February 2011 Newsletter

Lunar New Year Flower Traditions — Year of the Rabbit

by Kit Wertz

This will be the third year in the row we help The Hunt­ing­ton Library, Art Col­lec­tions, and Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in San Mari­no, Calif. cel­e­brate the Chi­nese New Year in col­lab­o­ra­tion with their exquis­ite Chi­nese Gar­den that is under­go­ing a fur­ther expan­sion as we speak. We will hold a class to teach our stu­dents all about the folk­lore behind giv­ing flow­ers to cel­e­brate the Lunar New Year and what each flower sym­bol­izes. The main point of offer­ing flow­ers for the new year is to offer good luck and prosperity.

Traditional Chinese New Year Flowers

The tra­di­tion­al “three friends” of the Chi­nese New Year are bam­boo, pine and plum blos­som. The bam­boo and pine sym­bol­ize longevi­ty since they are green all year round and very hardy plants. The plum is emblem­at­ic of per­se­ver­ance and puri­ty. The five petals of its flower make it an aus­pi­cious plant because five is a sacred num­ber in Chi­na. In this instance the five petals rep­re­sent the Five Bless­ings: old age, wealth, health, love of virtue, and a nat­ur­al death.

Col­or is impor­tant, too, dur­ing the new year cel­e­bra­tions. Red and gold are tra­di­tion­al col­ors and we will be teach­ing a class that uses gold ros­es with some red accents. Here are the last two designs we taught at The Hunt­ing­ton. The pho­to at left fea­tures the three friends and the one at right in our class­es sec­tion fea­tures gold and red col­ors along with tra­di­tion­al pussy wil­low, kumquats and a sym­bol­ic fire­crack­er string made from horse­tail. Pussy wil­low and cit­rus fruit are also giv­ing as gifts dur­ing the new year.

This year cel­e­brates the year of the Rab­bit. Peo­ple born dur­ing this year are cau­tious, gra­cious, ten­der, artis­tic, a good friend, ele­gant, reserved, self-assured, shy, com­pas­sion­ate, lucky, and flex­i­ble. They also can be detached, moody, super­fi­cial, self-indul­gent, oppor­tunis­tic, stub­born. Come to the class on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 5, 2011 and learn more about how to get luck in this new year – the year of the Rab­bit — and learn a new design we’ll be debut­ing for the class.

Valentine’s Flower Trends

by Casey Schwartz

In Mid Decem­ber I received an email from Mayesh, our favorite whole­sale flower ven­dor in Los Ange­les, announc­ing its first ever
Nation­al Open House and Design Con­test. The con­test was open to flo­ral indus­try pro­fes­sion­als who were reg­is­tered with Mayesh and were in good stand­ing. I thought it would be fun to give it a go. I shop at all three Mayesh oper­a­tions based in Los Ange­les, how­ev­er I am the longest cus­tomer of the ware­house based by LAX.

We were giv­en three choic­es of flower com­bi­na­tions, con­tain­ing sev­er­al dif­fer­ent flow­ers and had to use those flow­ers only. We could sup­ple­ment with $10.00 of added green­ery and $10.00 of props and sup­plies. Our con­tain­er could not exceed a $10.00 whole­sale price. The con­test was focused on Valen­tines Day, and for added twist, red ros­es were not part of any of the boxes.

I gave it my best shot and did a new design that I have been play­ing with, and called this one “The Road to Love.” As you can see from the first con­tain­er in front, the flow­ers are burst­ing forth in a kalei­do­scope of col­or and texture…just like a new love. The mid­dle con­tain­er shows love grow­ing and matur­ing. The last con­tain­er shows a step lad­der of pink ros­es – sym­bol­iz­ing how as a rela­tion­ship matures, so does the feel­ing of love as it keeps climb­ing toward the sky. See the pho­to above of my design.

The day of vot­ing arrived and just by luck of sched­ul­ing I had a stu­dent named Maria who trav­eled all the way from Egypt that week to take an intense col­lec­tion of cus­tom pri­vate flo­ral design lessons from me. She had already men­tioned that the designs are not that var­ied in Cairo and to see such tal­ent and diver­si­ty was breath­tak­ing and inspir­ing. I, too, was amazed at the tal­ent­ed design­ers that I share Mayesh with and not­ed that every design was as unique as the artist.

There were over 240 con­test entries from every loca­tion across the coun­try, a pop­u­lar vote of guests and cus­tomers crowned a local win­ner at each loca­tion. Each local win­ner then moved on to com­pete nation­al­ly with the grand prize win­ner earn­ing a free trip to Los Ange­les or Miami.

First prize went to a design­er in Cleve­land and it was actu­al­ly one of my favorites. Here are some of the images of the contest.

2011 Garden Trends and Garden Shows

by Kit Wertz

If you like arrang­ing flow­ers, chances are you appre­ci­ate a beau­ti­ful gar­den. There are some excit­ing new trends in gar­den­ing that you can do at home – even if you have very lit­tle space and a not-so-green-thumb.

Trend 1: Native and drought-tolerant gardens

As gar­den­ers become more eco-con­scious, we’ll con­tin­ue to see the removal of green lawns being replaced with more native and drought-tol­er­ant plants like suc­cu­lents, native shrubs and grass­es. These are both very easy to grow for any gar­den­er whether you are a full-time enthu­si­ast or part-time type gardener.

