“Callas and Cherry Branches”

Simple, graceful, seasonal: Calla Lilies and Flowering Cherry Branches

Love the ombre-coloring on these calla lilies!

From the Farmer

Calla curve: When cut, your callas may have a tendency to curve. Patrick Zweifel says this is normal and can be minimized by storing the cut flowers (heads down) in a box overnight. Also, once they are cut and placed in a

vase, leave the curved flowers toward the container’s outside rim. The callas will naturally straighten up toward the center.

NOTE: Each Sunday of this year, I will post my photographs, “recipe” and tip for that week’s floral arrangement, created for my new book, Slow Flowers. Enjoy the floral journey through 52 weeks of the year~

 

“A nest for my orchids”

A classic indoor plant, each cymbidium stem holds several blooms – the antidote to a dreary winter day.

Ingredients:

Yes, I have her signature in my used copy of “Flowers in House and Garden,” published in 1937. Signed in pencil, the inscription is dated February 1939.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about the first celebrity floral designer, Constance Spry.

The famous Mrs. Constance Spry

If you haven’t heard about her, check out the newish biography called The Surprising Life of Constance Spry, by Sue Shephard (2011). Mrs. Spry was at her peak of popularity between the two World Wars, and I loved reading about her magnificent cutting garden that supplied her London studio and shop called Flower Decoration in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s.

Speaking of Flower Decoration, that is the name of a volume that Mrs. Spry wrote in 1933. Re-issued in 1993, you can find it online used, filled with her strong opinions, witticisms, and black-and-white photographs of floral arrangements. These are a little dated, of course, but what stands out to me is the eclectic lineup of ingredients, which includes many flowers, foliage and edibles that today’s hip floral designers think they’ve popularized.

Guess what? Mrs. Spry did it first!

The rest of us have just discovered the ingredients with which she created lush, naturalistic, unfussy bouquets. Cherry tomatoes, grape clusters, gourds, fig leaves, sea-kale, agapanthus seed heads, amaranth, rhubarb and artichokes are wonderful floral elements showing up in couture bouquets and magazine spreads. But Constance Spry used them first – and that’s quite fun to RE-discover.

READ MORE…

“A Blue Bowl of Blooms”

Two completely different flowers – vivacious tulips and intricate witch hazels.

Winter’s Multi-Hued Palette

This is what you can harvest during the 2nd week of January!~ Pretty amazing!

Ingredients:

Beautiful detail of the oak leaf hydrangea and Corsican hellebore foliage

 

A “vine-wrap” detail embellishes the foot of this vase.

NOTE: Each Sunday of this year, I will post my photographs, “recipe” and tip for that week’s floral arrangement, created for my new book, Slow Flowers. Enjoy the floral journey through 52 weeks of the year~

Early Spring 2013

I’m used to being the one asking the questions, but recently, James Baggett, editor-in-chief of Country Gardens magazine, turned the tables on me. He asked me to participate in a Q&A for the “Over the Garden Gate” feature in Country Gardens. Here is the full interview below. A shortened version appears in the “Early Spring 2013” issue, out this week on newsstands. THANK YOU Mr. Baggett~

And a few more thank-you’s: Thank you designer Nick Crow, for making the page look so perfect; thank you to Diane Szukovathy and Dennis Westphall of Jello Mold Farm, for sharing your location (and great dahlias!) for the fun day of portrait work — and especially: thank you, talented photographer Mary Grace Long, for the nice image. No one likes to have their photo taken and you made it a blast!

Over the Garden Gate Q&A

Full Q&A:

1.      What gives you the most pleasure in the garden (keep it clean)?
Long ago, my friend Mary Robson, who has trained thousands of Master Gardeners in our area, taught me the most important way to enjoy the garden. “Be an observer,” she said. When I see the large and small changes that occur as the seasons come and go, I take pleasure in just being an observer. There are instances when I catch my breath and feel my heart race because a little bud is perfectly backlit at dawn or a tiny bird is perched on the fountain’s edge, giving herself a splash. Those fleeting moments of beauty mark the seasons and turn something ordinary in to a priceless gift from nature.

