Squish, Squash and Simply Gourd-geous — Try adding Gourds and other Dried Organic Items to Your Fall Floral Designs

by Casey Schwartz

Fall Gourds from a farm stand in Reston, Vir­ginia last month. Pho­to: Kit Wertz

Many Uses for Pumpkins

The most well known gourd is the pump­kin. It comes in all sizes and the clas­sic round shape is most often found, but cer­tain­ly not the only shape. Head to your local pump­kin patch or gro­cery store and pick out a pump­kin. To make a vase, cut around the stem and pop off the top, scoop out the seeds and pulp, fill the pump­kin with water, add fresh flow­ers and voilà, you have nature’s own per­fect flo­ral con­tain­er. It is rea­son­ably priced, water­tight, you can select the size you need and you can throw it in the com­post pile when your squash starts to squish.
Save the seeds you scooped out to make a crunchy snack. Just rinse them, place on a cook­ie sheet, add a lit­tle salt and cook at 325 degrees Fahren­heit until they start to pop and turn slight­ly brown.

Foam Pumpkins Last a Long Time

An alter­na­tive is to use a foam pump­kin. Arti­fi­cial foam pump­kins are avail­able in a bril­liant bright orange col­or with a thick skin that can eas­i­ly be adorned with flow­ers, rib­bon, or a Sharpie mark­er pen. You could spray paint them or cov­er them in glue and add glit­ter. There are a few com­pa­nies that make these and they are won­der­ful. Funk­ins is the most well known and sold online and at some craft stores. These foam pump­kins can be carved just like the real thing and won’t rot. They can be used every year with either bat­tery lights inside if you carve a face, or just carve out a lid off and add flowers.

Pho­to Source: Funkins.com.

Gourds in Floral Design

Small­er gourds like these pic­tured at left and top are abun­dant at gro­cery stores and famers’ mar­kets in the autumn. They add great tex­ture and their col­ors work so well with the palette of fall flow­ers. Sim­ply insert a flo­ral pick or bam­boo skew­er into the bot­tom of the gourd and add to your arrangement.

Dried Floral Decorations

To extend the life of your flo­ral design, try adding dried Lotus pods, such as Kiya, Hakea, or Frog’s Mouth. Or, add Ting Ting, a rigid grass from Asia. It’s long, comes in a few vari­eties such as Mag­dale­na, Straight or Twist­ed Ting Ting and is some­times even glit­tered! (We like the plain and nat­ur­al Ting Ting.) It is easy to cut and place low in arrange­ments or to keep tall to add gen­tle height to designs with­out the bulk.

Make Your Own Gourd-geous Floral Design with Flower Duet

Join Flower Duet at The Hunt­ing­ton Library lat­er this month to cre­ate a flo­ral arrange­ment using gourds and dried flo­ral ele­ments such as the ones men­tioned above. Book now while there is still space. The bonus of book­ing a class at The Hunt­ing­ton, is that you have a pass for the day to stay and enjoy the love­ly gar­dens and art collections.

Flower Duet expands its Offerings on Designing with Succulent Plants

by Casey Schwartz

We shared Kit’s suc­cu­lent wreath that we cre­at­ed at the end of Sep­tem­ber. It has been rest­ing and root­ing for the past month and is just about ready to hang. I made one as well and I have watched it trans­form and fill in over the past month. The sedum has grown and filled in and the jade is bloom­ing (pic­tured above.)

Flower Duet’s Mini Succulent Nursery

We have been so enam­ored with suc­cu­lents over the past cou­ple of years that we have found our­selves with a rather large col­lec­tion of plants which in turn con­tin­ues to offer a boun­ti­ful har­vest to cre­ate wreaths and oth­er suc­cu­lent-based flo­ral designs. Just a few years of plant­i­ngs afford­ed over 700 cut­tings which were trans­ferred into six wreaths for the upcom­ing holidays.

We decid­ed that our pas­sion for suc­cu­lents was far from wan­ing, so I decid­ed to turn an under­used part of my back­yard into a suc­cu­lent nursery.

