Design In Bloom Blog

Three sherbert-y bouquets, tangerine, lemon and passionfruit.  Each of these has a mitigating factor of white and/or ivory, and just a touch of clear green to add definition.  While they are all designed in relatively the same style:  hand-tied with a bit of the garden, I think the designs get a little more interesting as you go down the line, the last bouquet being my favorite of the three, as I think it shows the most personality.  The change in texture from the Cafe au Lait dahlia to the snowberries does it for me - the dinner plate dahlia against the clusters of symphoricarpos , a native shrub to our garden in Virginia, although the shrubs in the wild part of my garden bear no resemblance to the cultivated white beauties you see here.  

If you're a pop music fan, you'll recognize the title rip off from the infamous Vanilla Ice rap song from the 80's, who ripped off the baseline from Queen and David Bowie...so I don't feel any guilt using it here.  Thanks Rob Van Winkle, for the catchy phrase. (Apologies to those of you who now have the dunn dunn dunn danah dun dah ear worm.) I say Ice Ice Baby as this bouquet is all about a quiet white heat; a full base of locally grown peonies and feathery astilbe with Escimo roses, made all the more textured with double white freesia and the oh so charming bells of leucojum, aka summer snowflake.  Leucojum is one of my favorite blooms to design with - only available when they're blooming in our garden, not a single commercial wholesaler sells them.  Beautiful clean pure white, and if you look closely you can see small spring green dots on their tips, which my Nana used to tell me were from the fairies marking each one as they harvested the nectar. The gre...

Bouquet No.2, another Emily Bouquet - keeping to our garden rose start, here's a continuation on the theme -  Peach Shimmer and Romantic Antike garden roses are the focal of this bouquet, their delightful peachy pinkness highlighted by accents of white and ivory.  A bouquet for another Emily, it's full of texture and interest, alluding to deeper depths.  Orlaya, the lacey white umbel just peeking out here and there, is one of my favorite flowers to use to add a bitter of summer garden to a bouquet.   The orlaya in this bouquet was grown in our gardens here at the studio, as was the pennycress (the little round disks of green), the white peonies, and the white wands of gooseneck loosestrife.  The loosestrife is a bit of fun, the spikes rising above and curling a bit to give some movement in the bouquet.  Little bits of parviflora eucalyptus also move when the bride walks or a breeze blows.  Dusty miller, white spray roses and white waxflower ...

Happy New Year! It occurred to me it might be great to train myself to start blogging again, so the plan is to post 31 bouquets in 31 days on Facebook and Instagram, then chat a bit about the bouquet here on the blog, perhaps post another photo or two.  Keeping up with social media has not been my forté - it may be a throw back to my upbringing with the 'always be humble' rule drummed into my personality.  Posting photos then telling you I love them and they're special seems the antithesis of humble, but I do love what I do passionately, so I shall look at it as though I'm sharing my joy in flowers with you-  and so to Photo #1! Emily's bouquet - Aspen Dale Winery, Delaplane, VA for the ceremony.  Yves Piaget, Juliet and Augusta Louise garden roses were the backbone of this bouquet, hot pink peonies and soft pink sweet peas played supporting roles and looking all the more delicate for the deeper rich burgundy ranunculus dotted throughout. A hint of white jas...