Five Tips for St. Patrick’s Day Flowers

by Kit Wertz

There are many ways to dec­o­rate your home or office for St. Patrick­’s Day with flow­ers, plants, and oth­er organ­ic mate­ri­als. Here are a few ideas for you to help bring out the Irish in you. Check out our past arti­cle on green flow­ers for inspiration.

Tip 1: Hellebores

Helle­bores are near­ing the end of their sea­son, so we are see­ing them at the mart. They are also great plants to grow in the gar­den for ear­ly spring flow­ers. We love these uncom­mon flow­ers in bridal bou­quets and bou­ton­nieres, but the plants also look great on their own. I’ve placed them as the first tip since they come in a vibrant spring green col­or which is per­fect for any March celebration.

Tip 2: Flowering Branches

Our flower mar­ket and gar­dens are full of trees that are just bud­ding with flow­ers. Cher­ry Blos­soms, For­syth­ia, Plum and more are great choic­es to add a love­ly spring tex­ture, height and light­ness to any flo­ral arrange­ment. They also look great on their own. You can learn how to force flow­er­ing branch­es from one of our past articles.

Tip 3: Purple Shamrocks

Pur­ple Sham­rocks offer a fun col­or twist on St. Pad­dy’s Day. You can grow your own, cut them for a lit­tle posy and share a lit­tle luck, too! Where to pur­chase bulbs for Pur­ple Sham­rock plants.

Tip 4: Potatoes

Pota­toes can be a great way to add a lit­tle flair to your place card table designs. Below, we used pota­toes as a plat­form for green flow­ers like spi­der Mums or these green Echev­e­ria suc­cu­lent rosettes.

Tip 5: Cabbage as a Vase Liner

We often tell our stu­dents not to keep any leaves below the water line in the vase, but for a one-day event like St. Patrick­’s Day, adding a few cab­bage leaves as a vase lin­er in a cylin­der adds to a “corned beef and cab­bage” din­ner theme.

Flowers Make You Happy

by Casey Schwartz

What do an FBI agent, Rock­et Sci­en­tist, Accoun­tant, Cana­di­an Moun­tie, Inte­ri­or Design­er, Police Dis­patch­er, Girl Scout, Egypt Tour guide, and Painter have in com­mon? Each is a past or present stu­dent of the flo­ral design work­shops held with Flower Duet. Every month over the next year, we are going to be fea­tur­ing our amaz­ing, tal­ent­ed flo­ral design stu­dents and how their rela­tion­ship with flow­ers has changed. We hope you’ll find their expe­ri­ence inspir­ing, too!

Floral Design Student Tina C.

“I’ve had such an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence train­ing with Casey and Kit from Flower Duet. These ladies are amaz­ing teach­ers and I’m so lucky to be the stu­dent. They’ve made me much more con­fi­dent and my skill set has improved tremen­dous­ly. My approach to flow­ers has changed to an edu­cat­ed one. I no longer roll the dice hop­ing I pick the right flow­ers, I know I am. I’ve been train­ing with them for close to a year now and every time I take a class or join them down­town I learn some­thing new. I now design with con­fi­dence, excite­ment and even more pas­sion than before! I can’t express how valu­able their design class­es have been to me and my growth as a fel­low design­er. These Sis­ters are the Best of the Best.”

Tina C., Senior Mar­ket­ing Coor­di­na­tor and Flo­ral Designer

How Flowers Impact Emotions

Last month we fea­tured flo­ral design day and men­tioned a study on how flow­ers make us hap­py. Our flo­ral design stu­dents know that flow­ers make them hap­py. That is prob­a­bly the won­der­ful feed­back we hear most often. Here are some more fun facts on flower hap­pi­ness from the web­site globalrose.com. Enjoy!

Learn to be a Flower Farmer Intensive Workshop

by Kit Wertz

Join Floret’s founder, Erin Ben­za­kein, for an inten­sive, hands-on, three-day work­shop focused exclu­sive­ly on flower farm­ing and flo­ral design uti­liz­ing high-qual­i­ty, sea­son­al cut flow­ers. As one of the nation’s fore­most “farmer florists,” Erin is known as much for her dis­tinc­tive design style as her exper­tise in organ­ic cut-flower farm­ing. If you are inter­est­ed in flower farm­ing as a busi­ness or hob­by and love to arrange flow­ers, you must sign up for this work­shop. It’s offered by Flo­ret Flow­ers in Wash­ing­ton State and will sell out fast!

