Autumn Adams, Sarah Anderson, Sarah Berquist, Niesha Blancas, Alex Brooks, Peter Crane, Jenny M. Diaz, Alex Dickey, Amanda Dumouchelle, Kristen Earley, Sally Semonite Green, Matt McDaniel, Jillian McGrath, Haley Richter, Tess Schilke, Stockbridge Floral Design, Jorge Uribe
ON THE COVER
Fifty state-by-state floral quilt squares comprise this vibrant illustration by Jenny M. Diaz, Slow Flowers Society’s longtime graphic artist and designer. Hand-painted by Diaz over the past several months, the 8-by-8- inch water color originals are based on a 1970s book of state quilt blocks. Truly stunning!
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.
summer in bloom.
Welcome to our 2025 Botanical Couture edition celebrating American Flowers Week! As the original domestic flower promotional campaign, AFW was founded in 2015. By 2016, we commissioned our first botanical couture look, a red-white-andblue floral ‘fro designed by longtime Slow Flowers member, Susan McLeary. You can read more about that iconic look, as well as McLeary’s insights about how floral wearables have evolved over the past decade, in our Q&A with her on page 20.
The looks continue, with seven floral garments created for 2025. We welcome returning botanical couture designers, Jennifer Reed, Kelly Shore, and Alanna Messner-Scholl, and are thrilled to welcome new contributors, including Andee Zeigler of Three Sepals, and students of Stockbridge School of Agriculture (University of Massachusetts), led by instructor Sarah Berquist. We love the inventiveness and we especially love Zeigler’s philosophy of growing flowers so you can “wear your garden.”
It's a busy season for everyone, and we look forward to following our community through American Flowers Week. Post your local blooms as we share the beauty and message of local flowers – we’re excited to see what you grow and create!
Debra + Robin
summer.
JENNY M. DIAZ is Slow Flowers Society's longtime graphic designer who has created four inventive botanical couture looks for past American Flowers Week celebrations, including our 2024 Slow Flowers Journal cover look. Since creating the logo art for American Flowers Week in 2016, Jenny’s influence on this national floral promotional campaign has been everywhere. She illustrated our popular coloring sheets depicting the USA Map and all 50 State Flowers, which can be downloaded from americanflowersweek.com. For American Flowers Week 2025, we invited Jenny to be our featured artist. And of course, she had ideas! The finished piece includes 50 original watercolors of state-by-state quilt blocks, rendered in 8-by-8-inch paintings and assembled into a beautiful collection.
INSTAGRAM
JAYSON MUNN is based in Burlington, Vermont. Owner of Jayson Munn Design, he specializes in creating inspired arrangements for weddings, corporate events, and photo styling throughout New England, never veering far from his gardening influences. Jayson’s formative years shaped his love of botanicals, nurtured in the woods, fields, and at the river’s edge. With more than three decades of experience and a life-long passion for plants and the garden, Jayson continues to create floral masterpieces – from classic, modern, rustic and elegant, to something new altogether. Today, he is a thoughtful community builder, educator, and floral artist. jaysonmunn.com
LOCATION bloom
A spring flower explosion for downtown Burlington.
Floral and textile artists explore the ancient use of indigo dye.
We have an inventive new crop of botanical couture looks for our 10th Anniversary. From student life, to the field and garden, to a luxury estate, these designs demonstrate the versatility and beauty of local flowers.
bloom boom.
Designer Jayson Munn puts his own twist on public floral art.
In 2021, we brought The Shared Heart Project to Church Street— a large, floral heart created as a public memorial in remembrance of loved ones lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was quiet, sincere and grounded in collective feeling. This year, I’ve returned with something louder: a trash can, overflowing with flowers—bright, unruly, and a bit irreverent. It’s about joy in unexpected places. A reminder that beauty doesn’t need a special occasion or a frame to be worth noticing. The Church Street Marketplace is the perfect place for that kind of moment. It’s a crossroads—full of energy, community, and constant motion. It’s where daily life happens. And that’s exactly where I wanted this piece to live: right here, out in the open, blooming for everyone
- Jayson Munn
Burlington, Vermont-based floral designer Jayson Munn served as designer and creative director for “Bloom Boom,” bringing a bright and cheerful abundance of spring flowers to the Church Street Marketplace.
The downtown shopping district named the installation and handled signage, promotion, and public relations. The collaboration allowed Munn and the Church Street Marketplace to trial their concept for a larger, future production that will involve more merchants, florists, and volunteers.
A floral palette of hot pink and vibrant orange flowers, offset with greenery and white blooms, exploded from a trash receptacle in downtown Burlington for a one-day spring event. Designed to be viewed from all angles, the piece featured raucous, colorblocked sprays of rhododendrons, begonias, tulips, foxgloves, and ranunculus, which cascaded from the can’s opening.
