The Slow Flowers Podcast is the award-winning show known as the “Voice of the Slow Flowers Movement.” Launched in 2013 as the original flower podcast, we’ve devoted more than 10 years to covering the business of flower farming, floral design, and the Slow Flowers sustainability ethos. Listen to a new episode each Wednesday, available for free download here at slowflowerspodcast.com or on iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.
February 5th, 2012
Bess Wyrick, Celadon & Celery
- Bess, on an early-morning visit to the NYC floral district, carrying an armload of kiwi vines for her next arrangement.
I planned on being in New York for a few days last month so I called Bess Wyrick of Celadon & Celery to see if we could get together. David Perry and I met Bess in person last November when we flew to Los Angeles to produce a story about Bess’s DIY floral design workshops. I had previously interviewed her by telephone – for a piece in the Los Angeles Times. In April, when The 50 Mile Bouquet comes out, you will be able to read all about Bess and her eco-couture floral design tips and techniques.
- A designer attending to her craft
“Why don’t you come with me to one of my client’s?” Bess suggested. I met her in New York’s Chelsea Flower District at 7:30 a.m. one morning and we headed to her regular source for flowering branches.
Ironically, I had visited the same vendor on a trip to NYC two years ago. On this shopping trip, Bess picked out a huge bunch of kiwi vine, with nutmeg-colored bark and attractive curls. The kiwi is locally harvested and cut to 4- and 5-foot lengths.
We headed up to midtown to a restaurant called Rouge Tomate, a 2-star Michelin establishment known for its modern, organic fare. Celadon & Celery is responsible for designing weekly arrangements for the hostess station, the main dining room and the downstairs private dining room. Because of the restaurant’s organic menu and reputation for serving local ingredients, it makes sense that the owners of Rouge Tomate want their flowers to echo similar values.
The restaurant’s credo: “At Rouge Tomate, we give preference to local and seasonal products, including fruit and vegetables grown on farms that respect the environment; choose fish depending on their stock and impact on ecosystems; select meat and poultry from farmers that feed their animals with local plants; highlight quality wines grown by viticulturists who follow organic or biodynamic principles.”
- Kiwi vines and young spring gladiolas – silhouetted against the uplit wall of Rouge Tomate
From a floral designer’s point of view, it’s easy to adhere to these principles when summer’s abundance offers more choices than you can ask for. Come January, though, Bess gets creative. And I was eager to see how her commitment to seasonal and local played out first hand.
Before I arrived, Bess’s driver had delivered the other flowers she needed. Those ingredients included the longest and most slender gladiolas I had ever seen. In pale green, the blooms were clearly hothouse grown, but they weren’t imported. Along with the glads, Bess had requested yummy bunches of winter anemones in the deepest plum hue, with dark black centers. She also sourced quirky purple artichokes on stems. All of these ingredients came from greenhouses in Florida, whereas the kiwi and pussy willow branches came from local farms on Long Island.
Bess’s arrangement for the main dining room was simple yet completely sophisticated. She first filled a tall, square container with the kiwi branches, using them to create a tree-like structure that soared above dining tables. Bess arranged the glads in and among the kiwi, using that fresh promise of spring green against the earthy kiwi bark to make a thoroughly organic statement.
- Twin bouquets – local and seasonal, of course
Downstairs, Bess filled two matching vases with a similar version of the upstairs combo. The pair of vases flanks either side of a staircase that descends to the private dining room. These containers were large enough to accommodate an addition of pussy willow branches in and among the kiwi vines and green glads.
- A perfect floral and culinary pairing: Artichokes & Anemones
Finally, the hostess stand called for an impactful, smaller-scale design. Bess filled two bark-wrapped cylinder vases with what, to me, is a dazzling duo in purple: Artichokes and Anemones. I love the vegetable-and-flower pairing. It’s especially fitting for a restaurant venue, and it works nicely because of the purple palette. A few curly kiwi vines emerge from this design, helping to connect the smaller vases with the ingredients of the larger ones.
After finishing her design work, Bess still had cleanup duties. She brings biodegradable garbage bags with her when she designs on location. All the cuttings and trimmings get tossed in the giant bags, which are then placed with the restaurant’s kitchen compost. Any cardboard goes into the recycling, leaving zero waste on site.
This weekly ritual is one that keeps Bess in close contact with the restaurant management and kitchen staff. As a result, when weddings and private events are booked into Rouge Tomate, it’s a given that Celadon & Celery is called in to design eco-friendly flowers for the clients.
Posted in floral design, General | 4 Comments »
January 7th, 2012
Metallic, pewter, and snowy white - the non-floral arrangement
Choosing the appropriate vase for an arrangement is like finding the right pair of shoes to compliment your cocktail dress, right? There’s good, better and best. A critical eye is required to make the right choice!
Today, not able to decide which vase to use for my New Year’s arrangement, I photographed my silvery-winter ingredients in three different vases. Please vote for your fav!
The ingredients:
- Pussy willow from J. Foss Garden Flowers in Chehalis, Washington (grower Janet Foss tells me the cultivar of her unique, multi-branched form of pussy willow is unknown; she took cuttings from a customer’s garden and began propagating them). The stems are truly stunning and way more interesting that your typical ramrod-straight pussy willow branch
- Two forms of Dusty Miller (Centaurea cineraria) — lacy and broad, grown by Charles Little & Co. of Eugene, Oregon
- Plus, a few sprigs of feathery Artemisia arborescens from my garden.
We’re all a little tired of evergreens and red berries, right? That was my thinking when I came up with a metallic, pewtery vibe, which seems fitting for the New Year.
Option 1: Stripes of bronze, brass and pewter embellish this substantial urn, inherited from my father-in-law. It’s the only shiny-metallic vessel I own.
Option One
Option 2: Basic white. Going for the simple statement. The foliage definitely looks snowier against this glazed vase.
Option Two
Option 3: More textures, this time in a ginger jar with a raised, circular pattern. Its color is arguably mauve or pale lilac. Or maybe gray with a tinge of purple.
Option Three
Please vote in the comment section – and tell me WHY you prefer a particular vase for this combination!
Posted in Creativity, floral design, Gardening, General, Plants | 26 Comments »
December 11th, 2011
- Poetry in a bloom
Here’s a lovely amaryllis that I potted up to enjoy in our dining room this month. I can’t say enough about the beauty of every Hippeastrum hybrid I see this time of year. There have been many holiday seasons when I am super organized, and have planned ahead to purchase the bulbs, plant them in decorated pots and nurture them to bud-stage for hostess gift-giving.
This was not one of those years. Instead, I purchased two amaryllis already in bud stage from Cascade Cuts, a wonderful grower who is now selling herbs and potted plants at the
Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. You can see how I planted the ‘Joker’ hybrids here.
The flowers I chose are mostly white with red streaks. In
Starr Ockenga’s marvlous, photo-filled book called
Amaryllis (Clarkson Potter, 2002), there are several varieties of these candy-cane style blooms. Not ‘Joker’ but enough alternate varieties to wow you for holiday decorating or gifting.
As I said, I purchased 2 potted amaryllis about a week ago, but I didn’t know how I was going to display them until yesterday. I attended
2nd Saturdayz, the monthly indoor vintage flea market, with my friend and design muse
Jean Zaputil.
We found all sorts of fun stuff, from a 1950s plastic light-up Santa (Jean) to red and green-handled wood rolling pins (me – for my culinary essayist-friend’s surprise Christmas gift). And then I found a pretty piece of glass for $15. It has a nice footed base and graceful lines. I guess you could serve a trifle in it, or perhaps display it filled with vintage glass ornaments, as I found it.
But once I came home yesterday, I started thinking: “Why not plant my 2 amaryllis flowers in this beautiful vessel?” Who says you can’t put pottting soil in glass anyway? The trick was to first pour a layer of gravel in the base, then add some potting soil and the two amaryllis. I topped off the design with the vintage silver-and-gold ornaments that came with my $15 vase. A new sort of mulch! When I water the bulbs, it will be carefully, so as not to flood this glass vase (since it has no drainage).
They are gracing our dining room and looking quite lovely. When December and amaryllis season arrive, I always find myself wishing for more of these yummy blooms. So here are some more pics. Please enjoy!
Posted in Creativity, floral design, Plants | 4 Comments »
November 13th, 2011
Last year I blogged about finding a set of half-circle shutters at a vintage sale. I wanted to emulate my friend Baylor Chapman’s succulent-planted shutters that grace her outdoor terrace in San Francisco. Since then, a few folks have emailed to ask if I EVER finished that project? Much to my embarrassment, those dusty shutters sat in the garage, untouched for nearly a year!