Before the tran­si­tion in the backyard…

To cre­ate a com­fort­able grow­ing envi­ron­ment, we col­lect­ed aban­doned wood ship­ping pal­lets left near to our flo­ral design stu­dio, added legs to them and gave each one a few coats of “Oops paint” to pro­tect them. “Oops paint” is found at hard­ware stores or paint shops. The paint col­or was cus­tom mixed for a cus­tomer, but it was not quite right so it’s offered for sale at a frac­tion of the orig­i­nal price. Some­times a gal­lon of high end exte­ri­or semi-gloss paint drops from $35.00 to $5.00 just to get it out of the store.

After the trans­for­ma­tion into a new nurs­ery ready for plantings!

Those odd oranges, yel­low and blues are per­fect for adding a pop of col­or in a rather green pal­let of suc­cu­lents. We also used pots and con­tain­ers from past suc­cu­lent plant pur­chas­es, replant­ed cut­tings and we have sep­a­rat­ed some of our suc­cu­lents that have just got­ten too big for their containers.

We will be offer­ing some great flo­ral design class­es work­ing with suc­cu­lents and fresh flow­ers, as well as liv­ing art.

Flower Duet Offers 2012 Flower Arranging Workshops, Flower Mart Tours and Classes

Flower Duet offers a vari­ety of ser­vices includ­ing cus­tom flo­ral designs for wed­dings, cor­po­rate events, birth­day par­ties, Bat Mitz­vahs and Bar Mitz­vahs, retire­ments, sym­pa­thy designs, hotel instal­la­tions, restau­rant instal­la­tions and more! We also teach flower arrang­ing at our design stu­dio in the South Bay of Los Ange­les and at The Hunt­ing­ton Library in San Mari­no. We offer cus­tom pri­vate lessons, flower arrang­ing par­ties, work­shops and flower tours through­out the year. Each class, work­shop, par­ty and les­son reflects sea­son­al flow­ers and the cur­rent hot flo­ral design trend.

We Love Our Floral Design Students

We have a wide vari­ety of stu­dents who attend our class­es. Many of them are wed­ding plan­ners who want to learn the basics of flo­ral design just in case they need to fix a cen­ter­piece or bou­ton­niere dur­ing a wed­ding. We also have a lot of bud­ding flo­ral entre­pre­neurs, many of whom just bought a flo­ral shop and then real­ize, they need to learn the ropes — and quick­ly! For these stu­dents, we offer a cus­tom set of class­es which accom­mo­dates each stu­den­t’s indi­vid­ual needs.

Calling all Floral Enthusiasts and Flower Hobbyists

Our “flo­ral enthu­si­ast” stu­dents con­tin­ue to amaze us. We have a num­ber of reg­u­lar flo­ral denizens who return to our class­es each month and con­tin­ue to chal­lenge us to cre­ate new flower arrange­ments and tech­niques that rep­re­sent the cur­rent trend. These won­der­ful stu­dents, men and women, are game to meet the chal­lenges. We con­tin­ue to be amazed, too, with our new flo­ral design stu­dents. These flower enthu­si­asts are often stunned to find their hid­den tal­ent fol­low­ing a ner­vous arrival to our flo­ral design work­shops or class­es. If you have nev­er tried a flower arrang­ing class, please join us. We will teach you what you need to know to have the con­fi­dence to buy flow­ers, make them look great in a design and have that design last a long time in the vase or container.

Young Floral Designers Rule!

We are also inspired by the young design­ers who wow us every time they lis­ten and watch our flo­ral design demon­stra­tions and then go on to cre­ate amaz­ing designs. Each year, we teach a num­ber of chil­dren’s class­es at The Hunt­ing­ton Library, Art Col­lec­tions and Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in San Mari­no, Calif. for chil­dren ages 7 through 12. They come up with unique vari­a­tions of our designs.

