can buy, make, sell, learn and share. That mission is one I do not see happening with any intentionality at many U.S. Wholesale Markets, although I have to say it is very much in line with the mission of the farmer-owned Seattle Wholesale Growers Market.

Yet, with just a few changes of focus, there would be no reason why any wholesaler in our country couldn’t pull this off! I know we’re in the midst of a huge cultural shift in how flowers are sourced and marketed – and those who read the tea leaves and shift more quickly will be the ones who get to redefine the industry practices that others will emulate.

As you could tell, by the end of my conversation with Helen, I was thoroughly inspired to launch American Flowers Week – so stay tuned for news on that big dream. (and a note to the men from GreenSinner – as my witnesses, you two are in on that dream, too!)

Here’s a bit more about Helen Evans:

Helen has been at New Covent Garden Market for nearly 20 years.  It’s that sort of place.  Her work is to spread the word about the market, its flowers, its customers, its growers.  The market is not just about moving boxes.  Its about sharing information.  What’s new, what’s in season.  How would it work better.  So, brochures, website, social media – above all, talking.  Helen does a lot of that.  The product is great but for Helen its the people that matter.  Bringing them together.  Sharing.

Here’s a bit more about British Flowers week:

British Flowers Week is the brainchild of the team at New Covent Garden Flower Market, the UK’s largest Flower Market and the hub for British grown flowers and foliage for centuries.

Originally designed in 2013 as a social media campaign for the floristry trade, #BritishFlowersWeek was quickly picked up by florists, growers, wholesalers and media the length and breadth of Britain.

Last year, the hashtag #BritishFlowersWeek achieved a staggering Twitter reach of 1.4 million with British flowers content posted online, on social media, in print and on the radio.

This year’s campaign will involve the British Flowers Week Photoshoot online and on social media, The Garden Museum event, displays at RHS Harlow Carr as well as flower farm tours, flower workshops, flower demos, school flower crown days across the country. For more information visit www.britishflowersweek.com

Starting next week, one new image will be revealed to the media each day, which I’ll  share on the SlowFlowers FB Page as well as here on my web site. You can follow along by searching for the #britishflowersweek hashtag, too.

And please join me next week on June 17th for the second podcast episode devoted to British Flowers, in which you’ll meet Sarah Statham of Simply by Arrangement, a floral designer and floral educator who is active in the #britishflowersweek activities taking place next week in the UK’s Yorkshire region.

She’ll have even more photographs and stories to share about the distinctly local and regional efforts of the flower farmers and florists in Yorkshire – as a way to take the conversation out into the United Kingdom to differentiate from what has been otherwise a mostly London-centric campaign.

Thanks again for joining me today for another wonderful conversation. Yes, I am devoted to celebrating American flowers and the designers and farmers who are changing this entire industry for the better. But I’m also thrilled to introduce you to ways we can borrow ideas and inspiration from places like the U.K., where many parallels occur between our two marketplaces.

Listeners like you have downloaded this podcast more than 52,000 times. THANK YOU to each and every one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

Until next week please 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.

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.

Posted in Blog Posts, Creativity, floral design, Flower Farming, General, Podcast Episodes, SLOW FLOWERS Podcast | 3 Comments »

Week 22 // Slow Flowers Challenge

June 6th, 2015

A cool-toned combo for early June, including Acanthus mollis, baptisia, cerinthe and sweet peas – all offset with fragrant mint foliage.

Here’s how the entire bouquet turned out. I used a large trophy-like urn to accommodate the scale of the bear’s breech.

This week I couldn’t take my eyes off the gorgeous flower stalks of two bear’s breech plants ( Acanthus mollis) growing between our back porch and the pond in a shady area.

This perennial typically belongs at the back of the border where the large glossy foliage can offset smaller and more delicate companions. Deeply lobed, the acanthus leaf is a classical form in art and architecture. I’ve actually used the leaves in winter floral arrangements before. In my Zone 8b garden, the leaves are basically evergreen and winter hardy.

The blooms are also arresting. They are tall and pointed with an overall spiny form and purplish-green bracts. I will say this: They don’t LOVE being cut and plunked in a vase.

The five stalks I cut and used in this bouquet had mixed performance from between one to three days. So if you have bear’s breech in your perennial border, consider it a day-of cut flower.

‘April in Paris’ sweetpea, grown by Jello Mold Farm. If only you could inhale its perfume!

Baptisia (love the sweet pea-like flowers on the tall stem), with honeywort (Cerinthe).

Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis)

Curled just like a little shrimp, Cerinthe has a fabulous blue-green/purple flower

Here is the recipe::

• Garden mint, grown by Ojeda Farms in Ethel, Washington
• Honeywort (Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’), grown by Jello Mold Farm in Mt. Vernon, Washington
• Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis), Jello Mold Farm
• ‘April in Paris’ Sweet Peas, Jello Mold Farm
• Bear’s breech (Acanthus mollis) flowers, from my garden

Everything came together beautifully, including the addition of the mint foliage!

Just for fun, here’s how the Acanthus mollis foliage lent much-needed drama to a December arrangement. I paired it with Callicarpa, curly willow and camellia foliage.

Note the large, glossy Acanthus foliage on the right side of this winter arrangement.

And on its own, the foliage of Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is also fantastic. Long after the beautiful flowers fade, you can keep cutting the leaves for arranging:

Baptisia foliage in an August bouquet.

Posted in American Grown, Blog Posts, Creativity, floral design, Flower Farming, Gardening, General, Plants, Slow Flowers Challenge | No Comments »

An Artist’s Relationship with Floral Design, Abbie Zabar: Ten Years of Flowers from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Episode 196)

June 3rd, 2015

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In this pencil study, Abbie Zabar captures an exuberant floral arrangement from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall.

This week we’re celebrating the 50,000th download of the Slow Flowers Podcast.

As of today, we’ve produced 97 episodes bringing you the leading voices in the American Grown floral community – from flower farmers to floral designers, the inspiring people working to save flowers as part of our nation’s agricultural heritage and keep our flowers local, seasonal, sustainable — and American grown.

I am grateful to my past guests, each of whom has shared his or her story with listeners. And I’m so thankful to listeners who regularly tune in, comment, share and like this endeavor.

Students at Sarah Pabody’s floral design workshop learn about the origin of the flowers in their lives. (c) Elena Slesarchuk, courtesy of Triple Wren Farm.

Before we meet Abbie Zabar, this week’s guest, I wanted to share a text that I received this week from my friend Sarah Pabody of Triple Wren Farms located just north of Bellingham, Washington.

Sarah and her husband Steve Pabody are big promoters of the Slow Flowers Movement. When Sarah leads design workshops at Triple Wren she does something for which I’m so grateful.

Each student is handed one of the Slow Flowers infographics that reads “Where do your flowers come from?”

Then Sarah leads a short discussion about the frightening statistics revealing the small percentage of domestic flowers in the marketplace versus imported flowers, as well as the cost of those imported flowers, both environmentally but also economically, to local communities.

She texted me photos of last weekend’s workshop, which I have permission to share with you.

Even the youngest floral design student is introduced to the Slow Flowers Movement at Triple Wren Farms! (c) Elena Slesarchuk.

Said Sarah: “I thought you’d like to see your Infographics in action – at every workshop, I issue a challenge to each person to casually ask another person in their lives (grocery florist, family member, however they can work it into their daily conversation),”Do you know where these flowers were grown?”

If anyone listening to this story feels moved to do the same with their own customers, please follow this link to our graphics, which you are welcome to download and copy. Thanks for the inspiration, Sarah!

Abbie Zabar, captured in a familar pose at Rodmarton Manor in the UK. She’s sketching in a garden, with paper on her lap. (c) Sylvia Martin

Okay, today’s guest is thoroughly inspiring in a completely different way. When I first read the news that the work of Abbie Zabar, a New York-based artist and longtime virtual friend in the garden-writing world, was going to be celebrated this coming weekend with the opening of an exhibit of her floral drawings, I had to share her story with you.

As you will hear in our conversation, Abbie is a close observer of nature and of flowers, especially. She captures what she observes with colored pencils on sheets of rather ordinary paper or cardboard.

from June 23, 2002

For one decade of her life, from the early 1990s to the early 2000s, Abbie walked from her apartment in New York City’s upper east side to the famed Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue. She entered the impressive Great Hall during the early hours, found a place to sit, and proceeded to sketch the grand floral arrangements on display there each week. (I feel quite an affinity for someone who honored such a creative ritual week after week; after all, I managed to make a bouquet each week for one year and ritualized that practice, but Abbie’s ten-year observance is hugely impressive).

Abbie Zabar. December 6 1994. Collection of the artist

Abbie was enthralled by the five enormous flower-filled urns that stood in the Met’s Great Hall. At the time, the pieces were created by Chris Giftos, the Met’s former Master Floral Designer and Director of Special Events. For more than 30 years, Mr. Giftos was responsible for the beautiful arrangement in the Great Hall. And, as Abbie describes, the flowers occupied four large niches carved from the central piers, as well as the centrally located Information Desk. The weekly arrangements of fresh flowers appear, thanks to an endowment provided by the late Lila Acheson Wallace, who was one of the Museum’s largest single benefactors.

Abbie Zabar. February 4 2002. Collection of the artist

It’s no surprise to learn that Abbie and Chris became good friends. The fondness she had for this floral artist are reflected in each drawing she made in response to his work. Incredibly alluring, her diminutive floral portraits are breathtaking in both their simplicity and their complexity. Abbie’s own experience as a gardener and her innate knowledge of the flowers, fronds and leaves before her allowed her to capture the splendid bouquets with a sure and deft hand, well before the Museum opened its doors for the day.

Abbie Zabar. October 16 1999. Collection of the artist

Working in situ and in pencil—the only implement allowed in the space —her drawings showcase the vibrancy, variety and vitality of the displays, as captured in one quick sitting.

