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:

Here’s what I’ve been up to lately. I traveled to Southern California all of last week  – from Saturday, April 13th through Saturday, April 20th.  I experienced many great highlights; too many to mention. Here are some of them:

Tours focused on the entire process – from planting and growing to harvesting and grading. Mums, also known as pom poms, are one of the last commercially grown flowers still grown in soil.

Fun to wear the VIP badge!

Chalkboard welcome at Padaro Floral in Carpinteria, California

DAY One: Carpinteria Greenhouse & Nursery Tour, sponsored by the California Cut Flower Commission. I was hosted by Harry and Michele Van Wingerden, the great folks at Myriad Roses and Padaro Floral Design for a day of book-signings and eco-floral demonstrations. A special thanks to the Van Wingerden family, CCFC CEO/Ambassador Kasey Cronquist and Event Planner Anna Kalins for making it a successful and enjoyable day!

Erin Taylor, designer of flowers, interiors, landscapes and more~ The talented owner of botanik in Summerland, California hosted my lovely book event.

DAY Two: Book signing and flower demos at botanik in Summerland. Loved spending time with very talented owner Erin Taylor and her team. After several hours at botanik, I met up with Cristi Walden and we headed to Sea Crest Nursery, her father Jack Stevenson’s palm and cycad collection. It was so exciting to return to this beautiful place and hear how my talented friend is learning the business of growing and selling amazing landscaping plants (oh, and propagating, too!).

READ MORE…

Zen in Bloom

Showcasing a single type of flower – here, it’s spring daffodils – this technique is easy and carefree.

Ingredients:

15 stems common daffodils, from my garden

Multiple lengths of coral-pink twig dogwood, cut approximately 2 inches wider than the vase opening. Any straight, woody branch will work, including vine maple, pussy willow or the colorful twig dogwood (Cornus sanguinea or C. sericea)

Vase:

6-inch tall x 6-inch square glass vase (this design adapts to any square or rectangular glass vase)

The daffodil stems are stabilized by a “raft” of twigs, lashed to cover the opening of the vase.

Other supplies:

Decorative pebbles

Twine-wrapped wire (available at craft stores in natural or green)

Design 101

Borrow inspiration: The idea for this bouquet came from a project featured in Design, a publication of The Flower Arranging Study Group of the Garden Club of America. Whenever you’re inspired by another designer’s technique, it’s important to give it your own twist rather than make a direct copy. For example, the original creation used florist’s foam inside the container, but I found it unnecessary, especially since the pebbles and twigs are enough to hold the daffodil stems in place.

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~

“Lilies, Two Ways”

Two “lily” elements fill my antique majolica cachepot, set in the dining room window to catch the rare winter rays of sunshine

A detail from inside the vase . . .

Eco-technique

Flower frogs: I’ve made it a personal goal to stabilize flower stems with organic methods rather than the conventional florist’s foam or “Oasis.” That product, I have learned, contains formaldehyde and does not break down in landfills. An old-fashioned flower frog (in ceramic, glass or metal) is a great alternative. You can find flower frogs at flea markets or tag sales for a few dollars (or raid your grandmother’s supply). One of my favorites is a half-dome cage. It sinks to the bottom of the container and has ¾-inch square openings, ideal for woody stems. This is an arranging tool of the past, seriously useful for the present-day!

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~

An evergreen yew and topiary forms are frosted with just a little snow on a December afternoon at Old Goat Farm.

Snow came early to the outerlying parts of Seattle this week, dusting the evergreen topiary forms at Old Goat Farm in Orting, Washington. Owners Greg Graves and Gary Waller hosted a holiday tea to benefit Pacific Horticulture Society, and Lorene Edwards Forkner and I drove down to the farm for the festivities. Lorene, of course, is the editor of Pacific Horticulture magazine, a wonderful quarterly journal for gardeners on the West coast (or anyone who loves reading about the hort world in Washington, Oregon and California).

Lorene asked me to donate a seasonal floral arrangement and a copy of The 50 Mile Bouquet to the event’s silent auction. How fun to step out of our car and look across Greg and Gary’s wonderful garden at the sparkling white-and-green scene. There was an old log stump and it seemed like the perfect “pedestal” for placing my bouquet for a last-minute portrait before the party.

The locally-grown lilies, snowberry, eucalyptus and dogwood branches create a special holiday arrangement. There are a few stems of melaleuca tucked in. I brought them home from San Diego last week!

