Slow Flowers in Indianapolis!

We’re celebrating Indiana-grown flowers this week!
A huge thanks to my host Mark Zelonis,  the Ruth Lilly Deputy Director of Environmental & Historic Preservation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. He and his horticultural team made my visit a huge success last weekend! 

Admittedly, it was a challenge to source locally-grown flowers at the end of April in Indiana’s Zone 5, but with the help of some really supportive flower friends, we pulled it off! THANK YOU to the team at Welch Wholesale Florists (sisters Annie and Nora), who ordered our local tulips, ranunculus and anemones — straight from flower farmers nearby!

The designers in my afternoon workshop were so happy to create their arrangements using 100% local flowers and foliage. Enjoy their work here and admire the amazing diversity of styles and interpretation of the material.

THANK YOU to the horticulture staff (Chad and Irvin) for giving me a golf cart and letting me drive around the “back lot” of the grounds to clip here and there. We gleaned baptisia foliage, oak leaf hydrangea foliage, young peony foliage, flowering dogwood, flowering redbud, hellebores galore, narcissus and euphorbia!

The horticulture staff’s awesome golf cart, filled with my early-morning cuttings!

I’m so inspired by the variety and creativity that one room of women and men expressed using the same “ingredients.”

The Slow Flowers Challenge comes to Indiana with my own creation.

Indiana-grown florals and foliage for my bouquet include:

• Baptisia foliage
• Peony foliage
• Oak leaf hydrangea foliage
• Hellebores
• Ranunculus
• Anemones
• Red bud branches

This was a week of flowers, beginning on March 22nd with my “Four Seasons Cutting Garden” lecture at the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show. Here are some one of my favorite images shared in my illustrated presentation.

I call this my “dream cutting garden,” painted by Claude Monet in 1873. The Garden at Argenteuil (Dahlias)

Overwhelming or Inspiring? A design scheme from a vintage garden book, Hardy Perennials and Herbaceous Borders, 1912. “Plan of a Rainbow Border”

I also spent time interviewing several flower farmers and floral designers, which you can hear on the Slow Flowers Podcast in coming weeks. Subscribe here for free downloads from iTunes.

This week I have two arrangements to share with you. The first was created as a demonstration ofFloral Soil, the 100% plant-based, USA-made, compostable alternative to florist’s foam. The occasion was a workshop taught by Alicia Schwede of Flirty Fleurs, focusing on “Elevated Centerpieces.”

Floral Soil’s creator Mickey Blake and I participated in the workshop to gather photos and content for her web site. I brought along my favorite glass compote, a pedestal fruit dish that was my great-grandmother’s.

Thanks to very excellent instruction from Alicia, here’s what I created. There are three pieces that created the mechanics to hold the flowers and foliage: (1) a 3-by-4-by-5-inch piece of Floral Soil; (2) a sheet of chicken wire wrapped from rim to rim of the vase; and (3) 1/4-inch waterproof cloth tape to hold it in place.

Such an elegant piece with a slender pedestal that resembles a candlestick holder. It measures 9-1/2 inches tall and the bowl is 10-inches in diameter. It is only 2-1/2 inches deep – just the challenge for NOT using foam!

A combination of my own garden cuttings plus West Coast flowers and foliage

Ingredients:

From my garden: White-blooming Pieris japonica, glossy green Sarcococca ruscifolia (also called sweet box); common boxwood; and flowering currant, a native shrub (Ribes sanguineum).

Provided by Alicia: Pink tulips and stems of lime green viburnum (most likely from British Columbia) and button-like white feverfew (Chrysanthemum parthenium), sourced from California.

A Slow Flowers Birthday Bouquet

Vivid details of melon orange and dark plum hues.

Last year, prior to the launch of Slowflowers.com, I ran a successful campaign on Indiegogo and raised nearly $18,500 from more than 200 supporters.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

Agonis foliage, grown by Mellano & Co., Carlsbad, CA

‘Mambo’ Oriental lilies, grown by Oregon Flowers, Aurora, OR

Dark purple parrot tulips, Sonshine Farms, Whidbey Island, WA

Orange double tulips, Ojeda Farms, Ethel, WA

Phalaenonpsis orchids, Orchidaceae, Walla Walla, WA

Oh joy! The hellebores are blooming quite early this year.