2.      When did you first become interested in gardening?
Like many children, I dabbled in the dirt alongside my grandparents. My own parents weren’t gardeners, but my paternal grandfather was famous in our family for his peonies and my maternal grandfather was equally famous for his prize dahlias. So I think flower gardening skipped a generation and now I’m channeling my grandfathers’ practice of maintaining a personal cutting garden. In my twenties, my interest in growing and gardening expanded into unbridled passion – thanks to two close friends who are both landscape designers (Karen Page, my college roommate, and Jean Zaputil, who I worked with at a textile design firm in the 1980s). I learned a lot from them. I call them my garden muses. Lucky for me, I’m a writer, so I’ve been educated while also interviewing famous gardeners and writing about incredible landscape designs.

3.      What’s the best garden advice anyone’s ever given you?
Van Bobbitt, who taught many of the horticulture classes I took at South Seattle Community College, was one of the first people to talk to me about natural gardening practices. He introduced his students to the idea that if a plant is failing or under stress you should evaluate its cultural conditions rather than just dosing it with a pesticide or fungicide. That excellent advice has empowered me to stop blaming the plant and start looking at the larger environment. More often than not, it’s the “right plant” in the “wrong place.” And there’s an easy solution to that problem.

4.      What—if anything—do you enjoy listening to while in the garden? (Me? Dusty Springfield, Terry Gross, and birdsong.) Do you have a playlist?
My playlist is in my head, James. As a writer forced to operate in the world of social media, I have far too many external stimuli – nearly all digital and electronic in nature. The restful quiet of being outdoors is simply too rare – I cherish it. I find that while I am tending to my garden, I reflect, imagine and dream. Whatever inner conversation I have, it’s always a rewarding one.

5.      What does being a country gardener mean to you?
Greater Seattle’s population is 3.7 million people, so I definitely live in an urban setting. But being a “country gardener” is a state of mind, right? I think it means having a conscious connection to the parcel of land where I garden, no matter if it’s on a busy street or under the flight pattern of the airport. My favorite quote explains my “country gardener” philosophy: “…surely, if you are privileged to own a plot of earth, it is your duty, both to God and man, to make it beautiful.”  — Beverley Nichols, 20^th century English writer.

6.      What inspired your newest book, The 50-Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local, and Sustainable Flowers?

Seattle photographer David Perry and I collaborated on a storytelling project to document the groundbreaking changes taking place in the cut flower industry. It began in 2006 when we met several local flower farmers who were growing gorgeous, uncommon ingredients — and they had to work hard to break through the traditional “wholesale” marketing machine to sell their crops direct to area florists. We soon realized there were similar stories of intrepid flower farmers and nontraditional floral designers all around the country. We wanted to put a face on the flower farmer – and to inspire floral designers and their customers, as well as everyday supermarket shoppers, to start asking “where were my flowers grown?” and “who grew them?” It turns out that the field-to-vase movement is as exciting as the culinary world’s farm-to-table movement.

7.      How are you enjoying gardening in the Pacific Northwest as opposed to Southern California? What are the differences?
I gardened in Seattle for more than 20 years and then, all of a sudden, in 2006, we moved to Southern California for my husband’s work. It was a huge shock to my system and yet, from a gardener’s perspective, it was exhilarating because I learned an entire new plant palette. My garden in Thousand Oaks, California, had all sorts of cool California native perennials, grasses, and shrubs; succulents, aloes and cactuses; and plants from other Mediterranean regions like South Africa and Australia. It was like taking a crash course in low-water gardening.

And just when I started to figure things out, we returned to Seattle in 2010. So I’m back to shade gardening and zonal denial. Every single time I fly back to Seattle from my frequent SoCal trips, I have a little pot of something wonderful in my carryon. That’s the benefit of having a spot in my garage to shelter everything that’s not winter-hardy during Seattle’s cold, wet season. So far, my California succulents have made it through two Seattle winters, so I think my method is working. There’s a benefit to having lived both in the Northwest and the Southwest: I now feel like I’m a true gardener of the West. And that feeling is enhanced by the wonderful community of fellow gardeners I’ve found wherever I live.

8.      Describe your dream garden for us.
I have my dream garden. It’s a beautiful series of mixed borders and flower beds with a fish pond (which I inherited and am learning to care for), a white pergola and a covered porch with vintage white wicker furniture and an outdoor fireplace. I even have a peek-a-boo view of Lake Washington that greets me every morning. My husband, Bruce Brooks, is great with the lawnmower, too. My only other “dream” would be to have a full-time gardener to keep up with the weeding, dead-heading and other chores.