Everything else here sparkled, too. Enjoy the glimpses captured by my lens. And if you want to read more, follow this link to a post from an Old Goat Farm holiday tea from 2010. Visiting at Christmas, seeing the century-old Victorian farmhouse, hearing the clucking chickens and (of course) eating delicious food . . . what a chance to while away an afternoon.

Gary, a talented floral designer and retail display wizard, decorated the barn door with a lovely wreath.

Yes, these are old goat sugar cookies. Very tasty! And eye-catching, too!

This is a picture-perfect farmhouse. Absolutely love it! Especially that wraparound porch!

Gary and Greg's famous compost fence. It even made the cover of Pacific Horticulture magazine's fall 2012 issue~

Decorative chicken (or are they roosters?) cookies!

A beautiful detail of my bouquet.

Here’s to a wonderful holiday season! And a New Year to come~

I’m so inspired by the creative and generous souls around me. When I see their work, I am compelled to share it!

Last week, on a visit to Seattle floral designer and flower-grower Kelly Sullivan’s, I couldn’t take my eyes off of a beautiful floral still-life arranged on her end table.

Here’s what it looked like:

For anyone obsessed with the joy of garden flowers, you’ll immediately recognize the Helleborus blooms at the top of this image and the little sprigs of Pieris japonica flowers used to spell out L-O-V-E.

“That’s gorgeous, Kelly!” I exclaimed. “What are you up to?”

“I’m giving away one-thousand dollars’ worth of wedding flowers,” she explained. “To one Washington couple getting married next year. It’s my way of honoring marriage equality.”

Kelly is the owner of Botanique Flowers, a by-appointment floral design studio in Seattle. She’s known for creating seasonally-inspired designs with a romantic, natural feeling. I previously wrote about Kelly and her subscription CSA-style bouquet program (the article was entitled “Floral Choreography,” and you can read it here). Kelly grows many of the flowers and foliage for her designs in her own cutting garden. And, she designed my cutting garden, which I’m slowly installing and hope to have finished next spring.

Kelly’s new project, the Love Is Love Sweepstakes, celebrates the passing of Referendum 74 with FREE wedding flowers for one Seattle couple who will be married in 2013. “I believe LOVE IS LOVE, period,” Kelly says. “Botanique stands behind any couple that wants to celebrate their love through marriage.”

If you’re planning on tieing the knot in the greater Seattle area anytime next year, you are eligible to win $1,000 worth of wedding floral design services from Botanique. Contestants can enter by visiting the Love is Love page on Botanique’s website and filling out the entry form.

All entries must be received by 5 p.m. (PST) on Friday, December 7th. Kelly will notify the winning couple on Monday, December 10th.

All I have to say is kudos to Kelly for dreaming up this wonderful gesture of love and support for the couples of Washington. I hope other designers are similarly inspired! The lucky couple will be doubly lucky to have Botanique Flowers as a celebratory symbol on their wedding day.

Here’s one more gorgeous floral still-life, created by Kelly:

Creating a magazine story involves a lot of moving parts.

Last year, I worked with a huge team of talented people to produce a feature story for Country Gardens magazine called “Art by Hand,” which appears in the current Summer 2012 issue. Editor James Baggett had the original vision for this story — and he asked me to produce and write a group of short profiles that together tell the story of craftspeople and artists whose work is inspired by the garden, wildlife and nature.

Our starting point was Dirt Couture, the online garden emporium started in 2010 by Cindy McNatt. Many of you know Cindy for her daily updates called Dirt du Jour, which is a fun, g0-to site for all the latest gossip about plants, books, people and trends in the gardening world.

Cindy suggested several of the artists whose work is featured on Dirt Couture, and since photographer Laurie Black and I are now both located in the Pacific Northwest, we decided to focus on three folks in Oregon and Washington. We photographed their portraits and work last July.

Last September we headed to Southern California for a visit to Cindy’s gorgeous garden and the world headquarters of Dirt Couture (aka, her kitchen table!). Pulling together all these separate pieces and making them into an 8-page feature for Country Gardens was way more work than just visiting a beautiful garden and spending 24 hours photographing it. But I love teaming up with Laurie and her husband Mark King, and things always seem to have a good flow when we’re on location together.

So you can read the story here — or, better yet, pick up a copy at the newsstand. Laurie’s photos are amazing (and PS, she also photographed the cover of the same Summer issue to illustrate my feature about The Herbfarm Restaurant’s Basil Banquet. That’s another fun story!).

Here are my favorite out-takes from “location.”

Bob Denman of Red Pig Garden Tools in Boring, Oregon, is one of the country’s last blacksmiths making hand-forged gardening tools and implements. You can learn more about his work here:

Bob and Rita Denman, of Red Pig Garden Tools

Love this old-timey sign!