Up close, the detail is so lovely and intricate

For better or worse, Seattle’s uber-mild winter means that many of our early flowers are emerging weeks ahead of schedule.

I’m worried that our gardens and fields will need a lot more water this summer, but we can only say that Mother Nature decided to give us warmer temperatures and extra sunshine this year – more than previous winters in recent memory.

Diane Szukovathy and Dennis Westphall of Jello Mold Farm grew the hellebores you see here – and let me tell you, their luscious blooms were flying out of the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market when they arrived.

I snagged the *last* bunch of the plum hellebores and grabbed only 4 stems of the beautiful pale speckled ones.

Gorgeous specialty tulips also caught my eye – so much more substantial and visually arresting than the hothouse ones coming out of Canada. These were lovingly grown by Gonzalo Ojeda of Ojeda Farms, a member of the SWGMC who farms in Ethel, Washington. One bunch of 10 stems, while short, provided plenty of tulips to add dazzle to two vases.

Plum and berry hues with pale green & butter yellow in a vintage white vase.

Jasmine isn’t winter-hardy here in Seattle, but boy do I remember it clambering over the stucco retaining wall in our former garden in California’s Ventura County. On the first Thanksgiving we lived there – after moving from Seattle in 2006 – my friend Nancy, visiting from Seattle, created our entire Thanksgiving tablescape from the bounty of our new backyard – including that lacy jasmine.

Molly Sadowsky, the SWGM’s manager and principal buyer, has a secret California source for evergreen Jasmine – and the designers here in Seattle absolutely love it! Me, too! I love that the jasmine foliage is also a gorgeous aspect of this arrangement, a bonus to the fragrant flowers and buds.

Oh, and there is one element from my Seattle garden: the delicate pale yellow flowers from Epimedium, a beautiful groundcover. I only had a few stems to add, but their petals echo the Hellebores’ centers, adding a delicate texture.

Hellebores for the People
Designed by Mick & Olivia Payment,
owners of Flowers for the People 

Hellebores with orchids, roses, pincushion protea, jasmine and more – designed by Olivia and Mick Payment

Earlier this week, the SWGM hosted its first Orchid Spectacular to showcase a wide array of Local and American-grown potted and cut orchids. The Market staff invited Mick and Olivia, a brother-and-sister design team, to demonstrate how they design with orchids in arrangements and interior planters.

 

A trio of bud vases displays the season’s first hyacinths from my garden, paired with striking black pussy willow twigs grown in Washington by Jello Mold Farm.

It has been a busy few weeks so my floral design time has been limited. Sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to create an epic arrangement or centerpiece — and of course, we know that those expectations take the joy out of the total experience.

So this week’s little moment is a reminder that a few stems are often all we need to bring nature indoors and provide a glimpse of beauty when life is crazy!

These vases are widely featured in a charming book released last year by  Nancy Ross Hugo called Windowsill Art: Creating one-of-a-kind natural arrangements to celebrate the seasons (St. Lynn’s Press). Nancy describes this small vase as “the little black dress of windowsill arranging . . . the perfect foundation for whatever else you might add.”

After interviewing her for the Slow Flowers Podcast (click here to find the interview) and spending time reading this lovely book, I had to order my own set of these four bud vases. They are available fromThe Arranger’s Market, an online shop that specializes in hard-to-find, easy-to-use vases and other arranging equipment.

You can order a set of 4 “glass pyramid” bud vases for $24 plus shipping. I believe they are made from recycled glass bottles. Dimensions: Height = 4-1/4″; Width = 2.3/8″; Opening = 7/8″.

More from Slow Flowers
Seasonal choices

A sweet bunch of spring hyacinths, from Slow Flowers.

About the long stems you see here:  The typical garden hyacinth blooms on a relatively short stem – maybe 4-5 inches at the most. This limits the way hyacinths can be used in floral arrangements. According to flower farmer Gretchen Hoyt, of Alm Hill Gardens in Everson, Washington, the way to stretch those stems is to trick them into wanting more light.

“The longer you can deny them light, the more they stretch,” she explains. At the commercial flower farm, this process begins in dark coolers where bulbs are pre-chilled. When they are transferred to the greenhouse, the hyacinth crates are placed (in the shadows) beneath tables where tulips grow. If Gretchen wants to elongate those stems even further, “I’ll throw newspaper over them,” she says. Leaving bulbs on the stems is optional, but some designers do so to give the arrangement a rustic appearance.