Transcendental Blooms

Five o’clock Friday morning, speeding down Route 2 on a mission to pick up blooms for the Fruitlands Museuma' Open House this Saturday. What’s needed: 10 or 11 arrangements – seven cocktails, four centerpieces for 60-inch round tables – one raised piece among them, and one long and low arrangement for a rectangular table.

The setting: A rural venue with a Transcendental - Shaker - American Indian legacy. A red farmhouse of simple antique Colonial rooms has been turned into the Alcott Restaurant and Tea Room. Sunlight brings delicious notes of spring through the old windows, and beyond – a stunning view over the Nashoba River Valley to Mount Monadnock, a view that resonates with at least four centuries of recorded history, a view that drew Bronson Alcott and other aspirants to this very spot in 1843, when the Transcendentalists set up their (alas, short-lived) Utopian experiment known as Fruitlands.

The flowers must be romantic, rustic, elegant, pretty. It's a treat to rely on whim and inspiration at the flower market. This is seldom possible in the busy wedding season when I order blooms ahead for arrangements long discussed and visualized. A rare opportunity, a time to learn new things. And I do. I discover a new (to me) dendrobium orchid with slender twisting petals in a subtle pink and white stripe. It looks far more exotic than the usual rounded-petaled dendrobium, and is irresistible. My only rationale - compared to Marie Antoinette's extravagances, this is tiddly winks.

Soon the car is filled with brown paper sleeves of creamy freesia, blue delphinium, burgundy ranunculus, purple genestra, white and purple stock, pink dendrobium orchids, seeded eucalyptus, steel grass, white lisianthus, sweet pea of a dangerous pink, pussy willow, and curly willow. More than I need? Invariably. And yet it always turns out every stem finds a place, and I couldn’t have done with less.

Here are two arrangements I came up with for the open house – a long-and-low for the reception table; it has a traditional look, except for a few details - steel grass cut short in a sort of Japanese-like fan, and an asymmetry that gives it new life, and a cocktail vase of those new dendrobium orchids.

Simple flowers adorn the moment in an ancient stone chapel

A February day like any other – overcast, drizzly, and cold – only this is England not Massachusetts; the light is soft and spring imminent. The pansies bloom in London’s window boxes, and in the countryside, where we stay for two nights, drifts of snowdrops splash the green grass. It was an embarrassingly short trip with reverberations that went back decades. We had gathered to celebrate the life (and honor the death) of my children's 97-year-old Granny, and we managed to take it all in with a mixture of sadness at the swift passage of even such a long life, and awe at the beauty and history of the visible world around us, a sense of the sacred augmented by flowers, as well as by friends and family; a sense of the past, and the rituals of mourning.

The ceremony took place in a tiny 13th century chapel… tiny and yet, like the proverbial Volkswagen Beetle out of which dance a dozen circus clowns, some 90 guests find comfort and peace on wooden pews inside the ancient stone walls. Little décor is needed in such a setting. Rather the gift of a sensitive hand and eye – a long-and-low arrangement of miniature yellow daffodils with moss and ivy sits on a window ledge in the apse. So natural, so pure; these flowers possess all the virtues of simplicity. The designer has clearly drawn on the promise of spring to sanctify and adorn the moment.

In London neighborhoods dense with boutiques and restaurants the predominant colors are gray and white interrupted by green parks and peaceful squares. Yet wee occasionally spy a flower stall (reminiscent of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady?) nestled against a church wall,  filled with sheaths of bright blooming lilies, roses, and the like, along with piquant bouquets set into niches in the stone facade. No one is minding the stall; perhaps the flower seller has nipped into the next door cafe for a cappuccino; and we all remark on these blooms that offer such delight to passersby.

And now I must admit we lost our digital camera at the British Museum, and all the shots of flowers in the museum and on the street vanished with it.

Dahlias Open the Mind's Eye

For dahlia lovers everywhere and in particular for anyone planning late summer nuptials on the east coast, this engaging and informative article in September’s Down East Magazine about Endless Summer Flower Farm in Camden, Maine, will spark keen interest. Even if you never gave dahlias more than a half glance before now, writer Rebecca Martin Evarts’s descriptions of dahlias, with their ancient Aztec origins (as a wanton weed) and saucy contemporary presence will surely enchant and tempt. Here’s a glimpse into dahlia Eden, the lovely people who make it happen year after year, and the surest and best source of fresh, local dahlias Down East.

I first met the Clarks and walked around Endless Summer Flower Farm early last summer, when we stopped by to see what they could promise us in the way of white dahlias for a mid-September wedding at the Camden Yacht Club. We found, among other charming sights, their granddaughter waltzing down the aisles between nodding stems just coming into blossom. We found, too, that given advance warning, the Clarks deliver beautifully on their promises. They keep careful track of their orders and are wonderful to deal with… forthright about the vagaries of the weather, and utterly reliable. It’s always inspiring to visit people so engaged, if not obsessed, in creative endeavors.

And then, the way the Clarks talk about the blooms, it’s as if Karma Carona and Bodacious belonged in the family. The fact that they have to dig up the tubers before winter, store in their basement, and replant every spring makes the garden seem that much more theatrical (with stage hands at work shifting the scene with the turning of the seasons). Here surely is a late summer idyll to prize, even if dahlias sit low on your list of favorite flowers. It’s refreshing, too, to open a window on stale preconceptions, proving once again Emerson’s famous line about consistency being “the hobgoblin of little minds.” I’ve never been crazy for dahlias, nor given them much thought before I got into flower design, but to see their jubilant heads dancing in the summer air, and their neatly fluted and folded petals, is to fall in love with this flower of such exquisite texture, color, and variety.