“I learned a lot about how you actually put flowers in a trash can
and how to make sure there’s enough water,” Munn laughed. His personal agenda was to source blooms from gardens, local flower farms, and plant nurseries, designed foam-free. Perfect for selfies and Instagram posts, “the project had a magnifying effect on my social media and for the Church Street Marketplace,” he added. Munn discovered that the lip of a five-gallon bucket rests securely on the trash can’s opening, which allowed him to use the bucket as an “insert.” In addition to placing longer cut-branches and stems directly into the bucket, Munn divided potted azaleas and begonias into sections, wrapping the root balls, kokedama-like, before placing them into the composition.
This marked Munn’s second large-scale downtown installation, following his 2021 floral heart memorial. It speaks to his growing dedication to filling public spaces with flowers—brief, unexpected moments of beauty for anyone who happens to walk by.
JAYSON MUNN DESIGN
SITE SPECIFIC BY DEBRA PRINZING
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
JORGE URIBE
indigo in bloom.
Floral and textile artists explore the ancient use of indigo dye, while highlighting traditions and techniques.
FOR YEARS, JIM MARTIN DREAMT OF BRINGING HIS FRIEND AND mentor Hitomi Gilliam, AIFD, to Charleston, S.C., to collaborate on a large-scale, public art installation. As the director of horticulture and landscapes at Magnolia Gardens, and a longtime cut-flower grower and floral artist who owns Compost in My Shoe, Martin achieved his dream this past April. He produced Indigo in Bloom, a breathtaking fusion of horticulture, history, and artistry set against the timeless beauty of one of Charleston’s most storied landscapes. For centuries, indigo has represented more than just a dye; it has been a symbol of creativity, resilience, and transformation.
Martin invited two guest artists to lead designers, staff, and volunteers in creating multiple installations across Magnolia Gardens, paying homage to indigo’s rich botanical and cultural heritage. Hitomi Gilliam, AIFD, and Arianne King Comer are both well-known in their respective creative communities. They came together to teach and explore connections between art and nature using craft, place, and storytelling.
“Indigo is something like 3,000 years old,” Comer said. “I’ve learned that there are 32 kinds of indigo in the world—from Oshogbo, Nigeria, to Japan, to South Carolina. A lot of crafters grow indigo because we are intrigued by its story. Indigo was a portal for each of us, and it brought a lot of people together to explore and create. When you think about something coming from a plant that can turn cloth blue—that is magical!”
As the landscape manager at Magnolia Gardens, Martin envisioned a series of installations throughout the expansive grounds. The
DETAILS
JIM MARTIN, COMPOST IN MY SHOE WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
MAGNOLIA PLANTATION AND GARDENS
WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
REBECCA RAYMOND
REBECCA RAYMOND FLORAL WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
JORGE URIBE, URBAN FLORAL LLC
WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
NYUGEN SMITH
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PRECIOUS JENNINGS WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
OSCAR KING IV
ARIANNE KING COMER WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
HITOMI GILLIAM AIFD WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
exhibition was open to visitors April 5-May 4. Rather than using cut flowers and fresh botanical materials, the artists designed textile and fiber pieces to showcase indigo in and among the garden’s abundant plant life. In anticipation of the exhibition, Martin and Magnolia Gardens’ horticulture staff planted with the blue palette in mind, including delphiniums, blue fescues, pansies, and plants in analogous purple colors.
Martin introduced Comer and Gilliam, kindred spirits from different disciplines. Comer is a visionary textile artist and cultural historian whose passion for indigo is rooted in the traditions of the African diaspora.
Gilliam brings Japanese heritage and influences to her floral art and multimedia work. “Indigo has connections everywhere, and I loved the idea of indigo-dyeing with both the African-American connection and the Japanese connection—and helping these two artists collaborate was a beautiful experience,” he said. “They both had an idea of the pieces they wanted to create. Essentially, this was a collaboration with the landscape, so my interest was making sure we produced pieces large enough to show well in the garden.”
Rebecca Raymond of Rebecca Raymond Floral, and Jorge Uribe of Urban Floral LLC, who both have collaborated with Gilliam and Martin for years, joined the design team, while Comer invited several local indigo artists to contribute, including Precious Jennings, Nyugen Smith, and Oscar King IV. Comer produced several textile pieces, including a signature work that featured an image of a blue egret. “I had egret stamps made out of wood for people to use on their banners. I also hand-
painted textiles using a watercolor technique,” she explained.
