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.
Imagine being invited to Tasha Tudor’s house for lunch. What flowers would you take to such an icon? Images of meadows and daisies come to mind when I think of her. At first, this seemed daunting but then I realized like most flower lovers, we are happy when people do just that; bring us flowers!
To me, Tasha embodies the love for the natural world, finding delight in the garden, field or down a road. I picked grasses and ferns and dandelions and whatever was close by. It felt truest to me to have a free and wild-flower feeling bouquet that I could have picked along the road to her house!
I added a few daisies, short stems but oh-so-cute!
I’m sure there would be some tea…
I am a daisy lover, any kind is a favorite of mine - they are so joyful and remind me of a sunny day. Feverfew is an easy cut flower to come by and is also very long lasting. I found this antique English platter at my local thrift store for two dollars. It’s a celebration of spring and I thought it would be great to use for a centerpiece on my kitchen table. I tried bottles with different heights of spring flowers, but it looked too messy, so I simplified with these yogurt cups clustered tightly together. The violas are from six packs I bought at a local nursery, they are a quick shot of color outside in the cold months and look really nice as a cut flower too.
Simple vessels are good to have around, I’ve gotten so much use out of these yogurt cups!
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.
I've been trying to make a weekly fairy bouquet. Today's is a quick snip of asters just starting to open with some antique millinery pieces from years and years ago with handmade lace that I couldn't bring myself to cut.
All photos and styling by Silvanie Farmar Bowers
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 absolutely delight in the idea that there is magic outside, unknown spaces of play and imagination. When I was a child, I dreamed of seeing flower fairies, after my mother's suggestion that they were fluttering around the wild orchids on the drive up our wooded road. If only I could be quick enough to see them for just one second!
This spring, I started making bouquets of wisps of leaves, fruit and flowers small enough for a fairy and turned into an almost weekly ritual (#fairybouquetfriday).
Just a few minutes and just a few flowers, and of course a few photos!
All photos and flowers by Silvanie Farmar Bowers
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.
I thought I was making wreaths, but now they seem like nests. I still have my old fruit box on my back steps filled with bits I collect that I don't want to fly away. Mostly beautiful leaves, aged hydrangea and dried ferns.
Watercolor experiments with florals
Some old and new photos of clematis. Just a few stems can make such and impact. You can really never go wrong with green and white.
Some clematis growing along the banks of the Russian river entwined with wild grape. Such a beautiful summer display.
First hydrangea I've cut all year, I've been saving it for fall because I love it aged. Tinges of green and pink and speckles - it's hardened off so will probably just let it dry.
Little basket I made earlier this summer. Looks so sweet turned upside down and used as a frog.
A seasonal get together with other floral designers where we pick from our gardens and forage to make no-fuss arrangements and bouquets on the fly. Somehow I missed spring, but with summer in full swing I asked my sister, Zoe and mom, Lisbeth, both veteran designers if they were up for it again. We had worked on a couple for winter which were so much fun.
Zoe holding a bouquet I made with herbs from my garden and lavender, Shasta daisies and the cutest asters I picked from her's. A true hippie at heart, I found this breezy vintage dress from India at an estate sale a couple of years ago. It looks wonderful with this loose bouquet.
This cafe chair has been beautifully enveloped by some grapevines over the summer. Makes for the perfect spot in the garden to enjoy a glass of wine.
Summer is all about color - look at these mirabelle plums and borage together!
Made a quick bouquet out of some of my dried bits. With the right ribbon this could even be a cute bridal bouquet. With a lace shift dress, in a wheat field?
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
More non-dyed, bare, in the buff eggs. I love the soft, natural colors of the eggs themselves with bright spring flowers.
I always love the mix of colors during spring, and a little can go a long way. This is only two stems of lilac, a few crabapple branches, a few freesia, a handful of forget-me-not stems and a few snips of viola and maiden hair fern from pots on my front porch. Most people have more things to cut outside than they think. Mix it up, even pulling up a dandelion or two and putting them in a small bowl or terra-cotta pot with some eggs around is sweet.
Time to clean up...
All flowers, styling and photography by Silvanie Farmar Bowers.
Soft crabapple petals.
