We had a love­ly sum­mer camp at our stu­dio with over a dozen kids ages 8–15. Each morn­ing ses­sion we explored all aspects of Flower Design from basic arrang­ing to craft­ing with flow­ers to how to dye flow­ers. We explored how to keep flow­ers fresh and how to dec­o­rate drift­wood with suc­cu­lents. Each stu­dent was hands-on, took all their projects home and were eager to come back for more each day.

The kept us on our toes and were won­der­ful design­ers! We can’t wait to host anoth­er flower camp next summer!

Last year, we wrote about the 2018–2019 Cer­ti­fied Amer­i­can Grown Flower Guide and each class we teach, we are asked where to buy fresh flow­ers close to home. Now, there is an online source where you can find who is a Cer­ti­fied Amer­i­can Grown flower farmer.

If you go to the web­site: https://www.americangrownflowers.org/, nav­i­gate to the “The Cer­ti­fied” link to see whole­salers and farm­ers of local­ly grown flowers!

Why is this impor­tant? From the website:

Cer­ti­fied Amer­i­can Grown is a uni­fied and diverse coali­tion of U.S. flower farms rep­re­sent­ing small and large enti­ties across the coun­try. Togeth­er, Amer­i­ca’s flower farm­ers are giv­ing con­sumers con­fi­dence in the source of their flow­ers by pro­vid­ing the only third par­ty guar­an­tee in the flo­ral indus­try that the bou­quets and bunch­es that are pur­chased were actu­al­ly homegrown.

The 3rd annu­al Slow Flow­ers SUMMIT took place this past June 30-July 1, 2019 in St. Paul, Minn. If you missed join­ing, no wor­ries! Videos of all five pre­sen­ta­tions and the speak­ers’ Pow­er­Point slides are post­ed for you to watch and enjoy. This valu­able con­tent comes to you free of charge.

Video Release: SLOW FLOWERS SUMMIT 2019

The 2020 Slow Flow­ers Sum­mit will be in San Fran­cis­co at the beau­ti­ful and his­tor­i­cal Filoli estate.  See more infor­ma­tion com­ing soon!

Flower Book Recommendation:: Botanical Inks

We pur­chased this book by Babs Behan to learn more about how to dye fab­ric using nat­ur­al ele­ments like rose petals and green­ery. We did many of these projects for the kids sum­mer camp (see arti­cle top) and high­ly rec­om­mend this book for any­one who wants to learn how to dye fab­ric with nat­ur­al dyes. It is well writ­ten and easy to fol­low with beau­ti­ful results!

From the publisher:

Learn how to trans­form for­aged wild plants, plants, gar­den pro­duce, and recy­cled food into dyes and inks with Botan­i­cal Inks. The book shows you how to extract envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able col­or from the land­scape and use it to cre­ate nat­ur­al dyes for tex­tiles, cloth­ing, paper, and oth­er mate­ri­als. Botan­i­cal Inks cov­ers dye­ing and sur­face appli­ca­tion tech­niques, includ­ing bun­dle dye­ing, Shi­bori tie-dye­ing, hapa­zome, indi­go sug­ar vat dye­ing, wood-block print­ing, screen print­ing, and more. Itt also shows you how to turn your new inks, dyes, and tech­nique knowl­edge into won­der­ful projects, from a sim­ple bun­dle-dyed a scarf to a block-print­ed tote bag.

Flower Tool :: Rubber Mallet

Rub­ber Mal­lets were the uni­ver­sal favorite way for our sum­mer camp kids to cre­ate beau­ti­ful hapa­zome prints with flower petals and leaves on water­col­or paper.

How to cre­ate a hapazome?

1. Start with heavy duty water­col­or paper (note­cards are nice)
2. Col­lect col­or­ful col­lec­tions of petals and green­ery that are fresh. Pan­sy faces work espe­cial­ly well.
3. Place water­col­or paper on a hard sur­face (we used the ground) over anoth­er paper like cardboard.
4. Place a design of petals.
5. Cov­er with plain white paper (like copi­er paper)
6. Pound with rub­ber mal­let light­ly all over.
7. Lift off cov­er paper to see results and scrape away any remain­ing petals or leaves.
8. Let dry.

Steps for Hapazome Printing

Start with Paper and Petals on a hard surface

Make the design on the paper and fold paper over (or cov­er with top paper layer).

Pound all over the design area with a rub­ber mal­let. Be sure to cov­er all parts of the paper.

Open up the paper to reveal the print. Scape away the petals and let air dry.

Dis­play the dried hapa­zome print!