Just like the rest of the year, I think holiday flowers should reflect what you like. I was in the mood for pink, looking for raspberry colored taper candles and found these coral ones. They looked so pretty with these carnations and dark oak. Carnations can look a bit floristy and stiff so I picked some ferns and blackberry foliage to tone it down and look a bit more lived in and soft.
Celebrating a big birthday this week. Picked this little bouquet last night and it feels so vibrant, so fresh, so festive. My favorite flowers nowadays take a few minutes to put together.
‘I brake for wildflowers’ bumper sticker by Maria Schoettler, take a look at my visit to her studio last summer. Botanical journal by Jill Bliss.
I cut some beautiful apple branches at my friend’s house for Easter. Of course, before I put them inside and decorated them with eggs I had to take some photos.
Hopefully they don’t blow open today and will last through the weekend.
A few flowering quince with some painted eggs looks sweet for Easter.
Easter is almost here. I love decorating for it with all the spring bits that are coming to life. The great spring mash-up where all the colors and flowers go together and are beautiful!
I bought a dozen quail eggs from a local farm that my beloved produce store carries, the speckles are wonderful and celebrate the season. I’ll decorate eggs with my son just before Easter, but I do love decorating with and photographing bare eggs, like these previous years.
Doing flowers or any other kind of decorating is an expression of you and doesn’t have to be hard. Use what you have, a little goes a long way and experiment.
Some Easter decor from other years, Kashmir eggs, egg cups, or floral rings.
We all want a little magic on our birthday. A bit of glitter and rainbows can put a smile on anyone’s face. This is how I’m imagining a birthday celebration.
I’m a sucker for wrapping paper - bought this one years ago in Japantown. Looks super cute with this vintage lace edging.
A little fairy ring.
All photos and styling by Silvanie Farmar Bowers
Citrus is so amazing this time of year, we eat so many satsumas, I can never seem to keep enough around. Bowls of citrus or scattered along the table are so simple and decorative while they last.
Roast chicken with lemon and satsuma squeezed on top with a generous amount of cumin, salt and pepper was a perfect Saturday dinner.
All photos and styling by Silvanie Farmar Bowers
Some old and some new.
After doing big holiday installations for years I don’t really like to decorate much for Christmas.
I’ve had a lot of different trees over the years, I guess even growing up my parent’s weren’t that traditional. Some years I just do bare branches with ornaments. My son has gotten a bit more into the idea of Christmas so I knew we had to do some kind. We got this table top vintage looking tinsel tree last year and liked it a lot.
Is simple festive? I think so. Natural elements are always my favorite, I saved these sycamore leaves a few weeks ago for a halloween costume that never was. The hydrangea was dried on the stem on its side - I try not to cut them all summer because I think they are so much more beautiful when the depth of color comes out after they have aged. The leaves look really nice ruffled over and down a table too.
All photos and styling by Silvanie Farmar Bowers
How could I resist warm-toned speckled and velvety fruit with full and flopsy garden roses? They look wonderful arranged in any fashion. All of the soft tones and dried leaves of the season melt together so well.
All photos and styling by Silvanie Farmar Bowers
A few small snips of pea tendrils, strawberry, rosemary, thyme, jasmine, oregano, lysimachia, and marigold. Green, scented and fresh, feels a bit like spring rather than the end of September.
Just a few stems of flowers can brighten up a table or corner of a room. I love groupings of bottles, bud vases, yogurt jars - whatever you have. Mix and match.
I always save little jars, bottles and cans.
I love the iridescent glow in the blues (and merging into purples here). Blue, the color of quiet; still or crashing waves. I come to water for calm, for reflection, for peace.
The sweetest little powder blue forget-me-nots that pop up along my fence.
Floral on floral, I remember playing with scraps from my grandmother's vintage Liberty of London fabric stash when I was little. One of my favorites was one of their iconic florals in blues and greens similar to this one.
Looking for more color? A post about summer color and rainbows.
All flowers, styling and photography by Silvanie Farmar Bowers
Last year, I was all about bare eggs. Spring is a time of color and these Kashmir eggs are all about that.
A few chocolates go a long way in this simple little basket of baby tears with a few different springs of flowers tucked in. Perfect for a toddler or on your table.
I almost like the messy bits behind-the-scenes more. I always seem to take photos of them.
Mid-winter is feeling like spring with days in the 70's here in California. I cut some flowering quince from my front yard and fell down a rabbit hole.
Hellebores I picked earlier in the week at my mom's with a beautiful lichen covered branch that fell down one windy night a few weeks ago that I've been saving.
Muscari take me back to childhood and remind me of little flower fairies with their tiny florets and the blue is other worldly. Mine started pushing flowers in October! They're one of my most favorite flowers (my list is very long and changes with the season).