Trend 2: Edible gardens

Grow­ing your own veg­eta­bles or herbs is also a big trend. Part­ly due to the poor econ­o­my and expense of organ­ic veg­gies, many con­sumers are turn­ing toward their own back­yards, decks and win­dowsills to pro­vide some fare for the din­ing table.

Trend 3: Vertical gardens

Many urban plan­ners are look­ing to solve the future food short­ages with ver­ti­cal gar­dens that can be housed in cities. Many of these archi­tec­tur­al con­cepts are not only viable, but wel­come changes to our con­crete jun­gle land­scapes that are preva­lent in today’s big cities. Food would be grown in hydro­pon­ics cham­bers. Water would be recy­cled. Orchards would be three or four sto­ries above ground. You can learn more about ver­ti­cal gar­dens in the book by Dr. Dick­son Despom­mi­er, The Ver­ti­cal Farm: Feed­ing the World in the 21st Cen­tu­ry. See the “ver­ti­cal” hang­ing suc­cu­lent gar­den below.

Trend 4: Container gardens

Con­tain­er gar­dens will be more sus­tain­able with few­er annu­al flow­ers and more fruits, veg­eta­bles and perennials.

Trend 5: Cut-flower gardens

As with the oust­ing of annu­als from your gar­den, you’ll do bet­ter to plant peren­ni­al flow­er­ing plants and shrubs that can dou­ble as a cut-flower garden.

2011 Garden & Flower Shows

To see some of these trends, go to a gar­den show near you. Febuary and March are when most gar­den shows hap­pen, so don’t miss out. Here are the more well-known gar­den shows in the Unit­ed States:

East Coast:

Philadel­phia Flower Show: Sprint­ime in Paris

March 6–13, 2011 in Philadel­phia, Pennsylvania

Cen­tral Flori­da Home and Gar­den Show

April 15–17, 2011 in Orlan­do, Florida

New Eng­land:

Con­necti­cut Flower and Gar­den Show

Feb 24–27, 2011 in Hart­ford, Connecticut

Rhode Island Spring Flower & Gar­den Show

Feb­ru­ary 24–27, 2011 in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island

Boston Flower and Gar­den Show

March 16–20, 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts

South­east:

Fes­ti­val of Flowers

March 24–27, 2011 in Mobile, Alabama

South­east­ern Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Soci­ety Flower Show

Feb­ru­ary 25–27, 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia

South:

New Orleans Muse­um of Art: Art in Bloom

March 30 — April 2, 2011 in New Orleans, Lousiana

Mid­west:

Indi­ana Home and Gar­den Show

March 3–6, 2011 in Day­ton, Indiana

West:

Mari­co­pa Coun­ty Home Shows

March 4–6, 2011 in Glen­dale, Arizona

West Coast:

North­west Flower and Gar­den Show

Feb­ru­ary 23–27, 2011 in Seat­tle, Washington

San Fran­cis­co Flower and Gar­den Show

March 23–27, 2011 in San Mateo, California

LA Arbore­tum Gar­den Show

returns in 2012 to Los Ange­les, California

San Diego Spring Home/Garden Show

March 4–6, 2011 in Del Mar, California

2011 Flower, Home & Gar­den shows online listing

Book Review

The Begin­ner’s Guide to Edi­ble Herbs: 26 Herbs Every­one Should Grow and Enjoy by Charles W.G. Smith
To go along with the new trends in gar­den­ing we talked about in this month’s newslet­ter, we thought it best to review a book about how to grow and eat herbs. This book out­lines com­mon and not-so-com­mon herbs that you can grow your­self in your own gar­den or windowsill.

There is an overview about grow­ing herbs in the begin­ning sec­tion and then each chap­ter focus­es on one herb. For each herb, Smith writes about the his­to­ry of ori­gin, instruc­tions on how to grow it and har­vest it, and folk­lore asso­ci­at­ed with the herb. The author also out­lines exten­sive uses of the herbs includ­ing med­i­c­i­nal and culi­nary and details how to pre­serve the herb for lat­er use. Each herb has a chart for what parts of the plant to use and how – whether to use the petals or leaves of an herb. There are also a ton of mouth-water­ing recipes for the herbs from teas, pestos, soups, ketchups, drinks and cookies.

We teach an herb wreath class each year at the end of the sum­mer sea­son. Herbs are great addtions to bou­quets and all types of flo­ral arrange­ments. They add some won­der­ful tex­ture and scent to a bou­quet. Below is are two of our herb wreaths we teach. Grow some herbs for your flo­ral bou­quets at home. Good choic­es include laven­der, mint, rose­mary and thyme.

Floral Tool — Floral Gems

Sparkling gems, dec­o­ra­tive wire, and wire col­lars add whim­si­cal flour­ish­es to flo­ral arrange­ments and bou­quets. You can stick the pret­ty pin­heads right into a flower head to accent its beau­ty. You can wrap wire around a bou­quet to add sparkle and piz­zazz. Or, use the ready-made wire col­lars to add ele­gance and a rich look.

You can add all of these ideas to a design to add more val­ue for your cus­tomers. The Oasis brand – the same folks that bring us our pre­ferred flo­ral foam – also makes a pletho­ra of these types of flo­ral acces­sories. Get more ideas on how to use them at their website.

Pho­tos above are from the Oasis website.