Gilliam produced sculptural pieces and her signature headdresses using the dyed fiber, yarns, basketry reed, and botanicals like dried pods and Spanish moss. In the garden’s Bamboo Grove, the designers hung indigo fabric strips with messages on them, inspired by something that Gilliam and Martin remembered from their trip to Japan earlier this year.
“We saw how the Japanese wrote their wishes on folded papers and hung them from plants in a garden. We couldn’t do paper here because of
idea led to a trio of maypoles draped in indigo “ribbons.” That installation coincided with May Day and reflected agricultural traditions at the beginning of a growing season. Elsewhere, Hitomi displayed her signature headpieces on two mannequins, integrating fiber and fabric. Installed on six-by-six-inch posts, the fanciful headpieces were displayed for people to see at eye level.
Martin worked with Comer to replicate the indigo dye process on a large scale. He sunk a large agricultural trough into the ground, with the rim at ground level. From that emerged sail-like textile panels dyed by Comer to express various intensities of indigo, as if they
“Essentially, this was a collaboration with the landscape, so my interest was making sure we produced pieces large enough to show well in the garden.”
the environment, so we put messages on long strips of indigo-dyed fabric and tied them into the bamboo. There were literally thousands of them hanging from the branches,” Martin noted.
Gilliam led the production of a conical sculpture measuring more than 20-feet in length, made from bamboo poles, wrapped yarn, and other textile elements. Suspended from an oak tree in a secluded area of the garden, it sparked the imaginations of visitors who marveled at the dynamic, tornado-like piece. “It almost looked as if it was growing— and that’s the vision I wanted to create,” she said.
Martin suggested adding a maypole exhibit at the garden’s main display area and the
had been dipped in a vat. The pieces were draped over a rebar armature fabricated by Martin and Uribe, which soared upward from the vat to the tree canopy above. “I wanted to show how indigo moves from the dye bath into cloth,” Martin explained. “As the dye moves higher and higher, the colors change as they are drawn into the fabric and fibers.”
He praised both Comer and Gilliam for creating art that harmonized their individual points of view while also engaging garden audiences. Indigo in Bloom’s opening event invited guests to meet and talk with the artists before touring the installations. “This was one of the best experiences of my career. It was a culmination of working with wonderful people, getting to create some of my own art, and sharing it.”
BY DEBRA PRINZING
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
AUTUMN ADAMS
the art of floriography.
A grower and a designer team up to celebrate the meaning of summer blooms.
During peak peony season at Joy Bloom Farms, a boutique flower farm in Preston, Washington, owner Laura Morimoto was joined by Parsley & Rue’s owner and lead floral designer Kimberly Bryan, who is Seattle-based. Together, the women explored their interest in the language of flowers, collaborating with the dazzling peonies and other ingredients from Morimoto’s fields and Bryan’s seasonal garden aesthetic, which offers clients floriography arrangements designed with ageold meanings imbued in each floral variety.
Drawing from the many traits associated with Paeonia lactiflora and its cultivars, Bryan designed two seasonal arrangements.
“Laura’s beautiful flowers and foliage inspired our two themes,” Bryan said. “Romantic Love” is the peony’s primary meaning. Bryan paired a generous harvest of peonies with ladies mantle, blueberry and raspberry foliage, geum, snowberry, apple mint, rose, and foxglove. This created an arrangement which provided the meanings “romantic love,” “comforting love,” “love at first sight,” and “enduring love.”
The peony also symbolizes “grace, happiness, and good fortune,” prompting Bryan to create a large arrangement of peonies, foxglove, lady’s mantle, orange and pink roses, Agrostemma, and other textural elements. To her, the overall design communicates “Encouragement and Empathy.”
“It’s really important to tease out the emotions involved in the language of flowers,” Bryan explained. “I’m often asked to create floral themes that communicate empathy and encouragement, which I think is a reflection of our times. I’m careful to deliver a design that truly expresses the sender’s intended message, even with something that has numerous meanings, like peonies. I want to educate both the sender and the receiver about the language of flowers, so that they remember its attributes in the future.”
This Slow Flowers collaboration, which took place in early June, has given Morimoto a newfound
DIFFERENT KINDS OF LOVE
Peony ‘Duchesse de Nemours’ (white); ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ (light pink); ‘Paul Wild’ (dark pink); and ‘Felix Crousse’ (raspberry pink): Romantic Love
Rose ‘Plum Perfect’: Love at First Sight
Geum ‘Scarlet Tempest’: Passion, Enthusiasm
Foxglove ‘Camelot Rose’ (dark pink) and ‘Camelot Lavender’ (light pink): Insincere Love
Apple Mint: Sincerity and Respect
Raspberry: Kindness
Lady’s Mantle: Comforting Love
Snowberry: Protection
PARSLEY & RUE
WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
JOY BLOOMS FARM
WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
ENCOURAGEMENT
Peony ‘Garden Treasure’ (yellow) and ‘Canary Brilliance’ (peach): Happiness and Good Fortune
Rose ‘Crazy Love’ (orange): Enthusiasm, Energy; ‘Princesse Charlene de Monaco’ (pink): Gratitude, Affection
Foxglove ‘Dalmatian Peach’ (peach) and ‘Camelot Lavender’ (light pink): Healing
appreciation for the luxury flowers she grows. “Using my flowers to convey meanings gives floral designers and their customers something extra. I want more people to know they can explore these floral meanings more deeply.”
