Why I Love Arranging Flowers

I have always had a love of flowers and gardens.

When I was a child, we had a neighbor who lived across the street and she was seemingly great at everything.  She was a teacher and her husband worked for Boeing.  I don’t know what he did for Boeing, but he created beautiful sail boats in his garage, and a small “dinghy” for getting to shore when the boat was moored offshore, or other places I imagine.

They were very kind and creative people.  One Halloween I remember, “John”, the husband helped my parents create a yellow school bus out of a refrigerator box for my sisters and I to wear at Halloween and in the Halloween parade at our grammar school.

“Andra”, the wife, was not only a teacher, but created different, beautiful gardens each season and was a fantastic cook, more of a chef really and tried so hard to help my mom learn anything about these matters that she wanted to learn.

I do believe my mother came to love these new things she was learning, even though her efforts were wasted on my very unappreciative father, but I observed their efforts and tried to absorb all I could.  Andra even taught me basic sewing and would let me help her set up her garden parties for her ladies club.

Their life was quite a bit different than what was going on in our home and I am forever grateful for the things she gladly shared with my mother, me and my two sisters.

As I grew older, I really grew a much stronger interest in design and decorating, in addition to appreciating well put together gardens. One day I discovered a unique florist it seemed to me, at a cart in the mall and would buy flowers from them as gifts or for special occasions in our home.

When we moved our studio back to Pasadena in the early 2000’s, I discovered a florist by the name of Duran’s and they had some of the most beautiful creations I had ever seen and I noticed many businesses in town were utilizing their services and I just couldn’t help but admire each creation as if it were a piece of art. Of course I then began using them myself.

At various dips in the economy and there at our business, my penchant for beautiful fresh flowers in the house, exceeded my budget sometimes.   So I began studying the structure of these arrangements and also studied some videos about flower arranging and began to try my hand at creating my own pieces of floral art.

Through this journey, I noticed that one can spend a pretty wide range of money on flowers secured from different suppliers.  The Farmer ‘s Market was a good resource and less expensive than the flowers at the grocery store as an example, but the supply was not always consistent and their freshness seemed to vary greatly from week to week.

Then I discovered that Trader Joe’s gets fresh flowers delivered every morning of the week.  So I started to play around with various selections of flowers and creating my own works of art from flowers purchased there once a week and found that for the most part, they lasted about a week at what. would prove to be a fraction of the cost of florist purchased flowers.

What I have also noticed, in addition to being able to have fresh flowers in my home almost every week, is that the act of arranging them is relaxing and has given me a great deal of pride and sense of accomplishment when each arrangement is completed.

I also have noticed, the more I do it, the more the flowers themselves seem to guide me, with regard to where their placement should be amongst the rest of the flowers in the vase.  I usually turn the vase as I am deciding where to place the next piece and sometimes even move them around a bit at the end, as I look to achieve a kind of balance among the blooms.

In some ways, I think it also helps me realize that there are many ways to look at things, if you just take the time to observe things from different perspectives.  It can also have the affect of calming me in what might otherwise have been a day lacking the calmness I crave in this hectic world.

This has also developed into a new way that I work at tending my gardens outside, with much more patience and appreciation.  What a gift it is to be able to immerse one’s self in the act of creating with things provided to us by God and nature, just another one of his “canvases”! So grateful to be able to appreciate and see this in my life today!