9.      What lessons has your garden taught you?
Back to the idea of being an observer, I feel like when we pay attention to what’s happening in nature, our spirits and souls are enriched. The garden teaches both patience and acceptance. It also teaches that reward comes after work. Having spent all of my childhood listening to my father’s sermons and my mother’s Sunday school lessons, I learned a bit about giving a benediction –– the promise of hope at the end of a church service. I wrote a gardener’s benediction in one of my books. I didn’t realize that’s what it was until I saw it in print. But I think it describes my relationship with the garden: “I wish you a wonderful journey that will introduce you to many generous and supportive gardening friends … May your gardens be free of slugs; may your soil be rich and organic; and may you enjoy equal parts of rain and sunshine.”

10.   What’s next on your green-hearted agenda?
I’m wrapping up a solo project, which is a sequel of sorts to “The 50 Mile Bouquet.” Called “Slow Flowers: Four Seasons of Locally Grown Bouquets from the Garden, Meadow and Farm,” it will be published February 2013 by St. Lynn’s Press.  I challenged myself to design and photograph one bouquet every week  for an entire year. I only used ingredients from my garden or those grown and harvested by local flower farmers, even in the coldest months when most people assume there’s nothing available. In the process, I discovered that gardeners are ideally suited for floral design. We know the habit, form, peak of bloom and best qualities of the plants we grow – and we know how to combine them with in the landscape, so why not in a vase?

11. Anything else you would like to add that I’ve neglected to ask?
For the past five or six years, the grow-it-yourself trend has dominated the gardening world. And that has resulted in the pendulum swinging far towards the edible side of things. While many think it’s frivolous to grow flowers or care about how/where they were grown (i.e., the carbon footprint of imported flowers), I think the conversation is changing. Even though we don’t eat flowers, we do need their presence in our gardens – if only as a nectar source for pollinators or a seed source for birds. There is an important equilibrium that takes place when flowers – annuals, perennials and biennials – are cultivated, especially in the vegetable garden. You might be motivated to grow flowers for economic reasons, or to preserve heirloom varieties, or to attract beneficial insects. Whatever your reason, we need flowers in our lives, and in our gardens. 

Welcome to 2013! Each Sunday of this year, I will post my photographs, “recipe” and tip for that week’s floral arrangement, created for my new book, Slow Flowers. Enjoy the floral journey through 52 weeks of the year~

“Frosty White”

A gathering of the winter's quiet, silvery textures in a beautiful patterned ginger jar.

A detail of all the beautiful gray, silver and white textures in this winter arrangement.

Ingredients:

• 5 branches pussy willow (Salix caprea), grown by J. Foss Garden Flowers
• 7 stems each of two forms of Dusty Miller (Centaurea cineraria), grown by Charles Little & Co.
• 7 stems Artemisia absinthium, harvested from my garden

Vase:

• 9½-inch tall x 9-inch diameter ceramic ginger jar with 3-inch opening

Zoe Bartlett, creator and partner of Intentional Table

Living a life guided by intentional choices is something we advocate in The 50 Mile Bouquet.

In the introduction, I wrote:

Faced with concerns about our food supply, the materials with which our homes are built and furnished, and the energy sources we consume, more people than ever are asking questions about the environmental impact of everything they use, drive, eat and even wear.

And yet, until recently, conscious consumers were largely unaware of the decidedly non-green attributes of their floral purchases. They bought bouquets without questioning the source, or the manner in which those flowers were grown (not to mention the environmental costs of shipping a perishable, luxury commodity around the globe). . . .

Whether or not they consider themselves environmentalists, consumers are beginning to exercise their choices at the flower stand, asking whether the beautiful roses, lilies or tulips they purchase at the local supermarket were grown domestically or were imported.

The message is that making intentional choices, especially as consumers, allows us to be conscious and holistic about using our resources wisely.

Of course, the Slow Food movement is way ahead of the floral world in this respect. And when our mutual friend Lois Pendleton introduced me to Zoe Bartlett, creator of Intentional Table, I instantly understood that we spoke the same language.

The message of Intentional Table is one that resonates:

Over the past 18 months, Zoe has been developing her business concept with a vision for creating community around the table, connecting purveyors with diners, educating and inspiring, and sharing local resources with like-minded customers. She has teamed up with Linda Brandt and the two recently debuted the Bainbridge Island flagship store of Intentional Table. The storefront is located on the pedestrian-friendly Madrone Lane, just off of Winslow Way. Here’s what the island’s community newspaper had to say about Intentional Table.