Morimoto and Bryan live about 20 miles from one another, but they met virtually in a group chat during the 2025 Slow Flowers WORLDWIDE Summit in January. During the online conference, Morimoto introduced herself, mentioning that she was located 30 minutes outside of Seattle.
“It made my antenna perk up,” Bryan recalled. “I’m always looking for more material—more and more flowers for my designs. We met last winter, when I really wanted to cultivate more relationships with flower farmers, especially ones who are close enough to visit in person.”
The women’s face-to-face meeting occurred soon after, triggered by Bryan’s need for a large number of tulips to hand out at an upcoming event. “I was able to supply Kim, because I was growing 6,000 tulips that season,” Morimoto laughed. “Too many!”
In her fourth growing season, Morimoto was encouraged by Bryan’s enthusiasm for the variety and quality of Joy Blooms Farm’s crops. “I don’t sell many flowers to retail customers, but I love working with florists,” Morimoto observed. “I’m honing in on what my florists want, how they want it, and when they want it, not to mention keeping up with floral colors and design trends.”
THE AMERICAN FLOWERS WEEK COLLECTION
2016-2025
& REDWHITE BLOOM
A DECADE OF BOTANICAL COUTURE
Ten years ago, SLOW FLOWERS asked Ann Arbor, Michigan-based floral designer Susan McLeary to create a signature floral headpiece to celebrate American Flowers Week. Her eye-catching flower ‘fro, modeled by Monique Montri, was creatively satisfying to produce.
“I spent about 30 minutes making a heavy-duty flower crown, for which I had to wire each stem to make sure it was sturdy enough. Then, I spent another 40 minutes adding individual flowers to Monique’s hair. We teased out her hair so it had more structure to hold the flowers,” McLeary told American Flowers Week at the time.
Photographed by Amanda Dumouchelle and styled by McLeary, the project became an iconic image across our American Flowers Week promotions. Her impeccable look inspired a decade of botanical couture looks that followed: Garments, ensembles, and accessories created by Slow Flowers members and farmer-florist teams across the U.S.
Since 2016, we have celebrated an impressive lineup of 48 American Flowers Week botanical couture looks, designed by our members with domestic flowers and foliage as the inspiration. Hawaii; Maine and Florida; Missouri and South Dakota and beyond.
THE AMERICAN FLOWERS WEEK COLLECTION
design evolution q, & a.
Susan McLeary reflects on her botanical couture style over the decade.
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In considering the important influence that McLeary’s flower ‘fro brought to this campaign and to the floral artists who followed in her footsteps, we invited the Slow Flowers leader to discuss the evolution of her style. McCleary is the author of The Art of Wearable Flowers (Chronicle Books, 2020) and she teaches extensively through her online platform at susanmcleary.com.
SFJ: Sue, tell us about your first wearable floral piece and what inspired you to design it?
SM: I think it was probably with Françoise Weeks in California at a Chapel Designers Conference where she was teaching, 2012 or 2013. It was something beyond a corsage or beyond a crown.
SFJ: What did that experience reveal to you, or unlock in your imagination?
SM: I started figuring out that I could use the techniques I used to make jewelry—very simple techniques. Françoise showed me the example that you can really express yourself in whatever way you want with flowers. I was new in my learning and this was really exciting to see someone making things that really don’t have a lot of commercial purpose. It was art. And that was the purpose. And that,
obviously, was hugely valuable to me.
SFJ: You’ve been redefining wearable florals ever since!
SM: I love to take a topic or something that is either a pain point or a stumbling block and try to think through all the possible iterations until I can come up with something I think is a useful improvement. With wearables, I guess the purpose for me is that I want people to just enjoy the flowers while they’re here and kind of detach from the obsession with longevity that I think has done damage to our industry. Like the whole vase-life conversation and the consumer thinking that a flower is only valuable if it sits in a vase for 10 days. I want to throw that all out of the window and say: “Enjoy this right now for art’s sake. For joy.”
SFJ: Can you tell us about one of your most recent wearable floral designs?