Abbie Zabar at the Manhattan Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society’s Plant Sale, where she was passing around saxifraga “favors.” Photo courtesy of Yukie Kurashina.

You will hear more about her process in our conversation, and please visit debraprinzing.com to see examples of the pieces that will be unveiled in this upcoming exhibition.

The show is called Abbie Zabar: Ten Years of Flowers, on view June 7 through October 4 at Wave Hill, a beautiful public garden and cultural center in The Bronx. The event is free with your admission to the grounds.

And here is a little more about Abbie’s background:

Abbie Zabar is an acclaimed artist, graphic and garden designer, and the author of five books. Her first book, The Potted Herb (1988), is now considered a gardening classic.

She has created garden and graphic designs for numerous prestigious companies and organizations, including Bergdorf Goodman, Daniel Boulud’s restaurants and PS 198.

Her landscape collages have been represented by Allan Stone and BlumHelman, and Flowers in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art series has been represented by Ursus Books & Prints and the Horticultural Society of New York.

Abbie Zabar. May 18 1995. Private collection

Abbie’s artwork has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Parrish Museum, the International Paper Corporation, the Louvre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and the Vigeland Museum (Oslo), and is part of the permanent collections of the Mead Paper Corporation of America, the Brooklyn Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation and the Smithsonian Museum.

Abbie Zabar. May 17 2003. Collection of the artist.

Abbie’s illustrated articles have appeared in Garden Design, Horticulture, Fine Gardening, Gourmet and The New York Times, as well as in numerous esteemed British publications. She received the 2010 Award for Best Newspaper Writing from the Garden Writers Association for her piece “A Vine in the Sky,” published in The Forward.

Abbie Zabar. September 24 2000. Collection of the artist

In 2014, she was honored with the North American Rock Garden Society’s Carleton R. Worth Award, given to an author of distinguished writings about rock gardening and rock garden plants. Zabar is currently the Program Chairperson for the Manhattan Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society and a Learning Leader at P.S. 198.

Jar with green hyacinths

White roses in straight-sided jar.

White roses, little creamer

As Abbie and I discussed, not only is the exhibition at Wave Hill available for public viewing all summer long, continuing to October 4th, she has a second show in the works, which will run September 16th to October 2nd at W.M. Brady & Co., a gallery at 22 East 80th Street, just a few steps from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This collection of drawings includes the series of small floral studies that Abbie and I discussed at the close of our interview (and she generously shares a sneak peek of a few of those pieces here).

From the grand floral arrangements at the Met to these intimate moments of singular blooms captured in small vases, Abbie’s gifts as an illustrator of flowers are evident. And I know you’ll be as enchanted as I am. By the way, many of these pieces will be available for purchase, so please follow the links to the two institutions (Wave Hill and W.M. Brady & Co.) to inquire if you’re interested in a list of available works.

Thank you, Abbie Zabar, for showing us flowers in a new way. Not everyone is an artist or has the ability to use a pencil so masterfully as my friend Abbie. But this conversation has moved me to use my innate skills of observation more acutely, whether I’m on a walk in the park, purchasing flowers from my favorite flower farmer, or tending to plants in my own backyard.

Thanks again for joining me today for another wonderful conversation about flowers. Listeners like you have downloaded the podcast more than 50,000 times. THANK YOU to each and every one of you for downloading, listening, commenting and sharing. It means so much.

Until next week please 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.

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.

Posted in American Grown, Blog Posts, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Podcast Episodes, SLOW FLOWERS Podcast, Writing | 1 Comment »

Week 21 // Slow Flowers Challenge with Mock Orange and Garden Peonies

May 30th, 2015

Back Porch Bouquet – with every bloom clipped from my garden.

After all the traveling I’ve done since March, it’s so nice to be HOME. So for the last week of May, the Slow Flowers Challenge has stuck close by. All of these flowers are straight from my garden. You could call it the “5 Step Bouquet.”

Two types of peonies, a profusion of mock orange, and young hydrangea buds.

I especially love using this vintage American-made vase. It is also featured on pages 50-51 of Slow Flowers, where it holds beautiful garden roses that I paired with smoke tree and the ‘Black Knight’ Queen Anne’s lace. The 7-inch tall McCoy jardiniere is from the 1940s era and has a raised design of vertical bands (maybe suggesting picket fencing?) and a rim of flowers. It’s the ideal scale vase for such blousy bouquets!

By the way, here’s that design from Slow Flowers where you’ll spot the familiar vase:

Analogous color palette of pinks, mauves and purples! This design was originally published in my book, Slow Flowers

Below are a few more images from yesterday’s bouquet. The ingredients:

• Two types of peonies, both inherited when we moved to this home. So I don’t know the cultivars. I love the pale pink with the fringey yellow centers, but I think I love the single white variety even more, especially for its dense centers, some cream; some rose-tinged.
• Mock orange branches and blossoms
• Immature hydrangea stems, used as a lime green accent.

Quite delicious to the eye and fragrant to the nose!

More delicious details!

Posted in American Grown, Blog Posts, Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Plants, Slow Flowers Challenge | No Comments »