I love watching the quince fade out to a pale petal pink. I remember the days when people didn't want Coral Charm peonies because of the fade that is admired so much today. Oh, the ever changing floral trends.
My preferred floral tools have always been No. 2 Felcos and a pair of Joyce Chen snips (they can wear through pretty quickly but are the best size for me and have good action while they are sharp, they also fit nicely in your back pocket, most get accidentally thrown away). For the longest life of your quince or any flowering branch, scrape down the sides on the bottom inch or so with your Felco's (or knife) and cut on a diagonal with at least one sharp cut up the stem, sometime's I'll do two (like a cross). For more tender woody stems like snowball viburnum or lilac, smash stems with a hammer (or back of shears) after you scrape the stems. You will get the longest life-span from your flowers by properly conditioning so don't skip.
Growing up on a cut flower farm, with fields of garden roses, I took them for granted. It has been nearly a decade since my family said goodbye to our beautiful old farm. And now, I'm realizing I miss them. May is the explosion of roses, the first flush. I picked a single bucket of roses from my mother's garden and it felt spectacular. The fragrance, every petal and fading bloom makes my mind buzz like a bee to the next one, and the next one.
If you're picking garden roses, make sure you have a bucket of deep water nearby and place them in that bucket as soon as you can. Good hydration is key to lasting flowers. The water should always be room temperature whether in a bucket or vase.
When dealing with roses, make sure you have sharp shears so you can get a clean cut. When ready to arrange, cut above a node and always cut at an angle so the stem can drink the most water. Make sure you have plenty of water in your vessel and check it daily, filling as you need. After twenty years of doing flowers, the single most overlooked thing restaurants and other accounts do is forgetting to water in the first couple of days. Then, when the flowers begin to wilt, they add more water. More times than not, this is too late and they won't come back. If you notice a bloom or two wilting a bit, take it out and recut the stem.
Part of the beauty of garden roses is the color fading and petals dropping. I mean, big swaths of fluffy petals. This has been shown in paintings for centuries. Flowers are beautiful in all states of life, after all, isn't that why we pick them?
You can feel spring in the morning now, with light pouring through the windows and the warmth outside. Suddenly, you don't need your sweater. My sister, Zoe and I got together to make a sweet post about May Day, but then were more inspired by an abandoned birds nest and roses. Roses growing on her fences and field. She and I grew up on our family's cut flower farm with 13,000 roses planted in our fields and worked together designing florals for years. We have always done flowers.
In Asia, roses in fossils have dated back 70 million years. Even if they don't know any other flowers, most people can identify a rose. Throughout history, symbolism of roses has meant so many things, from love to death, peace to war. Wreaths of roses have been found in Egyptian tombs, and Romans used them to carpet their floors for special occasions.
Roses and strawberries are such a sweet combination, with this single-petaled climber mimicking a strawberry flower. It is also a beautiful scent combination and can be used to create delicious jams. They go together so easily.
I spent the summer I turned twenty in France and one of my favorite desserts was a bowl full of sliced strawberries with red wine and sugar to macerate them. Just soak them in the wine. No need for cream or anything else. Delicious.
Rose water is so refreshing, a quick face or body mist with a hydrosol really helps cool you down and to elevate your senses. It's also nice to spritz it over a glass of chilled white wine or champagne.
See another easy bouquet Zoe and I did with strawberries. Or, some of her garden roses. Daisies and strawberry foliage is also another nice combination.
Florals and styling by Zoe Honscher & Silvanie Farmar Bowers, photos by Silvanie Farmar Bowers
Making arrangements in tin cans has become one of my favorite things. It's a nice way to recycle, and makes an easy gift of your garden flowers. I make weekly arrangements for my son's preschool class. Using tomato cans is economical, recyclable, and non-breakable if they get knocked over in the classroom. I save the cans that come though my kitchen, I love tomato cans, with or without the label, vintage or new. I also keep my eye out for them (water tight is a must though) at garage sales and thrift stores.
Some more tin can arrangements from last summer. I favored the cans sans label. They look great on a kitchen table, or if you're dining al fresco, you don't have to worry about bringing them back inside or the wind blowing them over and breaking a favorite vase.
An easy bouquet or, more like a posy with fresh cut strawberries my sister, Zoe and I did in her garden. This would make the sweetest and simplest bridal bouquet. Not too fussy, and full of spring.
Zoe leaning on her fence covered in hops. Below a little video of her putting the bouquet on the fence and making some finishing touches. She is an amazing designer.
Sweetest little thing. It has strawberries in it, so I have to twirl it!
Flowers should be fun and express the seasons as well as you. Relax.
Flowers by Zoe Honscher & Silvanie Farmar Bowers, photos by Silvanie