SM: There’s kind of a pattern where I like to fix on something and I’m there for a while! What happened recently was (when) I was designing my daughter’s prom flowers. She didn’t think she wanted a corsage; she thought she wanted a bouquet, but she had this really cool dress with lots of handmade details. So I wanted to make a light armature that held the flowers, but didn’t feel heavy. I wanted to make a little accessory like a jewelry piece. That led me to testing out various ways to float
flowers in midair.
SFJ: How did you approach this challenge?
SM: I’ve always loved armature work. But armatures, as they were taught to me, always felt like they weren’t commercially relevant or aesthetically relevant. So I wanted to test out my concept and take away as much of the bulk of the mechanic as I could, leaving enough support to show the flowers. This was how my obsession started, and it continues! I am thinking about how to get rid of glue. How to get rid of tape. Corsage tape is plasticky, a throwaway item. Florist’s wire, as it is sold, is also plastic-coated and it’s not good-looking on its own, so I’ve found it really exciting to think of armatures and supports that can eliminate those products.
SFJ: Clearly your thinking has evolved over the past decade. How might you approach designing your Flower ‘Fro today, in 2025? Would you want to find a way to “float” those red-white-and-blue flowers above Monique’s head?
SM: The Afro is a mass design because all of the flowers are cut and manipulated to make one form. I think we swing back and forth as florists. Sometimes, we go really dense and decorative—that’s a mass design—and then we swing to really
minimal, light, and kind of Ikebanainspired.
SFJ: That seems to be where you are now, right?
SM: Yes, I really enjoy working with negative space and transparency, using the least amount that I need to get the point across, to get the impact, I guess. And then, thinking about the forms and the lines that flowers create. I think the exciting thing that’s going to be explored more and more is form-linear work, as opposed to the vegetative, ubernatural design style or the mass decorative design.
SFJ: Can you describe form-linear a little more?
SM: It’s very spare and it’s all about the forms in nature and about asymmetry. In form-linear, the materials are selected and they’re placed in a way so you can see the form and line of each element. And there’s a lot of negative space around them. You could say that Ikebana is form-linear design, too.
SFJ: We watch your Instagram feed where you’re showcasing wearable flowers with beautiful, formlinear techniques!
SM: Definitely! It’s exciting for me to think of ways to teach armatures that are approachable for a new florist, so they can see the breadth of what’s available to them and put all of these ideas in their toolkit. It’s an approachable technique, not one
where you’re wiring and taping for three hours to make a bridal bouquet, but instead, you have this simple armature that you know how to make. It creates an impactful result, without the extraneous waste.
SFJ: If you were to redesign the 2015 Flower ‘Fro with today’s Sue McLeary armature techniques, I could see it still framing Monique’s head like a beautiful halo, but in a form-linear style, right?
SM: (Laughs) I think it would be more transparent! I want more negative space. I want the flowers to each have their own spatial plane, with movement and interest. Remember, the Flower ‘Fro was for a photo shoot, so Monique didn’t have to walk or be on a runway. I’m more conscious of things being practical or wearable these days, more than just for a photo shoot setting. So I would want the headpiece to have a little more underneath structure if I recreated it.
SFJ: What else can you share about your philosophy of wearable flowers or botanical couture?
SM: I want my pieces to have a lot of motion. I don’t like anything to feel dense or heavy, typically. I take a lot of videos now. I take photos, of course, but in my daily sharing, it’s always video, because motion is so interesting to me.
DRESS STYLING: Kamaehu Duldulao, Grace Flowers Hawaii
DRESS CONSTRUCTON: Alison Higgins and Jade Woolford, Grace Flowers Hawaii
BOUQUET: Nicole Cordier Wahlquist, Grace Flowers Hawaii
FLOWER SOURCES: ACK Flowers LLC, Papaikou, Hawaii
PHOTOGRAPHY: Sarah Anderson
MODEL: Jasmine Kume Amari
MAKEUP: Kali Rosel VENUE: G.B. Hajim’s Farm, Birdsong
DESIGN + CONCEPT: Niesha Blancas, Fetching Social Media, fetchingsocialmedia.com, @fetchingsocial
DESIGN ASSISTANTS: Cathy Blancas, Ana Quinata
FLOWER PALETTE: Seasonal California-grown flowers in a yellow, peach, coral, orange and green color range FLOWERS: CamFlor Inc., camflor.com, @camflorinc
PHOTOGRAPHY: Niesha Blancas and Ana Quinata, @anaquinata
MODEL: Gloria Serna VENUE: Fresno, California
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DESIGNERS: Xenia D'Ambrosi, Sweet Earth Co., sweetearthco.com, @sweetearthco and Natalie Collette, The Gardenist @the_gardenist
FLORAL PALETTE: Delphinium, bachelor's button, and snapdragons from CamFlor Inc. (California); muscari from The Gardenist (Connecticut); local hyacinth from East Coast Wholesale (Connecticut); and dried amaranth and miscanthus from Sweet Earth Co. (New York) PHOTOGRAPHY: Sally Semonite Green, @salstergreen
MODEL: Ryan Matthew MAKEUP: Xenia D'Ambrosi and Natalie Collette
VENUE: Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Pound Ridge, New York
THE AMERICAN FLOWERS WEEK COLLECTION
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beauty among ruins.