When: April 3rd, 4th & 5th 2014

Where: Mount Ver­non, WA

What: This three-day hands-on inten­sive is specif­i­cal­ly designed for “farmer-florists” seek­ing to enhance their grow­ing and design skills, flower fanat­ics wish­ing to expand their cut­ting gar­dens in a BIG way and dream­ers ready to make the leap and start their own flower business.

Reserve Your Space: Reser­va­tions for Workshop

Slow Flowers Website Resource

by Flower Duet

Debra Prinz­ing, the author of many books on gar­den­ing and flo­ral design, has announced a new web­site called SlowFlowers.com, which will be a direc­to­ry of eco-friend­ly florists and flower sell­ers in the Unit­ed States. It’s just been fund­ed through crowd­sourc­ing and will be live soon.

It will be a nation­wide guide to florists, shops, and stu­dios who design with Amer­i­can-grown flow­ers through­out the USA. Debra answers,“Why is this impor­tant?” on her site. She says, “Increas­ing­ly, peo­ple are ask­ing: Where were these flow­ers grown? How far did they have to trav­el to get here? I want to meet the farmer! When you choose local­ly-grown, Amer­i­can flow­ers, they are in-sea­son and def­i­nite­ly more sus­tain­able than any prod­uct that was shipped here on jum­bo jets from anoth­er con­ti­nent. We want to help you find the best U.S. flo­ral design­ers who are com­mit­ted to sourc­ing from Amer­i­can flower farms,” says Prinzing.

We host­ed Debra at our stu­dio last year when she pro­mot­ing her books, Slow Flow­ers and The 50-Mile Bou­quet. Sign up on SlowFlowers.com to receive emails about this new online guide!

Book Review: Inspire — The Art of Living with Nature

This book comes out today, March 1, 2014, so we’ve not seen it yet, but will def­i­nite­ly order a copy for our library. What’s not to love about using branch­es, flow­ers and berries from your gar­den com­bined with oth­er flow­ers you can buy at your local farmer’s mar­ket or florist.

From Amazon.com: Divid­ed into five chap­ters on Hedgerow, Veg­etable Patch, Orchard, Flower Gar­den and Beach, here are more that 50 ideas rang­ing from helle­bores dis­played in test tubes to a wreath made from hydrangeas, spring nar­cis­si plant­ed in wood­en wine box­es, a mantle­piece dis­play incor­po­rat­ing apples and pears, dis­plays of peb­bles, coral and shells, sea urchins fash­ioned into nap­kins rings, hol­lowed-out red cab­bages used as vas­es, a col­or­ful posy of chill­ies and a styl­ish wall dis­play of antlers and feathers.

Check out author, Wil­low Cross­ley’s blog for more ideas!

Floral Design Tool: Raquettes Floral Foam

When you want to cre­ate a real­ly large flo­ral dis­play for an arch or per­go­la, you’ll have to use a lot of flo­ral foam to keep flow­ers like Hydrangea or Pink Jas­mine fluffy and perky through­out wind, sun and the wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny or par­ty. We will use this type of foam for a bridal show at Los Verdes Golf Club on Sun­day to dec­o­rate the new Per­go­la. Check out our Face­book page next week to see our work at the show!

• Deluxe OASIS® Flo­ral Foam Maxlife Bar wrapped in per­fo­rat­ed green poly film to sat­u­rate quick­ly and hold mois­ture even longer.
• Avail­able in two lengths: 18“L x 4“W x 3“H and 27“L x 4“W x 3“H.
• Rigid plas­tic base with two drilled holes pro­vides flex­i­bil­i­ty for final dis­play on man­tels, altars, stages or oth­er locations.
• Per­fect for cre­at­ing larg­er hor­i­zon­tal or ver­ti­cal arrangements.
• Where to buy a 27″ Oasis Raque­tte Hold­er? You can find them online or at your local whole­sale flo­ral supplier.