Beer Garden Inspiration for Floral Designs

Vases Can Be Anything Watertight: How about a Beer Mug? Or Tulip Glass?

By Kit Wertz

In our flower arrang­ing work­shops and class­es, we tell our stu­dents, “A vase can be any­thing, as long as it’s water­tight.” This month, our focus on vase and flower designs is inspired by the dif­fer­ent col­ors of craft beer and the unique shape of beer glass­es. Yes, beer glasses.

As con­nois­seurs of the craft brew­ery craze close to our home stu­dio in Tor­rance (local brew­ers like Abso­lu­tion, Monk­ish and Smog City) and dur­ing our trav­els, we’ve tak­en our flo­ral design inspi­ra­tion from the dif­fer­ent shapes of glass­es used for the dif­fer­ent types of beer.

Accord­ing to Beer Advo­cate, the shape of glass­ware will impact the head that forms on the beer when you pour it. The foam cre­at­ed by pour­ing a beer releas­es the aro­mas in the beer and can also help cre­ate a silky mouth feel. Plus, it looks cool. So, each type of glass is designed to cap­ture the foam so the drinker can enjoy the beer’s fla­vor better.

Each glass is rec­om­mend­ed to match a type of beer and I thought it would be a fun and chal­leng­ing way to match flow­ers with the beer and its glass shape. While on vaca­tion on the East Coast, I vis­it­ed my local farm­ers’ mar­ket, Trad­er Joe’s and then col­lect­ed var­i­ous green­ery from my par­ents’ gar­den to cre­ate these fun flo­ral beer ideas.

Per­haps you can make your own flo­ral beer gar­den for your next par­ty or gathering!

Pilsner Glass = Amber Ale and Magenta Flowers

Glass Type: Pil­sner Glass — A pil­sner glass holds lots of types of beers from Amer­i­can Amber Ales to Pale Lagers.

Beer: Fat Tire Amber Ale - Brewed by New Bel­gium Brew­ing Com­pa­ny in Ft. Collins, Colorado.

This is the first craft beer I can remem­ber tast­ing. When I lived in Vail, Col­orado in the ear­ly 1990s, the news­pa­per office where I worked was con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed two floors above a brew pub. This beer was one of the fea­tured brews. It took years before Fat Tire made it out of Col­orado to oth­er bars and when it first appeared on draft in Los Ange­les, I was delight­ed. I thought it was great when I could final­ly pur­chase bot­tles and now it even comes in cans. I guess a lot can hap­pen in 25 years of craft brewing!

Flower Recipe:  I chose to go with the dark­er red amber col­or of the beer as my flower col­or cue and designed a col­lec­tion of magen­ta Zin­nias, Celosia and added red Coleus leaves as accents. To bright­en the over­all look, I added some bi-col­or magen­ta and white mini spray carnations.

Glass Beer Stein = Blonde Ale with Yellow Zinnias

Glass Type: Beer Stein — Good for a huge vari­ety of beers from Ales to Lagers to Stouts

Beer: Bridge Builder Blonde Ale — by Park­way Brew­ing Com­pa­ny brewed in Salem, Virginia

Flower Recipe: Gold­en col­ored flow­ers look great with a gold­en col­ored beer like a Blonde Ale. I used the yel­low Zin­nias from Potomac Veg­etable Farms and added the blue Salvia and Ager­a­tum. To round out the design, I added var­ie­gat­ed gold­en Euony­mus and Japan­ese Maple branches.

About the Beer Mug: Heavy, stur­dy, large and with han­dle, the mug is a seri­ous (and fun) piece of glass­ware that comes in many sizes and shapes. The coolest part of drink­ing from a mug is that you can clink them togeth­er with more con­fi­dence than oth­er types of beer glass­es and they hold loads of beer.

Ben­e­fits: Easy to drink out of. Holds plen­ty of vol­ume and great for a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent beers! Choose one!

Tulip Glass = Cream Ale and Orange Tulips

Glass Type: Tulip Glass — Good for Pale Ales, Lam­bic or Scotch Ales.

Beer: Hardy­wood Cream Ale — Brewed in Rich­mond, Virginia

Flower Recipe: Tulips! What bet­ter flower to put in a tulip glass but tulips!? But real­ly, any flower looks great in a stemmed vase. The best thing about tulips is the water will stay nice and clear for days. The oth­er cool thing was these tulips were grown in Virginia!

A stemmed glass,  tulip-shaped, cap­tures the head of the beer. Scotch Ales are often served in a “this­tle glass,” which is a mod­i­fied tulip glass that resem­bles Scot­land’s nation­al flower. I am a big fan of cream ales which are sim­i­lar to Scotch Ales, so that is what I added to this pret­ty glass. Tulip or This­tle-style glass­es are often used with these beer styles:

• Amer­i­can Dou­ble / Impe­r­i­al IPA
• Amer­i­can Wild Ale
• Bel­gian Dark Ale
• Bel­gian IPA
• Bel­gian Pale Ale
• Bel­gian Strong Dark Ale
• Bel­gian Strong Pale Ale
• Bière de Garde
• Flan­ders Oud Bruin
• Flan­ders Red Ale
• Gueuze
• Lam­bic — Fruit
• Quadru­pel (Quad)
• Sai­son / Farm­house Ale
• Scotch Ale / Wee Heavy

Weizen Glass = Wit Beer & Grapefruit Colored Zinnias

Glass Type: Weizen Glass. Good for Bavar­i­an-type Wheat Beers.

Beer: Opti­mal Wit by Port City Brew­ing, Alexan­dria, Vir­ginia. “Tastes Like Sun­shine and Happiness.”