DESIGN + CONCEPT: Jennifer Reed, Jennifer Designs Events, @jenniferdesignsevents
DESIGN ASSISTANT: Jennifer Bender, @thisholidayhouse
FLOWER SOURCES: Owlet Farms, Pilesgrove, New Jersey, @owletfarms, CamFlor Inc., Watsonville, California, @camflorinc. Muth Family Farm, Williamstown, New Jersey, @muthfamilyfarm PHOTOGRAPHY: Haley Richter Photography, @haleyrichter MODEL: Brooke G., @brookeitlist
HAIR + MAKEUP: : Jessica Saint Beauty @jessicasaintbeauty and Toni Burke @toniburke_muah
HAIR + MAKEUP: Tanya Ferrell VENUE: Shaver Lake, California
DESIGN + CONCEPT: Jennifer Reed, Jennifer Designs, jenniferdesignsevents.com, @jenniferdesignsevents DESIGN ASSISTANT: Kelly Shore, The Floral Source, thefloralsource.com, @thefloralsource
VENUE: Continental Floral Greens, Forest Grove, Oregon
THE AMERICAN FLOWERS WEEK COLLECTION
northwest narrative.
Fresh-cut branches, berries, and greenery get all dressed up.
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Last fall, Jennifer Reed and Kelly Shore traveled from their east coast studios to Forest Grove, Oregon, where they taught a holiday design workshop at one of Continental Floral Greens’ satellite farms. The event was captured for Slow Flowers Journal’s Fall 2024 cover story, photographed by Matt McDaniel.
Slow Flowers asked the women, American Flowers Week botanical couture designers for past seasons, whether they wanted to create a botanical couture look using classic Pacific Northwest greens and foliage.
Owner of Jennifer Designs, Reed said yes and took the lead, enjoying the chance to design with freshly harvested conifer greens, broadleaf evergreen sprays, and berry-laded boughs. While also producing the two-day design workshop, Shore, owner of The Floral Source, found time to assist her frequent collaborator.
In planning her dramatic look, Reed says she researched Oregonthemed cultural and artistic influences online. “When I googled ‘Oregon,’ the movie ‘The Goonies’ kept popping up,” she laughed. “So my original idea was some sort of pirate look.” Fans of the 1985 cult classic may well-recall the plot: A group of young misfits called the “Goonies” discover an ancient map and set out on an adventure to find a legendary pirate's long-lost treasure. The production was filmed in the coastal fishing town of Astoria, Oregon.
Reed continued, “I asked myself, why would a pirate be on a flower farm? It made no sense.” Even after she moved onto other ideas, it turns out that a swashbuckler vibe remained— and the look Reed created is both an ode to the best foliage crops produced in Oregon, and a playful nod to some of the corseted attire worn by the “Outlander” series’ lead actress, Caitríona Balfe.
Reed sent her sketches to Madison Milgard, brand director for Continental Floral Greens, who helped source the ingredients on Reed’s list. Milgard, whose family co-founded CFG, grew up surrounded by acres of conifer trees and shrubs, so it wasn’t hard to convince her to model Reed’s floral garment, too.
“Madison sent me the magnolia leaves ahead of time so I could get started on the corset,” Reed recalled. She shaped overlapping layers of the leathery foliage over an actual fabric corset, exposing the soft, caramel-colored indumentum that appears on the back of each glossy green leaf. “Every single part of the leaves had to be glued and then held in position with the heat of my hand to keep their shape around the body,” she explained. I didn’t want the edges to pop up or crack once the magnolia dried.” Little details give the garment its character, such as bits of lichen tucked into spaces between some of the leaves, resembling torn lace.
It's often hard to avoid a bulky look when a human model dresses in botanical couture, but Reed’s corset fit Milgard like a glove. Clasps along the back allowed for a snug fit when worn. Botanical accents graced the neckline, shoulders, and upper arms, including vibrant Oregon native vine maple and nandina, which resemble a vintage mantilla scarf.
