Flowers on Friendship Day — August 3rd, 2014

by Kit Wertz

In 1919, Hall­mark found­ed Friend­ship Day to be the first Sun­day in August. It was intend­ed to be a day for peo­ple of all ages to cel­e­brate their friend­ship by send­ing each oth­er cards. By 1940, no one was inter­est­ed in send­ing cards and the trend died out. In 1998, Win­nie the Pooh was named by the Unit­ed Nations as the Ambas­sador of Friend­ship and in 2011, the UN  made July 30th Inter­na­tion­al Friend­ship Day. How­ev­er, most  coun­tries cel­e­brate on the first Sun­day of August!

On this Friend­ship Day, Flower Duet is host­ing a group of friends at our flo­ral design stu­dio for a pri­vate flower party.

We’ll be teach­ing the ladies how to cre­ate their own flo­ral designs to take home to enjoy or give away to friends. It will be a won­der­ful way to cel­e­brate Friend­ship Day.

Per­haps you would like to make a flo­ral design to give to your friend? Here is a quick flower recipe and step-by-step pho­tos for cre­at­ing a love­ly design to give to your best bud­dy on Sun­day (or any day of the year!)

All flow­ers pur­chased at Trad­er Joe’s. You could also source from a local Farm­ers Mar­ket, gro­cery store or if you are lucky a whole­saler close to you. NOTE: The mums, ros­es and stock are avail­able year-round, but Dahlias are most­ly only around in the sum­mer­time. So get them while they are hot!

Flower Recipe:

• 7 stems Pur­ple Dahlias
• 8 stems Ker­mit Mums
• 13 stems small head­ed Hot Pink Roses
• 7 stems Laven­der Stock

Sup­plies:

• Flower Food — came with flow­ers — use it!
• White Cube vase — 4x4x4 inch­es — opaque con­tain­ers are great because they hide the stems
• Flo­ral twine — you can use rub­ber bands or kitchen twine
• Flo­ral cutters

Total Cost about $23 for flow­ers and $4 for the vase.

Friend­ship Day Flower Design Instructions

Step 1: Clean all the leaves off the stems and sep­a­rate stems so that each stem is about the same length. It’s best to remove all green­ery on a stem that will be below the water line in a vase. This will help the water stay clean and enable the flower stems to stay unclogged.

Step 2: Make small bun­dles of flow­ers using 2–3 stems of each type of flower and tying them togeth­er with a rub­ber band or twine. I used flo­ral twine because I was out of rub­ber bands and it is more Eco-friendly!

Step 3: You’ll end up with about 3–4 bun­dles. Place each in a small, low con­tain­er full of water and flower food. Place them so you lock the stems in place.

Step 4: When plac­ing the bun­dles, be sure to have the low­est blooms of each bun­dle just rest on the lip of the vase. This ensures you don’t see any “stems” above the top of the vase and lends itself to a mod­ern and lux­u­ri­ous look.

 Step 5: Fin­ish adding the bun­dles, write a card to your friend and give it away for Friend­ship Day!

Flower Tool: Racking Gerbera Daisies

By Casey Cole­man Schwartz

Ger­ber Daisies are a joy to work with and to look at. The hap­py faces and mul­ti­tude of col­ors are extra­or­di­nary. Their stems how­ev­er can chal­lenge your design on a reg­u­lar basis.  This can be helped.

I pur­chased a grow­ers’ box last week and they were out of water and lying flat. I need­ed to sus­pend them some­how so the stems would get strong and straight.

I had to rack my brain….“Aha, a rack with a buck­et under­neath. Per­fect,” I thought.  I pulled the Ger­bers out of the box and snipped a half inch off the base of the stem and slipped the stem between the grid of the rack and presto, a sus­pend­ing Ger­ber, with a straight stem com­ing right up!

Ger­bers also love to drink lots of water, caus­ing their heads to get very full and heavy, mak­ing them droop eas­i­ly. So, when you put them in a vase, try to lim­it their vase water and add just enough to keep them hydrated.

Teach Your Children Well: Flower Arranging

By Casey Cole­man Schwartz

Young Learn­ers

Cros­by, Stills, Nash and Young sang it best….”Teach your Chil­dren Well…“

We do our best. We teach our chil­dren every day, and we teach oth­er chil­dren as often as we can and we love it.

Whether it is about bugs, birds or flow­ers, it’s all relat­ed and increas­es aware­ness of the entire world around them.  My sons, Will and Sam, went on a bird-watch­ing tour while we were on the East Coast this sum­mer and those two hours shaped them for the remain­der of the trip and con­tin­ue on since we have returned to Los Ange­les. They point out flow­ers to me along our walks in the neigh­bor­hood and at the gro­cery store, they even iden­ti­fy flow­ers by name or com­ment if I had just used them for an event.

Kit’s twins who are 3 1/2 years old are already design­ing and have shown they have com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent design aes­thet­ics, are com­plete­ly fear­less and have embraced the nor­mal­cy of it.

The daugh­ter of a co-work­er spends a lot of time at the stu­dio with us, and I have been teach­ing her a few tricks and tips. She spends her morn­ings in Jr. Life­guards and in the after­noon she is ready to help me with clean­ing flow­ers and loves to see what she can cre­ate with all the left­overs.  She has made some com­bi­na­tions that I would not think to put togeth­er and they are amaz­ing­ly sweet.

