Welcome to the Slow Flowers Dinner

Imagine a table set for 40 . . . inside a flower-filled greenhouse. Vintage vases overflowing with just-picked blooms adorn the table and a locally-grown menu is served.

Last month I joined with the California Cut Flower Commission to host a “Slow Flowers” dinner as part of the 2013 Monterey Bay Greenhouse Growers Open House & Tour.

The table was set for local food and local flowers.

We called it “Farm-to-Table; Field-to-Vase” and held the dinner in the gerbera-filled greenhouse at Kitayama Bros. Farms in Watsonville, California. The event was a gathering of like-minded persons. Each of us — farmer, florist, media, community advocate — cares deeply about the role of American  flowers in the greater agricultural environment. And everyone in attendance contributed an important voice around the table, a table with locally-grown food and locally-harvested flowers.

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I’m very excited to show off the backdrop that I recently created for DIY floral video projects.

If you look closely, you’ll see some of my favorite things gathered on the garage workbench. Vintage ceramic vases and metal urns, French flower buckets, frogs of all types, Mason jars, botanical artwork, salvaged goodies and more.

A floral designer’s work bench – and perfect video set.

Here’s another view – with the weathered picnic table in front – the ideal surface for bouquet-making.

Another view, featuring the weathered picnic table in the foreground.

How on earth am I pulling this off? Making a video, I mean!

I am fortunate to have a young filmmaker here for the day. Her name is Hannah Holtgeerts and she is a college friend of my son Ben’s. Hannah jumped into this project with total enthusiasm. A talented photographer, videographer and documentary filmmaker, she really makes things look effortless. Aaah, YOUTH, CHARM AND TALENT~ Too bad that Hannah is heading back to Chicago where a post-college job awaits her this fall. But for now, I’m thanking my lucky stars. The video will be pulled together soon and I promise to share it here~

Hannah Holtgeerts – at work editing the video we shot this morning.

Looking over Hannah’s shoulder. What a pro!

AMERICAN ROSES

There are three sultry-smoky elements to this simple bouquet: roses, smoke bush foliage and a type of Queen Anne’s lace.

When all three colors, forms and textures are seen together – up close – it’s simply beautiful!

Ingredients:

I was on the road last week, working in Oregon for six days (counting 1,000-miles of travel). My companions were James Baggett, editor-in-chief of COUNTRY GARDENS magazine and photography team Laurie Black and Mark King of Laurie Black Photography.

James Baggett, showing off the many titles he creates with coworker Nick Crow, his art director. It’s simply mind-boggling to grasp their huge productivity – and it’s an honor to be one of their writer-producers.

Wherever I can discover locally-grown flowers, that’s where you’ll find me!~

We spent the week photographing awesome landscapes, inspiring new plants and a fabulous farm-to-fork dinner (complete with locally grown, organic wine, food and flowers). A busy schedule, but filled with great experiences. It will be my privilege to write the stories to accompany Laurie’s photos for publication in 2014.

I’ll keep this short. I mostly have photos to share.

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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.

SUMMER GLOW

This coppery design began with the russet foliage called ‘Coppertina’, a variety of ninebark.

Textural details in a sultry summer color palette

Ingredients:

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: