November 2010 Newsletter

Flower Duet on Televsion — Creative Living

by Casey Schwartz

Flower Duet was asked by Cre­ative Liv­ing Host Sheryl Bor­den ear­li­er this year to appear as a guest on five tele­vi­sion seg­ments for her nation­al show car­ried by PBS. We accept­ed. The stu­dio and the show are based in Por­tales, New Mex­i­co, which are in the east­ern part of the state. So like any event that we are hired to do, there was a lot plan­ning involved.

Plan­ning First of all, my sis­ter and part­ner Kit would not be able to accom­pa­ny me as she is about to have twins! So, I recruit­ed our Dad who is always up for a road trip to meet me in Albu­querque via a plane ride from Vir­ginia and then we would dri­ve around the state of New Mex­i­co for a flower arrang­ing adven­ture and then we’d vis­it rel­a­tives in oth­er parts of the state, too!

For sup­plies and flow­ers, Flower Duet has all its favorite ven­dors in Los Ange­les, but this was new ter­ri­to­ry, so I had a bit of research to do. I knew I could pack some things, but I would need to find fresh flow­ers, and sup­plies as well as a nurs­ery that sold suc­cu­lents, as we were going to incor­po­rate those into an arrangement.

To my delight I found a won­der­ful whole­saler in Albu­querque, New Mex­i­co, who was able to fill my order per­fect­ly and in water-filled buck­ets I could bor­row. This was essen­tial as we were going to be dri­ving four hours across the state in 90 degree heat.

Prep­ping So after meet­ing Dad in the Albu­querque air­port, we were off to DWF Whole­sale Mart. The flower qual­i­ty was top notch, the order was com­plete and the staff so help­ful. I was also able to sup­ple­ment my order for that last minute buy…just in case!

Then it was off to Rehm’s Nurs­ery & Gar­den Cen­ter who had assured me that they would get a ship­ment of suc­cu­lents in over the pre­vi­ous week­end. It was Tues­day and the selec­tion was vast and just what I need­ed. We had a car full of flow­ers and plants and I felt very hap­py with our pur­chas­es. Were fin­ished with Albu­querque and on to Portales.

We stayed at the Hol­i­day Inn in Por­tales and the staff was kind enough to let us use the con­fer­ence room for all my prep­ping. I need­ed to cre­ate one of each of the five arrange­ments I would be demon­strat­ing on the show the next day, as well as prep as much of the mate­ri­als as pos­si­ble ahead of time. I prac­ticed my teach­ing of each tech­nique to the emp­ty room or to my Dad if he hap­pened to pop in and check on me. I was hap­py with the tech­niques Kit and I had decid­ed upon and felt ready for the fol­low­ing morn­ing on set.

At the Stu­dio We vis­it­ed that after­noon with the host Sheryl Bor­den and toured the set and found where we would be set­ting up. Sheryl could not have been nicer or more wel­com­ing to us, which made our trip there that much more fun. We took the rest of the day to lit­er­al­ly pop over to Texas and tour the sur­round­ing area.

The day of film­ing arrived and we arrived on set to find we were the sec­ond guests. I was giv­en spe­cif­ic direc­tions: Don’t look at the mon­i­tor, or at the cam­era or out at my Dad! It was to be as if I were giv­ing Sheryl a pri­vate les­son. That was easy, as I have been giv­ing a lot of those lately.

We blast­ed through the seg­ments with only one take on each one which was a relief since I was expect­ing to hear “CUT! Do it again please,” but we got through each design very quick­ly. This real­ly was fun as we actu­al­ly got into a nice rhythm and I know I can make a nice arrange­ment in about 9 minutes!

We filmed the select­ed seg­ments on Sep­tem­ber 30 and they will be played through­out the 2010/2011 sea­son. Our require­ments were to cre­ate five 5–9 minute seg­ments for the view­er to be able to com­pre­hend and recre­ate. We chose flow­ers that were avail­able year round, and tech­niques that did not need a lot of supplies.
The tech­niques I taught on the show includ­ed: Dozen Ros­es in a Vase, Gath­er-Drop and Fill, Bun­dle and Place, a Pavé and How to Com­bined Suc­cu­lents and Fresh Flowers.

We have been invit­ed back for next sea­son, and I am glad to know I have a great set of sup­pli­ers and a nice place to stay. I was hap­py to give the The Hol­i­day Inn two of the arrange­ments to thank them for accom­mo­dat­ing us so nicely.

Vis­it­ing Fam­i­ly In addi­tion to this won­der­ful expe­ri­ence, the rest of my trip with my Dad includ­ed a vis­it with fam­i­ly in Las Cruces, more fam­i­ly in San­ta Fe and the mass ascen­sion of over 500 hot air bal­loons on the 2nd day of the Bal­loon Fies­ta in Albu­querque the morn­ing of our depar­ture! It was great tim­ing and a fun experience.

Cre­ative Liv­ing with Sheryl Bor­den. Look for it on your local PBS sta­tion. If you are in the Los Ange­les area, you can find it on KVCR at 11:30 a.m. on Sat­ur­day mornings.

How-To Centerpiece: Gather, Drop and Fill

One of the tech­niques that Flower Duet taught on Cre­ative Liv­ing was called “Gath­er, Drop and Fill.” It is a sim­ple con­cept that can be done short or tall. It can also be called the “Head­start Arrange­ment.” We like to use a face flower (rose) a spray flower (Alstroe­me­ria ) and a filler (misty blue). At left, you’ll see we also added about sev­en stems of dark pur­ple calla lilies to this design.
These would also be con­sid­ered “face flowers.”
Supplies:

Vase: A cube vase or low cylinder

Flow­ers: 12–15 face flow­ers, 10 spray flow­ers and 8 stems of filler (20 stems)

Steps:

VASE: Use a low vase that is opaque. A met­al cube vase would work that is about 4 inch­es x 4 inch­es. Fill the vase with water and flo­ral food about ¾ full.

PREP: Prep the flow­ers – con­di­tion them.

CLEAN: Clean the flow­ers. Take off all the green­ery. Most of the stems will be below the water line inside the vase.

GATHER: Gath­er ½ the total stems into one hand – alter­nat­ing stems – like you are mak­ing a small bou­quet in your hand.

DROP: Mea­sure the stems and cut them a lit­tle longer than you think you need. Place them in the vase and let them fall where they may. At this point, you may need to re-cut the stems a bit shorter.

FILL: Using the rest of the stems of flow­ers, fill in the gaps in the arrange­ment, tak­ing care to alter­nate flow­ers so that you don’t have any Ros­es touch­ing each oth­er and so that they are the main focal flower in the design.

MAKE IT LAST: Fill the vase every 2–3 days with fresh water com­bined with flo­ral food.

Scorpio Florascope — 23 October — 21 November – Cactus Flower

Cac­tus Flower (Scor­pio) Traits

If you are a Cac­tus flower (or Scor­pio), you are capa­ble of mas­ter­ing the mir­a­cle of trans­for­ma­tion. Good careers for Cac­tus flow­ers include archae­ol­o­gist, lawyer, pri­vate eye, psy­chi­a­trist, brain sur­geon, hotel man­ag­er, or rac­ing dri­ver. Cac­tus flow­ers are hardy and can endure extremes in tem­per­a­ture. Cac­tus flower chil­dren are loy­al friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers. Cac­tus flow­ers get along well with bird of par­adise, mums, pop­pies, lotus, tulips, ros­es and oth­er cac­tus flow­ers. Famous Cac­tus flow­ers include Hillary Clin­ton, Christo­pher Colum­bus, Sal­ly Field, Jodie Fos­ter, Bill Gates, Grace Kel­ly, Robert F. Kennedy, Claude Mon­et, Pablo Picas­so, Ted­dy Roo­sevelt and Andy Warhol.

About Cactus Flowers — Botanical Information

With a few excep­tions, cac­ti are suc­cu­lent plants and, like oth­er suc­cu­lents, they have a vari­ety of adap­ta­tions that enable them to sur­vive in hot and dry envi­ron­ments. Every type of cac­tus will flower and bloom.

Growing Cactus

A very pret­ty flow­er­ing cac­tus is avail­able around this time of year and is com­mon­ly called the “Christ­mas Cac­tus.” Shown at right is the del­i­cate bloom that is on the Christ­mas Cactus.

Anoth­er very acces­si­ble flow­er­ing cac­tus this time of year is Kalanchoe.

Grow­ing Cac­tus Indoors: Indoors, the best place is a sun­ny win­dow or a green­house in fast drain­ing pot­ting mix. Suc­cu­lents are not good plant options for Terrariums.