Flower Recipe: These pink Zin­nias remind­ed me of pink grape­fruit which in turn made me think of the cit­rus over­tones of a good wheat beer or Hefeweizen. I added mint from the gar­den which had start­ed to flower and mim­ic­ked the look of white Veron­i­ca. I added a pret­ty pink and white green­ery called Hout­tuy­nia ‘Chameleon’ I found in my Pop’s gar­den and  lit­tle bits of Chamomile add to the del­i­cate design.

Hofbräuhaus München Miniature Beer Stein = Mixed Mini Blooms

When I grad­u­at­ed from col­lege, Casey and I back­packed through Europe. We stayed in youth hos­tels and lit­tle guest hous­es (pen­sions). One of her cruise ship­mates, Hannes, was from Bavaria and he took us to Munich to drink its world-famous beer at the Hof­bräuhaus. I found this lit­tle mug (see below) I bought in Munich all those years ago hid­ing at my par­en­t’s house while I was cre­at­ing this beer gar­den flo­ral design project and thought it would be so cute with a mix of all the flow­ers I used for all the beer gar­den designs.

Nonic Pint Glass = Porter and Rudbeckia Flowers

Glass Type: Non­ic Pint — great for Stouts and Porters

Beer: Yuengling Porter by Yuengling Brew­ing — Amer­i­ca’s old­est Brew­ery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania

Flower Recipe: Chero­kee Sun­set Rud­beck­ias (Black-eyed Susans) are the per­fect flow­ers to pair with dark brown stouts and porters.  To bright­en the arrange­ment, I added Chamomile, orange fern and dark red Bay­ber­ry branch­es (gor­geous but thorny).

Sourcing Flowers for our Beer Garden

Casey and I were in Vir­ginia vis­it­ing our par­ents for parts of July and August and so this mon­th’s news is a bit short (vaca­tion edi­tion) and we are sourc­ing flow­ers from the East Coast.

For my beer gar­den flo­ral design project, I was delight­ed to buy flow­ers at one of the local farm­ers’ mar­kets in Falls Church. There were two ven­dors with local­ly grown mixed bou­quets. I loved the bright col­ors from Potomac Veg­etable Farms and two of these col­lec­tions made up the bulk of my flower recipes for the beer glass vase inspiration.

I real­ly want­ed to fea­ture tulips inside a Tulip glass and was delight­ed to find Virig­inia-grown tulips at the local Trad­er Joe’s — in late July!  I bought 20 tulips for $9.99! They were beau­ti­ful and fresh and fun to work with for this lit­tle project!

King Proteas as a Flower Crown

Last month when I attend­ed the Slow Flow­ers Sum­mit in Seat­tle, I met the flower farmer design­er, Mud Baron, who is behind the art­sy #flow­er­son­my­head move­ment. He cre­ates amaz­ing bou­quets and then has peo­ple from all walks of life put them on their heads and pose for a photo.

After my July Pro­tea class at the stu­dio, I had these amaz­ing King Pro­teas from Mayesh and had to do some­thing fun with them. So, I tried to make a cool “flo­ral crown” made from King Proteas.

Then, I enjoyed it in a vase for the next week! Hope you like it and gain some of your own inspi­ra­tion to put flow­ers on your head!

Baby Shower Flower Arranging Party

I was delight­ed to teach a fan­tas­tic group of women in hon­or of a friend who is hav­ing her first child. Hei­di and I worked togeth­er back in 2000 which was one year after my sis­ter and I found­ed our flower business.

When Casey and I formed our busi­ness, the mod­el was to bring flow­ers to peo­ple’s homes and hold a flower arrang­ing party.

Hei­di (the mom-to-be) reached out and asked me if I still “did those flower arrang­ing par­ties?” I said, “Yes!”

Here are the flow­ers we cre­at­ed for the par­ty. Pink ros­es, Hyper­icum berries and orchids where the stars in a pil­low of white Hydrangea. A per­fect trib­ute for a new baby girl due this month.

Flower Gift Ideas from the National Gallery of Art

By Kit Wertz

Each sum­mer, Kit and Casey of Flower Duet bring our kids  to the East Coast to vis­it grand­par­ents, cousins and friends. One of those friends for Kit is the Nation­al Gallery of Art! I love this place and what I love almost as much as the art is the gift shop!

Here are some cool flower-theme gifts I spied and hope you can find them, too!

Book Rec­om­men­da­tions:

Bunch Up!: A Step-by-Step Guide for Bud­ding Florists — by Irene Cuzzaniti
Pub­lished in 2016, this is a fun book with great pho­tos to show you steps of how to cre­ate each flower recipe in the book. At 192 pages, it is filled with ideas and time­ly designs from today’s flo­ral world. This is a great choice for some­one new to flo­ral design.

Illus­tra­tions: 160

About the Author: Imme­di­ate­ly after her degree in Archi­tec­ture of Gar­dens and Land­scap­ing, Irene Cuz­zan­i­ti found­ed a nature design and arrange­ment prac­tice called “Twen­tytrees”. Her way of work­ing is broad and ver­sa­tile. She is the author of tuto­ri­als and arti­cles for mag­a­zines and the cura­tor of work­shops that aim to bring peo­ple clos­er to nature and embrace good envi­ron­men­tal prac­tices. Twen­tytrees is above all, a lifestyle accord­ing to Cuzzaniti.

Where to Pur­chase: In book­stores, online or at the Nation­al Gallery of Art in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

The Flow­er­ing Year Col­or­ing Book — Leila Duly

Card Game: Flower Fam­i­lies — A Go Fish Game

Mini Sticky Notes — Page Pals Gar­den Bou­quet Flags