April 2013 Newsletter

Eco-Friendly Flowers with Debra Prinzing

by Kit Wertz

Acclaimed gar­den writer Debra Prinz­ing, author of The 50 Mile Bou­quet: Sea­son­al, Local and Sus­tain­able Flow­ers, wants to show us the rich, flo­ral boun­ty that is local and fresh. Inspired by the “slow food” move­ment which encour­ages peo­ple to grow and eat food that is both healthy and sus­tain­able, Debra looks close to home for flo­ral inspi­ra­tion in her own back­yard and near­by farms. In her new book, Slow Flow­ers: Four Sea­sons of Local­ly Grown Bou­quets from the Gar­den, Mead­ow, and Farm, she takes us through the sea­sons to cre­ate 52 sen­su­al bou­quets using only local­ly sourced mate­ri­als — even in winter.

This book is per­fect for the DIY flo­ral design­er with expert tips, bou­quet recipes, eco-friend­ly arrang­ing tech­niques and a com­pre­hen­sive index with cli­mate zone infor­ma­tion for each botan­i­cal ingre­di­ent. After speak­ing with Debra on the phone about her book, I am total­ly inspired by how she approach­es flo­ral design. It’s a nat­ur­al, unforced view of how flow­ers can be dis­played in your home or for a spe­cial event at any time of year. Even on the phone, I can tell she has a warm per­son­al­i­ty and it shows in her flo­ral design which is fea­tured so beau­ti­ful­ly in the vibrant col­or pho­tographs of her book.

Pic­tured above is the cov­er of the new book by out­door liv­ing expert Debra Prinz­ing. We’ll be host­ing her at our stu­dio on April 16th, 2013 for a wine and cheese recep­tion, flo­ral design demon­stra­tion and book sign­ing. This is a free event open to the public.

On the cov­er of her new flo­ral design book “Slow Flow­ers: Four Sea­sons of Local­ly Grown Bou­quets from the Gar­den, Mead­ow and Farm” (shown at left), she fea­tures a sim­ple and beau­ti­ful spring arrange­ment made of two dif­fer­ent col­ored Tulips, six stems of Curly Wil­low and 8 stems of Camel­lia japon­i­ca and describes the con­tain­er she uses includ­ing the col­or and dimen­sions. For this design and the oth­er 51 designs in the book, she talks about her thought process that went into the design, as well as the archi­tec­ture used to cre­ate it and a com­plete flower recipe so you can recre­ate it.

From “Slow Flow­ers,” here is a detailed look of an “Orchid Nest” design that Debra created.

I LOVE flo­ral design books that give away all the details on how each design is made. It pre­vents you, the read­er, from won­der­ing, “How the heck did she do that?” and oth­er per­plex­ing ques­tions like, “Just what the heck is THAT flower?” Debra answers all these ques­tions and writes in an easy con­ver­sa­tion­al tone that is easy to under­stand and free of any hard-to-under­stand flo­ral lingo.

Los Angeles Flower Design Demonstration, Book Signing, and Reception — April 16, 2013

The Cal­i­for­nia Cut Flower Com­mis­sion (CCFC) will be part of this event. The CCFC is an orga­ni­za­tion fund­ed by cut flower and greens farm­ers to help our Cal­i­for­nia farms sur­vive and thrive while ensur­ing con­sumers in the Unit­ed States have quick and afford­able access to the fresh­est, high­est qual­i­ty flower possible.

In her demon­stra­tion at our stu­dio, Debra will show us all how to cre­ate flo­ral designs that fea­ture flow­ers and branch­es you can find close to home and even in your own back­yard for every week of the year. She will also demon­strate how to use branch­es and chick­en wire to secure stems in two dif­fer­ent types of con­tain­ers as opposed to using flo­ral foam.

Please join us for wine, cheese, the free flo­ral demon­stra­tion and book sign­ing. Take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to come and meet with pro­fes­sion­al florists and flo­ral enthu­si­asts like you.

Learn more about this free event and RSVP today

Tips for Earth-Friendly Floral Design

by Kit Wertz

To go with our Earth Day theme this month and fol­low along in Debra’s foot­steps, we thought it would be good to remind our read­ers of an exten­sive arti­cle we wrote about how to design with flow­ers in an eco-friend­ly way in our May 2011 newslet­ter. One of the tips we wrote about, but did not illus­trate, was to design with Curly Wil­low as under­wa­ter archi­tec­ture. Here is how that works:

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Buy a bunch of short curly wil­low (it comes in three lengths).

Take a few stems and wrap around your fist before plac­ing in a container.

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[/one_half_last] Repeat the process by mak­ing a few more lit­tle balls of Curly Wil­low until you feel you have enough in the con­tain­er to give you a good struc­ture. Fill the con­tain­er with pre-mixed water and flo­ral food. Add flow­ers such as Pink Jas­mine, Freesia and Alstroe­me­ria which are shown here. I har­vest­ed these from my gar­den to illus­trate that you can design with just a few stems from your own backyard.

Make a Grid of Branches to Hold Stems

Pho­to from “Slow Flow­ers,” here is a stem grid that illus­trates a visu­al­ly appeal­ing and stur­dy option for dis­play­ing blooms in a cube vase.

Debra’s book is filled with great ideas for hold­ing stems in a design using nat­ur­al archi­tec­ture like this grid method. She also includes a pletho­ra of ways to keep cer­tain flow­ers hydrat­ed and what to expect from some flow­ers like Tulips once they are in a vase. She also talks about tools, sup­plies, flower and plant grow­ers, and more earth-friend­ly flo­ral tech­niques to help you design the “Slow Flow­ers” way.