The high-low skirt was comprised of two sections, which simplified the mechanics and achieved an important goal of Reed’s. “I always want my models to be able to move in my floral garments.” The underskirt, worn across the front of the body like an apron, had a chicken wire base with a tapestry of intricate texture and color patterns provided by branches of nandina, Ilex with red berries, and branches with rose hips. Reed attached most of the pieces to the waistline, starting with a dense placement at the belt and allowing sprays to softly drape and weave together closer to the hemline.
The longer overskirt wrapped three-quarters of the way around the waist, so that the decorative underskirt peeked out from its opening. Reed fashioned the garment with CFG’s pre-made garlands, lining the skirt with extra pine branches. After Milgard stepped into these two skirt pieces, Reed added cedar boughs at the hips, cutting them short to resemble a flouncy peplum. Accessories completed this look, including a charming pair of shoes that the designer covered in magnolia leaves.
“This was a fun way to show off evergreens without it looking Christmasy,” Shore observed. “It really reads ‘Northwest’ and isn’t pigeonholed in the winter season.”
The garment highlighted some of the best Oregon-grown options for florists, Shore continued. Through The Floral Source, she supplies florists with many of the greenery, foliage, and fruiting branches grown by this farm. “I don’t think people realize how fun it is to explore a farm to see what it grows,” Shore raved. “There is so much cool material here that many florists around the country aren’t used to having.”
THE AMERICAN FLOWERS WEEK COLLECTION
2025
blooming bride.
Hundreds of creamy tulip petals bring romance to a bridal gown.
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Growing and designing wedding florals is part of Waverly Flower Co.’s brand, so it’s no surprise that Alanna Messner-Scholl reimagined a bridal gown fashioned not from silk yardage, but with a flurry of tulip petals from her own tulip harvest.
For the Philadelphia-area farmer-florist, the character of her selected venue complements the dreamy botanical couture concept. MessnerScholl’s editorial-style photo shoot took place at Elkins Estate, a historic manor built in 1898 and situated on 42-acres in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. “It felt like we were in an elegant setting in the French or Italian countryside,” she said. The collaboration with Tess Schilke was fortuitous, because the photographer was quite familiar with Elkins Estate from previous bookings. “This location is so ornate, you almost don’t need flowers; they’re just kind of an accent to complement the rooms,” Messner-Scholl laughed, adding that she’s
MODEL: Shannon McConnell and Brett Morris, @shanmcconnell, @brettmorris10
HAIR: Krystin Curry of Mane & Moon, @krystincurry_hair
MAKEUP: Sarah Capizzi of Inner Glow Hair Lounge, @innerglow_hairlounge
VENUE: Elkins Estate, @elkinsestate, VIDEOGRAPHY: John Feher, @johnfeher
AIRBRUSH TAN: TLS Spray Tan Bar, @tls_spraytanbar
planning flowers for a 2026 ceremony at the property.
The models, Shannon McConnell and Brett Morris, are clients of Waverly Flower Co., and they plan to marry in October. “Having already met Shannon, I imagined her wearing the silhouette of a slender, strapless gown with a neck scarf that draped over her shoulders,” Messner-Scholl explained. For the groom, rather than making a conventional boutonniere, she created an oversized botanical lapel featuring tulips, hellebores, ranunculus blooms and Pieris japonica. “It is a statement piece that reads like part of his tuxedo rather than a boutonniere.”
The gown’s production and the photo shoot were planned for peak tulip season. “I was pretty set on having our own flowers for this gown, and my vision was to use about 250 fully-double ‘Mondial’ tulips, which are a gorgeous, creamy white hue.”
“I originally thought I would fasten tulip heads with reflexed petals to the gown, but we didn’t have enough. So instead, I removed all the petals and glued on each one individually—which took a lot longer than I anticipated.“
Unpredictable weather created some. tulip production challenges, requiring Messner-Scholl to choose a second variety to round out the design recipe. “I added ‘Avant-Garde’ tulips, which are ivory with a yellow center.” The mix of cream and ivory petals added depth and dimension to the pale floral gown.
The use of tulip petals (rather than full flower heads) created a softer, ruffled texture but avoided bulk in the bust area, the designer said. However, she found it hard to maintain the freshness of her tulip petals once they were glued to the base garment. “The tulips didn’t hold up as much as I had hoped for, but that’s part of the process,” Messner-Scholl explained. “We started constructing the gown at 8 a.m. and at noon, it looked perfectly fine. Even with misting the heck out of the dress, though, by 3 p.m., it just nose-dived.” The unseasonably warm, late-April date and a one-hour drive to transport the dress to the venue took a toll on the delicate petal shapes. “Thankfully, I’m overjoyed with the photographs,” she added. “They tell the story that I wanted to tell.”