Grow­ing Cac­tus Out­doors: In warm cli­mates, suc­cu­lents can be plant­ed in the ground or out­doors in pots year round.

Suc­cu­lent & Cac­tus Care Basics: Keep water­ing and fer­til­iz­ing at a min­i­mum. Let soil dry between water­ings. Suc­cu­lents tend to col­lect debris. You can clean them with paint­brush­es, long tweez­ers, or even a vac­u­um clean­er using the crevice attach­ment. Most suc­cu­lents are pets and dis­ease free. But they can get mealy­bugs, wipe them with cot­ton swabs dipped in alco­hol. If aphids appear, wash the plants with a focused stream of water. These meth­ods will keep you from rub­bing away the waxy bloom that gives some suc­cu­lents their dis­tinc­tive col­or. To avoid get­ting pricked, dis­play the plants away from high traf­fic areas. Just because you can’t see the spines doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Some cac­ti have tiny barbed spines that can bury them­selves in your skin.

Arrang­ing Fresh Flow­ers with Cac­tus or Suc­cu­lents Flower Duet is teach­ing a flo­ral design class this month that will incor­po­rate non-spiney suc­cu­lent plants with fresh flow­ers for a long-last­ing design that will be very suit­able for your South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Thanks­giv­ing table. Sign up for the class today!

Succulent Bridal Bouquet How-To

Flower Duet com­bined suc­cu­lents to cre­ate a gor­geous bridal bou­quet in this FREE flower arrang­ing video.

Flower Book Recommendation: Ikebana Style by Keiko Kubo

Flower Duet loves this new book by flo­ral design­er Keiko Kubo who real­ly makes the art of ike­bana acces­si­ble to all. “Ike­bana” is the Japan­ese art of flower arrange­ment and has dif­fer­ent schools of design that many peo­ple devote years and years of prac­tice to per­fect. This can be a very intim­i­dat­ing style of flo­ral design, but Ms. Kubo makes it very easy. She takes you step-by-step through 20 dif­fer­ent arrange­ments and shows you how to cre­ate ike­bana-inspired designs.

What makes these designs dif­fer­ent from tra­di­tion­al ike­bana is that each design is suit­able for gift giv­ing as each design is portable like most of West­ern flo­ral designs. Tra­di­tion­al “Ike­bana arrange­ments are,” Ms. Kubo explains, “ordi­nar­i­ly cre­at­ed to adorn a spe­cif­ic site. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, ike­bana was con­sid­ered art to be dis­played along with oth­er art­work in the tokona­ma (or alcove) in the Japan­ese home, where guests were received.”

So, this real­ly is a per­fect book to get for this time of year if you are look­ing for gor­geous inspi­ra­tion to cre­ate your own unique DIY gifts to give to your friends.

If you like this book by Ms. Kubo, you’ll also like anoth­er book that Flower Duet has in its library from her called: Keiko’s Ike­bana: A Con­tem­po­rary Approach to the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Art of Flower Arranging

Floral Tool — Floral Picks

These lit­tle pieces of green wood with their del­i­cate piece of cop­per wire attached are very pow­er­ful tools. They come in two sizes, 6‑inch and 3‑inch and the wood actu­al­ly expands once wet so they hold well in flo­ral foam.

Uses: The most com­mon use for these picks is to bun­dle stems togeth­er that can man­age to be out of water. Once the stems are bun­dled, they can be placed eas­i­ly into a gar­land or a wreath to add col­or and dif­fer­ent tex­ture. Flower Duet has tak­en ever­green wreaths and gar­lands and have bun­dled stems of misty blue, seed­ed euca­lyp­tus and bright white and pur­ple sta­tus and place them all around the ever­green pieces.

Wiring the pick to the stem of a bunch of grapes offers you the abil­i­ty to eas­i­ly add those to an arrange­ment or flo­ral spray.

In addi­tion to using the wire end, the pointy end of a pick can be dri­ven into a pome­gran­ate or per­sim­mon, giv­ing them a stem, and then they can be placed into a flo­ral foam arrange­ment. We have glued the pointy end to the flat end of the Wal­nut and then added them to a cen­ter­piece, too.

Longer Picks: There are also longer picks, up to 12-inch­es, made of just wood than can be used to put an apple or pear on the end and insert­ed into a taller arrangement.