But finally, now that we’ve settled into a permanent residence, I’ve been able to work on this project. The shutters have been cleaned and given three coats of exterior paint. To turn them into vertical succulent planters I mounted both pieces with wood screws outside my office windows and then stuffed the openings betweeen each slat with sedums and sempervivums. Let’s see how they look:
Step one: Paint the shutters. I used semigloss acrylic berry-red, the paint used for my home's exterior trim
Step Two: Staple landscaping cloth to the back of both shutters.
Step Three: Mount shutter and fill the "slots" with potting soil.
Step Four: Plant with hardy sedums and other succulents.
Posted in Architecture, Creativity, Gardening, General, Plants, Playfulness | 14 Comments »
November 8th, 2011
Here’s a photo of my dining room wall, where I’ve organized a medley of rounded objects, mostly plates and one vintage mirror that I inherited as a girl in the 1960s:
- Debra’s dining room wall. The paint color is aptly named “Pod,” chosen by my design guru, Jean Zaputil.
This is what you do when a large wall needs to be filled and one does not own large artwork! Each of the pieces has a back-story. Clockwise, from left:
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Round gold-framed mirror, given to my parents and migrated to my possession since the 1960s.
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Dark purple pottery plate, a gift from my college roommate and her former girlfriend.
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Celadon plate, imprinted with a real lotus leaf, gift from same college roommate, who purchased it for me when we visited Lotusland.
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Red-and-teal platter, a gift from the owner of Fireworks Gallery, years ago, as a thank you after I wrote a story about her Pioneer Square shop.
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Another wonderful celadon plate, a gift from my friends Kathleen Brown and Sara Anderson when they visited us from DC years ago.
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Teal, white and purple platter, hand-formed and painted by the Berkeley artist Keeyla Meadows. I purchased it from her on a visit to her garden in 2008.
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Tiny vintage Majolica plate, purchased from an antique shop in Madison Park.
Let’s just say the men in my household were less than excited to see this installation. The day after I created my plate-platter vignette, my spouse left for work, saying: Please do NOT hammer any more nails into the wall today!
So the following weekend, we were in Chicago visiting our college-aged son for family weekend. We had breakfast at a cool neighborhood spot and what do you think I noticed on the wall there?! Check it out:
- Nice plates!
- Many small plates add up to one large work of art!
I am definitely onto something. You can be, too. Plates or dishes, inexpensive plate hangers & a few nails. Voila!
Posted in Creativity, General, interior design | 4 Comments »
November 1st, 2011
A stand of cape rush adds a semitransparent layer of privacy between sidewalk and front garden.
Joel Lichtenwalter and Ryan Gates of Grow Outdoor Design, based in Los Angeles, have introduced me to some really creative gardens they have designed. And what strikes me when seeing these mostly small, urban landscapes, is how well plants are used as architectural elements within the spaces they reside.
Designers Joel and his client Scott can be seen in the distance, conferring on some of the planting designs.
You won’t see fluffy cottage gardens with English-inspired perennial choices in Ryan and Joel’s gardens. Yet even when they design for bungalow-scaled residences, some of the same intimate, cottage garden experience occurs for the humans who occupy them. That emotional sense of being surrounded by plants, layers of textures — and even color in a tonal, modern sense –happens in their gardens.
I wrote about one such place recently and you can follow the links to the Los Angeles Times story here, including an extensive web gallery.
For those who ask: What plants are appropriate for a lush, low-water landscape? I think you’ll appreciate Ryan and Joel’s plant list for their clients’ lawn-free front yard now filled with native and Mediterranean grasses, shrubs, ground covers and trees, many of which display multi-season beauty:
A shopping list of California native plants and their Mediterranean companions
Natives:
Ceanothus griseus horizontalis Yankee Point
Cercis occidentalis
Arctostaphylos ‘Howard McMinn’
Arctostaphylos ‘Emerald Carpet’
Leymus condensatus ‘Canyon Prince’
Muhlenbergia rigens
Platanus racemosa
Carpenteria californica
Eschscholzia californica
Juncus patens
Sisyrinchium montanum (Blue Eyed Grass)
Non-Natives:
Arbutus ‘Marina’
Agave bracteosa
Leucadendron ‘Safari Sunset’
Agave vilmroniana
Olea europaea
Chondropetalum tectorum
Materials:
Composite decking (raised deck and boardwalk)
Square pre-cast concrete pavers
Poured-in-place concrete bench
‘Del Rio’ gravel
Decomposed granite (DG)
Shredded tree mulch
Posted in Architecture, Creativity, Gardening, General, Landscape Design, Plants, Writing | 2 Comments »
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