You can see the actual forge-marks on these hand hoes. Rustic beauty!

Artist Blenda Tyvoll uses mixed media to cover her canvases with soulful trees, inspired by the Oregon farm where she and her family grow Christmas trees! Check out more of her work here.

I love this little gallery I styled with Blenda's canvases and her collection of paint-chipped stools.

from left, Blenda studies her collection of tree-inspired paintings as Laurie Black and Mark King capture the shot.

Potter and artist Marybeth Sommers of the Seattle area has adapted the traditional Raku method to create bird houses and bird feeders. They are charming! We photographed Marybeth and her work at the Dunn Garden in Seattle. Thanks to the folks there for making that happen! Marybeth’s studio is called Ring of Fire Pottery.

Here's what happens when the showers arrive in the middle of a photo shoot! That's Mark King, holding a rigged up photographer's stand with an umbrella clipped onto it. Just to keep our subject Marybeth dry while Laurie take her portrait.

A sweet vignette of Marybeth's bird feeders in the colorful Dunn Gardens.

Finally, we spent a day with Cindy McNatt, creator of Dirt Couture. Visit the site here and learn more about all of these artists, plus nearly 100 more artisans and crafters. You won’t be disappointed!

Garden Writer friend Julie Bawden Davis (left) visited Cindy McNatt (right) and me (center) during our photo session. It was fun to reunite with my SoCal girlfriends!

Laurie King, a dream of a photographer to work with!

Dirt Couture's canvas harvest trug - perfect for gathering flowers and herbs.

The end! Now we’re busy planning all the stories to be created this summer for 2013 issues~

Michael Tortorello, a gifted writer whose work regularly appears in the NYT Home section, set up a phone interview with me last week. Due to time zone differences, his travel and my own travel schedule, it turned out that between the two of us, we could only find one hour that worked for a phoner! I was literally seated in Stephanie Clevenger’s SUV, which was parked in front of The Red Barn – the gathering place for Yakima Master Gardeners. The minute Michael and I finished up the Q&A, which he recorded, I dashed into the barn and gave a Container Design presentation to about 75 MGs . Whew.

I immediately thought of the brilliantly beautiful Pike Place Market stall operated by Alm Hill Gardens (Gretchen Hoyt and Ben Craft, owners). This is the single best place in Seattle for organic tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, lilies, and other amazing crops that come later in the year – like lilacs and peonies. Their farm is located in Everson, Wash., close to the Canadian border, and Alm Hill is a gold-standard flower fixture at the Market. My go-to source! Plus, since we have a 2-page spread on Gretchen and Alm Hill in The 50 Mile Bouquet, it seemed fitting to take the photo there.

I met freelance photographer Kevin Casey at the stall on Monday afternoon. My flower-seller pal Max Clement was working, as he does most Mondays, and he indulged us by stashing Kevin’s gear and my stuff while we did the photography. It was certainly less painful that I thought it would be, thanks to Kevin’s easygoing style and also the way he let me know what “worked” and what didn’t. Do I smile? Do I look serious? Ugh!

But I had a chance to turn the tables on Kevin, too. I asked him to pose with me for a photo that Max shot with my Iphone. We look goofy, but who cares? It was way fun and an unforgettable experience. Turns out, Kevin is an old newspaper staffer like me, so we compared notes about editors and writers with whom we’ve both worked in the past. It really is a small world.

Last evening, I received an email from Mary Robson telling me that she’d seen the story on the NYT’s web site. It’s also fitting that I first heard from Mary, a dear friend to so many gardeners and readers from her days as a popular columnist with The Seattle Times, and as King Co.’s Extension Agent who trained hundreds of Master Gardeners over the years. Mary and I co-authored The Washington-Oregon Gardener’s Guide in 2004 (and Lola was our publicist then – see what a small world it is?). What a treat to hear it first from her – the best co-author a girl could ever have.

This morning, the “real” print edition arrived in our driveway. Bruce went out to get it first and used the edge of the Home section to tickle my face and wake me up at about 6:30 a.m. Later in the day, friends texted and emailed their own photos taken of the story in the print edition and Ipad version.

I know that the 24-hour high is about to wind down, but then again, maybe not. There is something called an after-life for stories. I know because when my own articles are posted online I’m always surprised to see that they have an extended shelf life, sometimes for years.

For now, I’m just grateful and happy to have been part of the experience. Something great is coming from the combined creative efforts of two people who adore and admire flower farmers and floral designers. So as my friend, the late Linda Plato, would have said: “It’s all good.”

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.