Use Aspenwood Excelsior as Underwater Architecture

In her book, Debra men­tions a much more eco-friend­ly option to flo­ral foam for keep­ing stems in place in a con­tain­er. The beau­ty of this tip is that it looks nice in a clear con­tain­er as well as a hid­den one. (See flo­ral tool tip at right for details on where to pur­chase.) Excel­sior, also know as Aspen­wood, is basi­cal­ly shred­ded wood that is pri­mar­i­ly used for pack­ing wine bot­tles for ship­ping in wood­en crates. It’s also used a lot in crafts for pack­ing gift baskets.

Untan­gle the mass­es of wood shav­ings before plac­ing into your flo­ral con­tain­er and add water. Insert your stems into the mass of fibers which will hold them in place. After the flo­ral design has wilt­ed, the entire bou­quet along with the wood fibers can be com­post­ed (which you can­not do with flo­ral foam).

How to Rehydrate Boxed Cut Hydrangeas

by Kit Wertz

Boxed Hydrangeas are the best option when you need to buy over 25 stems for a design. You’ll get fresh blooms and a great price per stem. Pic­tured above are 40 Hydrangea blooms in one box. Some box­es con­tain only 25 stems (depend­ing on the grow­er and col­or of Hydrangea). Make sure when you need to order a lot of stems that you order by the stem count as opposed to the box count to ensure you are get­ting enough stems.

In March, we cre­at­ed a wed­ding that fea­tured over 500 stems of white Hydrangea blooms (see pho­tos of the event on our Face­book page). So, we made a call to Mayesh Whole­sale Florist, and had 14 box­es deliv­ered to our stu­dio. Once we had them in hand, it was our job to take each one out of the box, remove the plas­tic pro­tec­tive sleeve from the head, cut off the water reser­voir at the bot­tom of the stem, give it a dip in Quick Dip® and then let it sit in flo­ral solu­tion and water to rehy­drate for 24 hours before we could cre­ate designs with them. Here are the steps we took to get these beau­ties ready for the event.

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Blooms arrive in plas­tic sleeves to pro­tect them dur­ing ship­ping. As the florist pro­cess­ing the flow­ers, you have to remove this or it will cause mois­ture to become trapped and could start to wilt the blooms pre­ma­ture­ly.  Hydrangeas need a lot of water and they are shipped with these lit­tle tiny bags of water at the bot­tom of the stem. It’s best to cut this off and Quick Dip® the stem before adding it to a buck­et of fresh water and flo­ral food. Read more about Quick Dip® in our Jan­u­ary 2013 newsletter.

Top…the stem before we re-hydrat­ed it and then, the ful­ly-hydrat­ed stem. What a difference!

Some of the 500+ stems ful­ly hydrat­ed and ready for designing.

Some of the 100 designs we cre­at­ed for the event…ready to be placed in their vas­es on the tables.

Here we are set­ting up at the At&t Cen­ter in down­town Los Ange­les for the wed­ding which fea­tured over 100 flo­ral arrange­ments. Learn more about work­ing with Hydrangeas from our August 2011 newslet­ter How to Buy and Arrange with Hydrangeas.

Video: Eco-Friendly Gather, Drop and Fill Technique Floral Design

by Casey Schwartz

 Gather Drop and Fill — even a 7‑year-old can do it!

I was recent­ly asked to lec­ture at an edu­ca­tion­al facil­i­ty about my career as a flo­ral design­er as well as demon­strate a tech­nique of flo­ral design. I was hon­ored for being rec­og­nized for my career that start­ed in Europe over 20 years ago. I was giv­en a place to pre­pare, asked to lec­ture to three class­es and only had 15 min­utes for each lec­ture and demo which left about 10 min­utes for questions.

I had to make the demon­stra­tion to each class very quick­ly, so our “Gath­er, Drop and Fill” tech­nique was the one that came to my mind. My audi­ence was a dis­cern­ing group of expe­ri­enced flower girls, ring bear­ers and wild daisy gath­er­ers. Yes… I was speak­ing on Career Day at my son’s pub­lic ele­men­tary school. Sec­ond, third, and fourth-grade class­es made their way to where I was teach­ing. The sec­ond graders were a tough crowd, as they had been told not to talk and to be very qui­et. All my jokes and sil­ly design ideas had no effect. Final­ly, I left a rose a lot high­er than all the oth­er flow­ers and said, “Ok, I think we are done. This looks great.” I got a lot of huge eyes back at me and so I said, “That looks sil­ly, it looks like a giraffe head stick­ing out of a tree.” The kids final­ly laughed. “Whew,” I thought.

For the main flow­ers of the demon­stra­tion, I used white Alstroe­me­ria and orange Ros­es. This is a great com­bo and eas­i­ly found at Trad­er Joe’s on a reg­u­lar basis. I did have some Berzil­lia Berry stems on hand and these added a love­ly green shade with a del­i­cate tex­ture. Each class had great ques­tions, inter­est­ing com­ments and all believed that they could recre­ate the arrange­ment after watch­ing it done live.

I gave the teacher from each class a fin­ished arrange­ment in recog­ni­tion for all the work she does for our kids. That way the kids could enjoy the flow­ers for the rest of the day! This tech­nique is quick fun and easy and instant­ly love­ly. Plus, the com­bi­na­tions of flow­ers for this type of arrange­ment are seem­ing­ly end­less. Give it a go and send us an image of your combination.

Sub­scribe to our YouTube chan­nel: fash­ion­ingflow­ers so you’ll know when we’ve uploaded a new show of our own!

Casey Schwartz of Flower Duet has appeared on Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion’s Cre­ative Liv­ing with Sheryl Bor­den the past two sea­sons and returned to Por­tales, New Mex­i­co to film anoth­er set of five shows for the 2012–2013 season.