We have an intern this sum­mer, he is the son of a friend of mine. He is 17 and just grad­u­at­ed from high school and will be head­ing to a four-year col­lege in Sep­tem­ber. He had expressed this inter­est about floristry to his moth­er, who relayed it to me. He is total­ly game for anything.

So far this sum­mer we have cre­at­ed 14 arrange­ments togeth­er using three dif­fer­ent tech­niques, built the inside of four, 25-inch tall vas­es with man­zani­ta branch­es, sand, shells and sea stars. Togeth­er, we’ve mixed cement, cut PVC pipe and tack­led the ever-glam­orous task of clean­ing many, many used vas­es and buck­ets. He is get­ting a behind-the-scenes view of a flower busi­ness. He is real­iz­ing that he has a keen sense of design and detail. He admit­ted that he had no idea what to expect and is hap­py to be learn­ing so much. We have a full month of August ahead of us, so he will con­tin­ue to bloom and learn. Our job is to teach them well. And we love it.

Manhattan Beach Wedding at a Private Residence

By Flower Duet

Here are a few designs that our 17-year-old intern helped us cre­ate for a Man­hat­tan Beach wed­ding at the end of July. This wed­ding was in a pri­vate home, so the flow­ers were treat­ed as accents to the love­ly beach envi­rons. All designs by Flower Duet.

 New Farmers Market on Wall Street: Saturdays 10 a.m. — 3 p.m.

By Flower Duet

[pul­lquote align=“left” type=“simple”]Mission: Increase foot traf­fic into the flower mar­ket with a week­ly event that pro­motes improved fresh food access with rea­son­ably priced high-qual­i­ty per­ish­ables that ben­e­fit all while sup­port­ing Cal­i­for­nia small & mid-size farms. Result, enrich the health & over­all qual­i­ty for the com­mu­ni­ties in which we work & live.[/pullquote]

There is a new place to shop for fresh local pro­duce in down­town Los Ange­les and it’s right in the mid­dle of our favorite place to buy fresh local flow­ers — the Los Ange­les Flo­ral Dis­trict! On July 26th, The Wall Farm­ers Mar­ket was launched amid fan­fare that includ­ed a rib­bon cut­ting, cook­ing demon­stra­tions, live music, aer­i­al per­form­ers, food ven­dors and local politicians.

The mar­ket has fresh pro­duce as well as flow­ers and plants and will be open each Sat­ur­day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wall Street between 7th and 8th Streets Rain or Shine.

Be sure to note this the next time you trav­el down to the flower mart. Stop by and pick up some fresh fruit and veg­gies along with your flow­ers. Just be sure not to dis­play your flower designs next to any ripen­ing fruit!

View more pho­tos on Face­book or on Yelp. Know that Flower Duet offers guid­ed group and pri­vate tours of the Los Ange­les Flower Dis­trict. Our next sched­uled group tour is Octo­ber 25, 2014.

Book Review: Summer Reading Recommendations Include More Florist Mysteries!

It’s sum­mer and time for some light read­ing for the plane, the beach or your com­fy couch at home. Last year, we wrote about The Flower Shop Mys­ter­ies by Kate Collins. This year we want to high­light two more authors who write mys­tery nov­els that fea­ture florists as ama­teur sleuths. Thank good­ness that Agatha Christie gave us Miss Marple or where would we be with­out all these fun-light­heart­ed mysteries?

Theo Bloomer Mysteries

Joan Hadley’s Theo Bloomer mys­ter­ies from the late 1980s are a fun flash­back to a time when Kit was in col­lege and Casey was gal­li­vant­i­ng around the globe on cruise ships design­ing flow­ers for pre­mi­um pas­sen­gers. You can pick up a used copy online for a few pen­nies or hunt one down at your local library book sale!

[one_half]

In The Dead­ly Ack­ee, retired florist Theo Bloomer lucks into what appears to be a per­fect sit­u­a­tion — escort­ing his teenage niece and her five friends to lush Jamaica, where he can study the trop­i­cal flo­ra to his heart’s delight. But there are ser­pents in par­adise; his squab­bling charges are enough to dri­ve even mild-man­nered Theo to drink, and when an old friend from the CIA turns up, it’s more than coin­ci­dence. But when a body is found float­ing in the resort pool, Theo’s vaca­tion turns mur­der­ous, and only he can solve the mys­tery before anoth­er vic­tim is found.

[/one_half][one_half_last]

In The Night-Bloom­ing Cereus, Theo Bloomer, a retired Con­necti­cut florist, dis­cov­ers that his niece, Dor­rie Caldicott, refus­es to leave a kib­butz in Israel because her Vas­sar room­mate may be involved with some dan­ger­ous char­ac­ters impli­cat­ed in gun-run­ning and terrorism.[/one_half_last]

The Lake District Mysteries

Rebec­ca Tope has writ­ten numer­ous mys­tery nov­els and three of which fea­ture a florist as the sleuth. In her Lake Dis­trict Mys­tery series, florist Per­sim­mon ‘Sim­my’ Brown has moved to the beau­ti­ful region of the Lake Dis­trict to be near­er her charis­mat­ic par­ents. These are more recent and can be read as eBooks or pur­chased online.