They opened the doors of their beautiful emporium-culinary studio on November 24th, Thanksgiving weekend.

I’ve been trying to make it over to Bainbridge Island ever since. Today was one of those magical, non-scheduled days (made even more special because our December temperatures reached a high of 48-degrees). I took the ferry from downtown Seattle, not worrying about the schedule, but just paying for my ticket and getting in line to calmly wait for the next departure. As the ferry-boat pushed away from the downtown Seattle waterfront, I snapped a few touristy photos, which I’d love to share with you here:

The SEATTLE GREAT WHEEL - a new icon on the waterfront

The new Seattle Great Wheel is quite stunning. Read more about it here.

The Space Needle is a classic work of architecture that turned 50 this year.

Read more about the Space Needle here.

After a 35-minute crossing, we arrived on Bainbridge Island and I headed a short distance to downtown Winslow. I have a lot of friends living on the island, including the amazing garden owners featured in The Abundant Garden, the book I wrote to accompany Barbara J. Denk’s beautiful photography (Cool Springs Press, 2005).

But today, my goal was to visit Zoe’s new venture. It was so great to walk inside and see her there, bustling about to help customers, share samples of gourmet chocolate, demonstrate cool products like wine decanters and unique vases.

Thanks, Zoe, for a spontaneously fun visit!

Because it’s a holiday week, lots of out-of-towners wandered in, including a young sommelier from New York City and a gourmet nut entrepreneur who took a specialty food business development class from Zoe a few years ago. Lots and lots of people arrived, in search of hostess gifts. Conversations among strangers wove together.

There was no huge effort to *explain* what Intentional Table meant. People understood. Everyone expressed curiosity about the upcoming cooking class schedule that Zoe and Linda will soon announce. Then, by summer, there will be food-centric educational dining experiences, staged all around the Northwest. I can’t wait!

One of the reasons Zoe’s vision resonates so much with me is that she views the Intentional Table as not just about food. To her, anything that we put on our tables – from the food and wine to the flowers in the vase – needs to reflect the place we live. I love that!

So you can definitely look for my participation in future events at this wonderful destination.

Together, we’re hoping to create several hands-on, seasonal floral design workshops that celebrate local flower farms and engage customers with the growers in their own community.

To sign up for Intentional Table announcements/newsletters, please click here.

Here are more photographs of this beautiful food & wine studio:

Love the chalk-board motif - especially this witty sign!

The 50 Mile Bouquet, spotted on the book table! Thanks, Zoe!

The professional kitchen, where cooking classes will soon commence.

The central book table, filled with inspiring titles from Northwest food and wine experts.

Clever "I. T." motifs are everywhere, including these ceramic balls in a bird's nest.

"I. T." playing pieces...

Industrial "I. T." letters on the Christmas wreath!

A foodie's crossword puzzle, just for fun!

[Author’s note: This is the introduction of my forthcoming book, “Slow Flowers,” which will be published February 1, 2013. You can pre-order it here.]

My 52 Weeks of Local Flowers

A summer still life.

One of the joys of gardening is to step out my back door and clip a few sprigs to bring inside. The day’s prettiest blooms and just-unfurled leaves – assembled simply into a bunch and displayed in a jar of water – provide everything I need to start the day. The tiny arrangement graces my kitchen counter or brightens a spot by the keyboard, connecting me with the natural world even when I’m “stuck” indoors, away from my beloved garden.

IS THIS FLORAL DESIGN?

I guess it is, but like avid gardeners everywhere, I certainly never considered myself a florist. After all, despite hundreds of hours of horticulture training, I never once studied the art of flowers, other than one weekend class on liturgical arrangements that I took with my Episcopal priest friend Britt Olson. Floral design was an entirely different sort of activity for which I wasn’t qualified (I thought). I’m a writer and a lover of plants, but not an artist.

I have written about floral design for years, interviewing top florists around the country for articles in magazines like Seattle Bride, Romantic Homes and Sunset. I loved reporting those stories, and I have to admit feeling a twinge of jealousy as I listened to flower artists answer questions about their style and technique, their use of botanicals and vessels – and especially, their inspiration.

