Cafe au Lait Workshop Recap

In October, we hosted a workshop that was all about Cafe au Lait dahlias, the absolute queen of late summer and early fall arrangements. We started in the Cutting Garden talking about growing and harvesting tips, then moved into the studio for lots of time arranging with these beauties.

Jess Hunter was there to photograph all the magic, and as usual, she blew me away with her images.

Here's the cafe patch in the garden, blooming like crazy!

And the group out in the garden learning about growing these beauties:

And the group inside, starting to learn about arranging with cafes:

I start all of our workshops by demonstrating techniques for arranging, then set everyone loose to create their own work of floral art. During this time, I float around the room answering questions, helping everyone with their arrangements, and making sure everyone is getting what they need from the experience. Keeping the workshops to a six person maximum ensures there is a lot of time for this personal attention, which I think is so crucial to learning.

It was amazing to see everyone's arrangements come together! They were all so beautiful, unique, and artful...

It was such a wonderful day!

I'll be announcing our spring workshops in the next few weeks- if you're interested in attending, send me an email (kelly@botaniqueflowers.com) and I'll put you on our workshops list!

Hope to meet you soon!

Classic Northwest- Jamie and Weston at AXIS

There is so much beauty in our Northwest forests, and Jamie and Weston wanted that reflected in their flowers. They also wanted to stick to a fairly traditional color palette of white and green, so we spiced up the classic with lots of textures and northwest native foliage- maidenhair and sword ferns, snowberries, salal and huckleberry foliage all found their way into their bouquets and table designs. That combined with lots of Peterkort roses, gomphrena, scabiosa pods and more made for a beautiful, late season palette at one of my favorite downtown venues, AXIS Pioneer Square.

As always, it was a joy to work with Megan from Clutch Events on this wedding! She is just fantastic- if you are looking for a planner, check her out!

Molly Magee took all these beautiful photos.

Congrats Jamie and Weston!

Lauren's Bouquet

Just one shot- a favorite from this summer. Lauren's bouquet was so pretty!!!

Photo by Yaggi Photography

Late Summer Wedding at Alderbrook

B and M were married at Alderbrook in late August. This wedding was especially fun, as we got to use a ton of ingredients from our Cutting Garden: cafe au lait dahlias, flowering basil, hydrangea, and some prized Koko Loko roses for B's bouquet. Every season has it's stellar botanicals- in late summer, fruit is definitely part of this list. In addition to flowers, we added blackberries, grapes and apples branches to many of the arrangements for this wedding- summer splendor at it's highest! It is always a joy to work with an incredible photographer, and Ryan Flynn certainly did not disappoint- all of these beautiful images are his doing.

Congratulations to the newlyweds!