2012 schedule (so far)

Flower Duet Design Studio and Showroom, Torrance, Calif.

All class­es fol­low option­al tours of the Los Ange­les Flo­ral Dis­trict on Sat­ur­day morn­ings. Tours take place in down­town LA from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and work­shops are held from 10 a.m. to Noon.

Learn more and reserve your spot in a work­shop at our Tor­rance, Cal­i­for­nia studio.

• Jan­u­ary 28, 2012 — Suc­cu­lents Class — Learn how to com­bine suc­cu­lents and fresh flow­ers in a mod­ern flo­ral design.
• Feb­ru­ary 25, 2012 — Trop­i­cals Class — Use trop­i­cal or exot­ic flow­ers to cre­ate an on-trend design.
• March 24, 2012 — Wed­ding Bou­quet Class — Hand-tied bou­quets that can be used as cen­ter­pieces as well!
• April 21, 2012 — Spring Cen­ter­piece Class — Inspired by the col­ors and flow­ers of spring, stu­dents will work with ranunculus.
• May 19, 2012 — Arrang­ing with Tulips Class — Learn the ins and outs of work­ing with tricky tulips.
• June — Decem­ber 2012 — More to come! Stay tuned to our work­shops page.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, Calif.

All Class­es are on Sat­ur­day morn­ings. Adult class­es are 10 a.m. to Noon. Kids’ class­es are from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Each child must be aged 7–12 and accom­pa­nied by an adult. Each flower arrang­ing class is inspired by a gar­den, art piece or exhib­it from The Huntington.

Learn more and reserve your spot in a work­shop at The Hunt­ing­ton in San Mari­no, California.

• Jan­u­ary 21, 2012 — Chi­nese Gar­den Inspired — Chi­nese New Year arrange­ment using tra­di­tion­al flow­ers and green­ery ele­ments. Adults’ and Kids’ Classes
• March 3, 2012 — Desert Gar­den Inspired — Liv­ing art piece with suc­cu­lent plants. Adult Class
• April 28, 2012 — Shake­speare Gar­den Inspired — Tall hand-tied arrange­ment in a vase. Adults’ and Kids’ Classes
• June 2, 2012 — Japan­ese Gar­den Inspired — Work­ing with cypress and fresh flow­ers for a Bon­sai style design. Adult Class
• Sep­tem­ber 8, 2012 — Cal­i­for­nia Grown Flow­ers — Use gar­den Dahlias in a loose open style design. Adults’ and Kids’ Classes
• Octo­ber 20, 2012 — Herb Gar­den Inspired — Cre­ate a cen­ter­piece using flo­ral foam, fresh herbs and fresh flow­ers. Adult Class
• Novem­ber 17, 2012 — Aus­tralian Gar­den Inspired — Using flow­ers and green­ery native to Aus­tralia, stu­dents will cre­ate a long-last­ing design. Adult Class
• Decem­ber 15, 2012 — Jun­gle Gar­den Inspired — Get a lit­tle untra­di­tion­al with a trop­i­cal wreath! Adults’ and Kids’ Classes

Book Review

Fresh Flower Arrang­ing by Mark Welford and Stephen Wicks
Pub­lished ear­li­er in 2011, this flo­ral design book has amaz­ing pho­tos, step-by-step instruc­tion, and on-trend designs. In our class­es, we often refer to the flo­ral design­ers in the UK as being cut­ting edge, and this book, by UK pub­lish­er, DK Pub­lish­ing is up to the task. The best flower arrang­ing books are the ones that show a gor­geous flower design fol­lowed by pho­tos and instruc­tions for each step of the design. It is in this aspect that Fresh Flower Arrang­ing does not dis­ap­point its read­er. It offers pho­tos and descrip­tions of each flower and green­ery stem in the design, how many stems to buy, what type of con­tain­er, how to cre­ate the stem archi­tec­ture, which green­ery or flow­ers to add first and each step of the cre­ation so you can eas­i­ly recre­ate the design. This is a must-have for your flo­ral library.