What fun to play with flowers! Here I am at the Arizona Federation of Garden Clubs Convention down in Phoenix on April 27. As well as being a working artist here in Sedona , AZ., I love plants and flowers and joined our own Sedona Area Garden Club here in Sedona a few years ago. I was fortunate enough to take a workshop with a Very well know flower designer, Brent Leech. One of his first questions went something like, ” How many of you just take your flowers from the grocery store and put them in a tall vase?” Ok. I have been guilty of that. I do often go outside and see if there are any interesting blooms in my garden to add, but not always.
Brent does have an advantage over those of us who live in Sedona and other small towns in Arizona. He can go to the flower market in Phoenix that is open to professionals and others. That is now on my list of ” must do” in my future. He likes to work with “tropicals”, those exotic flowers that grow in the tropics and are not readily available here in dry Arizona. Perhaps some local flower stores will sell them? Another thing to follow up on in my future.
His goal was really to get us to think “out of the box” when making a design. Notice the other materials included here as well. There are large leaves that can be folded; rolled; split; anything to add interest, and the branch that also adds support to the tall blooms. There are clever little bamboo pins to hide these methods of manipulation.
Notice the difference in heights; the directions of the blooms; the way the eye circles around the whole. A very low vase for a very tall arrangement. Even the little bamboo-like stems we cut up and put on a copper wire which flows out of the arrangement and keeps us intrigued. Something mosslike is added to hide the foam “frog” keeping the flowers in place. We were doing the same arrangement, but there was always an individual interpretation. The Art involved in your next flower adventure!
By Victoria Norton
Victoria is a member of Sedona Area Garden Club, an artist, and writes a blog, Sedona Artist.
Photo 1 Peggy Ahola
Victoria created the beautiful, beaded ceramic artwork pictured on the easel that inspired the creative floral design made by Renee Waite that used a black sculptural form and white daisy chrysanthemums.
Photo 2 Karen Bowen
Brent Leech lead convention attendees in making a creative floral design using a variety of unusual plant materials.
Photo 3 Karen Bowen
Brent Leech demonstrated how to use tropical plant material to create a large abstract floral design.
