GRAY Magazine

We are very honored to be featured in the current issue of GRAY Magazine! We created the arrangement for this article a year ago last April, so that the flowers shown would actually be in season when the article was published. Many thinks to the fabulous Debra Prinzing for writing such a nice piece, and for all the farmers at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market for growing such incredible flowers! You can read the article online here.

This is the arrangement we created, photographed by Alex Hayden. Narcissus, Iceland poppies, anthriscus foliage, hellebores, peony-flower tulips, ranunculas, white dicentra..... gotta love spring!

A little hellebore love....

It is hard not to get REALLY EXCITED during hellebore season. Hellebores are undoubtedly one of my all time favorite flowers, and a special jewel during these early months of the year when things are just starting to get going.

Lovely and magical. This arrangement features WA grown Hellebores, Spirea and Salal,  Oregon grown Viburnum, and California grown Ranunculas. Hello spring!

Sarala's Bouquet

It has been so busy around here that I am way behind on my blogging. There is so much to share! Before March is a completely distant memory, it seems important to share this shot of Sarala's bouquet. From that magical time when fritillaries, hellebores, muscari and ranunculas were all blooming together. Magic, I say, magic!

This lovely photo comes courtesy of Ish Ishmael. Stay tuned for lots more photos coming to this blog in the near future.....

The Botanique Seasonal Subscription: Week One

It was at least two years ago when I originally had the idea to start a weekly floral design subscription. At the time, I thought I would source flowers, foliage and other interesting seasonal elements exclusively from my gardening clients yards, based solely on whatever needed pruning, had been knocked down by the wind, or otherwise would have been removed for maintenance purposes. Needless to say, this plan had some major flaws: gathering vase-worthy materials SOLELY from garden scraps for one, and figuring out how exactly to explain what I was asking of my clients for two. Imagine how this conversation would have gone: "Can I cut flowers from your garden, but only the ones you don't actually want, I mean, the ones that have been blown over? Or if I am pruning a shrub, I could just use the clippings..." Hmmmm.... I imagine I would have been met with some very doubtful looks.

This idea germinated before I had really started designing flowers professionally. Now that floral design has become one of the primary foci of Botanique's services, I am fortunate to know where to source these local blooms without raiding anyone's garden in the process! ( In addition to the Botanique Cutting Garden, that place is the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market, a collective of flower growers in the Pacific Northwest who set up a weekly market where they sell their gorgeous blooms directly to florists- it is quite an amazing and inspiring place!)

I am so excited to mark today as the first day of the Botanique Seasonal Subscription! The original idea has come a long way. I have held on to the desire to source everything as local as possible- at the heart of the subscription lies the commitment to source flowers exclusively from farms in the Pacific Northwest- nothing imported! This is a big deal in the floral industry, as a commitment to exclusively local product connotes a certain level of compromise: you can't get any flower, any time of year- whether in season or not. Additionally, local blooms often cost a bit more than imported ones- but as with any commodity, if you trace back the roots of why the imported blooms cost less than the domestic ones, you will find a host of unsavory truths: poor working conditions, massive pesticide use, jet fuel pollution to fly the blooms worldwide... flowers are political, people! (If you're interested to read more about this, I would recommend two amazing books: A Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart, and the recently published The 50 Mile Bouquet by Debra Prinzing, which features many of the local flower farmers whose blooms I use on a weekly basis.)

I would prefer to know EXACTLY where the flowers were grown, under what conditions and by whom, to get the freshest flowers available because they come directly from the farm (no air travel!!!), and to stay in touch with the natural rhythms of the season. By far my favorite way to design is to go to the market and be inspired by what is freshest, most vibrant and most exciting that day- and that's what I love about the subscription. Subscribers are surprised each week with a new arrangement that is created from the best findings in local flowers that week- this means that you can't request a certain color or flowers, but it also means you truly get the BEST that the season has to offer.

This week's arrangement includes hellebores from Jello Mold Farm in Mt. Vernon, WA, Snowball Viburnum from Oregon Coastal Flowers in Tillamook, OR, Parrot Tulips from Choice Bulb Farms in Mt. Vernon, WA, and Huckleberry foliage from Paradise Found Forest Products in Olympia, WA.

Thanks to all the subscribers for riding the very first wave of this business endeavor, and for trusting me to create something magical each week! It is literally a dream come true.

Flower Growers School

Last weekend I had the incredible opportunity to attend a Specialty Cut Flower Growers School put on by The Seattle Wholesale Growers Market and Washington State University Mt. Vernon Research and Extension Center. I learned SO MUCH in the two days of the workshop- everything from crop selection, seed starting, harvest and post-harvest flower care, hoophouse and greenhouse construction and crops, succession planting, business planning, crop costing, beneficial insects and dealing with pests in a sustainable manner.... the list goes on and on. It was a conference full of super helpful and pertinent information, and it left me so inspired and ready for the next phase of The Botanique Cutting Garden, the 500 sq. ft. area in our backyard that is rapidly turning into a mini, urban flower farm! I feel like I am only just beginning to digest the smallest little fraction of what I learned, and can't possibly fit it all into one blog post. So for now I will just share some photos of one of my favorite parts of the weekend, a tour of Jello Mold Farm in Mt. Vernon, where the second day of the workshop took place.

The hellebore beds at Jello Mold Farm- LOVE THE HELLEBORES!!!

One of my favorites, love that dark purple, grape juice color

Columbine, just starting to poke up through straw mulch.

Soil Blocking- a great way to start seeds.

Dahlia propagation!!!

Diane Szukovathy (my new hero). Diane was one of our teachers for the weekend, and she and her husband Dennis Westphall run Jello Mold Farm. I have gotten to know Diane and Dennis through purchasing their flowers at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market, and it was so awesome to see where and how their flowers are grown.

It was a truly inspiring weekend! It made me want to move to the Skagit Valley and farm, farm, farm..... but for now, I am STOKED to get the Botanique Cutting Garden going for the year! Small-scale, urban flower farming- YES! 

February's Hellebores

Oh spring, oh spring, could it be true? Are you here yet? This weekend brought two 60 degree days, and it sure felt like spring. This weekend also brought the first crocus and snowdrop sightings of the year, and the first arrangement of 2013 made with with flowers from the cutting garden!

Dusty Miller, Green Amaranth, Green Berzillia, Pussy Willow from the Vashon Island Adventure of a few weeks back, and the infamous HELLEBORE.

If you can find a place to plant a few hellebores in your garden, I would strongly recommend that you do!!!! They are without a doubt one of my favorite plants- gorgeous flowers in FEBRUARY, when almost nothing else is in bloom. Depending on the variety, they come in an assortment of different shades of rose, plum, white, cream and chartreuse. The variety I have growing right now is Helleborus niger 'Joseph Lemper-" the flowers are pure white, and as they go to seed the blooms turn a light, lime green color, with the backs of the petals turning dusty rose. They are truly gorgeous...

Most often they are billed as shade plants- they will bloom and thrive in the shade, however I have also found them to be extremely durable and unfussy in the sun- in one of my gardening clients homes, they are part of a completely drought tolerant parking strip that receives NO irrigation- and they bloom and grow like nobody's business. You can cut back the foliage in late fall, or leave it through winter and cut it back in early spring when they start to bloom (I am a fan of the latter method as their evergreen foliage is a nice addition to a winter garden). Plant a few- trust me, you will LOVE them.