I have spent my life observing and writing about creative people. But I didn’t really believe that I was one of them! I was the classic journalist: a detached outsider documenting what she heard and saw.

Yet writers are sponges and driven by an insatiable, need-to-know curiosity. In pursuit of our stories, we can’t help but absorb knowledge about myriad topics, taught to us by generous subjects whose own passion is infectious. That’s exactly what happened to me while story-gathering for my most recent project, The 50 Mile Bouquet. I loved shaping the narrative about the many talented individuals who are part of the local flower movement.

During the creation of that book with photographer David Perry, my own bouquet-making activity was on the rise. I was beginning to see the gardens around me in a new way: in all four seasons, rather than only during July when the perennials peaked. The palette of possibilities expanded greatly, thanks to my interviews with the gifted flower farmers and designers profiled in The 50 Mile Bouquet.

My previously-spontaneous bouquet-making gestures soon became a weekly ritual. I discovered that just like designing a container garden or a display border, there is great satisfaction in choosing flowers and companion elements – and then assembling them into a beautiful composition in just the right vase.

I often photographed my design process. Documenting each step seemed like a good idea, either for my own reference, for a blog post or to illustrate a future lecture.

The bouquet that started it all!

And then, one September day as I was making a bouquet out of burnished autumn leaves, green millet seed heads and the last dahlias of the fading summer, I had a brainstorm that led to the birth of my new book, Slow Flowers. I jotted down some ideas, including this one:

There’s a common misconception that it’s impossible, or at least tricky, to find enough beautiful ingredients in one’s own garden or region during certain times of the year for creating interesting seasonal floral arrangements. Taking the Do-it-Yourself designer’s point of view, I want to disprove that notion by making bouquet-a-week – all year long. My goal is to inspire others to create personal bouquets with what’s at hand, if only they begin to see what’s around them with new eyes.

I launched the project then and there, and continued it for 52 weeks. As each season unfolded, so too did my passion for floral design. My experiment turned into a season-by-season, week-by-week book of ideas and inspiration for gardeners and DIY floral designers.

WHY SLOW FLOWERS?

The idea for the title of this book emerged organically. We had used the term “slow flowers” as part of the marketing for The 50 Mile Bouquet – and to our surprise, nearly every major newspaper and magazine that reviewed the book picked up on it as a reference to a cultural shift in consumer attitudes toward local, seasonal and sustainably-grown flowers.

So when editor Cathy Dees and publisher Paul Kelly and I got serious about finding a book title, Slow Flowers seemed like the “just-right” description of my one-year floral design experiment. 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 around 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, berry-producing evergreens – and the occasional greenhouse-grown rose, lily or tulip, just to satisfy my hunger for a bloom.

I made my book's cover bouquet using locally-grown tulips and curly willow; the camellia stems (with buds) came from my garden.

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.

I used all my senses. Unplugged, away from electronic distractions, I studied the form, line, texture, subtle color and utter uniqueness of each stem. What a gift to slow down and experience the moment. I don’t know much about ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging flowers, but I understand that silence and contemplation of nature are part of its practice. I experienced something similar. Slow Flowers forced me to work at a decidedly different pace as I embraced creativity, fearlessly.

I learned about my own preferences, design style and ability to look at the world of floral ingredients in an unconventional way. I learned that I really am a floral designer. Like me, you don’t have to earn a certificate from the London School of Floral Design to create seasonally-inspired bouquets. You can find local blooms in your or your friend’s garden, or from the fields, meadows and farm stands of local flower growers. Each bouquet tells a story about one moment in time, about Grandmother’s cherished flower vase or the fleeting memory that returns with a whiff of lavender or lilac. That’s one of the intangible gifts of bringing flowers into our lives.

Love this sign! The original definition of a FLORIST is having a comeback!

I love the old-fashioned definition of a Florist, appropriately portrayed in a flower shop sign I noticed on a visit to Chicago: “One in the business of raising or selling flowers and ornamental plants.” It underscores my belief that if you grow flowers and ornamental plants, you can also arrange them.

Gardeners are especially qualified in the art of floral design. After all, we have an intimate relationship with our plants, their bloom cycle, their natural form and character – and their seasonality. We also know what colors and textures we like when combined in the landscape. A vase can be a little garden, its contents gathered and arranged to please the eye.

So give it a try. Design a bouquet. Channel your inner floral designer and begin your own year with slow flowers.