THE AMERICAN FLOWERS WEEK COLLECTION
feverfew frock.
A crop of perennials blooms into a charming garment.
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Andee Zeigler owns Three Sepals, a Portland, Oregon-based studio for ceramics, floral art, and bouquets. She grows flowers to share with neighbors, occasionally selling buckets of blooms to DIY designers. She embellishes her pottery using creamy, earthy, and aqua-blue glazes in distinctive scallop patterns.
That detail appears in Zeigler’s most recent botanical creation—a ruffled skirt with sections of feverfew placed in scallop patterns, and curved sword fern scallops across the hemline. She fashioned the skirt, purely for the joy of it, collaborating with her husband Alex Dickey to photograph the look on a recent summer’s day.
“I love making botanical couture,” Zeigler proclaimed. With a “unicorn” property equivalent to four city lots that add up to just under one-half-acre, there is plenty of soil for the Three Sepals garden.
Each year at the end of the season, she harvests everything still in bloom to create wearable looks for herself, her family, and her friends.
“I spend all year growing this garden and there’s an abundance of everything here. Why not be ‘in the garden, in the garden’!”
“People ask, ‘What do you do with it?’ when they see what I have
DESIGN + CONCEPT: Three Sepals WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
created. Some might ask, ‘Is this a waste of time?’; ‘Is there a point to it?’ or ‘Are you wasting resources?’”
For Zeigler, the answer to such questions is that art is an essential expression of who she is. “I make a lot of art and I have never quite wrapped my head around melding my art with the world of capitalism. I grow flowers mostly to give to my community. We have a Free Library and it is like a little house with two sections. On one side are books and the other side is full of pottery and flowers. From the beginning of July until our first freeze, every Saturday, I put out free flowers for our neighbors. When I have extra pottery, or even rejects, or when my studio feels overwhelmed, I add those.” Giving away bouquets of flowers feels right, she added. “It doesn’t even look like I picked a single stem!”
Making floral fashions also feels right. When a small crop of feverfew—three varieties, including ‘Magic Lime’, ‘Virgo’, and ‘Magic Single’—expanded into a four-foot-square patch, the proliferation inspired Zeigler to make something with all those fluffy stems. She harvested the feverfew, filling three large buckets, and set up production in her pottery studio. A dress form made it easy to attach dozens of feverfew bundles to a chicken wire skirt, their downward-facing heads forming those botanical scallops. Thicker wire runs vertically through the mesh to prevent the weight of the flowers from collapsing the flared skirt form.
Zeigler attached the curved sword fern shapes as the final trimming. It’s a detail she has used in the past, thanks to all of the fern plants inherited from her garden’s prior owner. An opening in the back of the skirt allowed Zeigler to step into it; with small twists of wire to hold it closed. Underneath, her leggings kept the mesh from scratching her skin. A dark-green top complemented the verdant look.
It's fun to dress up in your garden’s bounty, she said. “I just think there are too many people hung up on ‘What am I making this for?’ and ‘Do I need to be marketing this to someone?’ instead of doing it for themselves.” The gardener-maker has an inspiring philosophy: “Dress Like Your Garden,” and it’s one all flower lovers should embrace.
Professor Sarah Berquist teaches farmer-florists of the future through the sustainable flower farming and floral entrepreneurship curriculum at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts.
During spring semester, she challenged her Farmer-Florist Practicum students to join Slow Flowers’ American Flowers Week campaign with their own botanical couture designs. For many, this was their first foray into wearable florals, and like most of the projects Berquist assigns, the young floral artists and growers fearlessly embraced the opportunity to creatively experiment with local and seasonal blooms.
“The practicum is an advanced version of our retail floral design course,” Berquist explained. “We did a series of projects during spring semester—from working in the greenhouse and holding plant and tuber sales, to producing an annotated bibliography of Slow Flowers articles. When I proposed the botanical couture project, the students dove right in.”
With “Student Life” as their prompt, class members brainstormed design themes around familiar university, agriculture, and farmerfloristry themes. Four design concepts emerged: The Shirt, The Boots, The Backpack, and The Graduates. “Everyone liked the symbolism of education and creativity,” said Allison Virzi, a graduating senior and teaching assistant in the program. Added Sarah Johnson, “We kept asking ourselves, ‘how are we going to be able to do this?’ But, we obviously found the time and it was definitely worth the experience!”
THE GRADUATES
SARAH JOHNSON and ALLISON VIRZI partnered to “flower” their traditional capand-gown graduation attire. “The photo shoot happened during graduation week, and this project symbolized how close we all became as the Stockbridge Floral Design team,” Virzi said. “We decided to make tulip stoles and daffodil tassels with the flowers we were harvesting that week.” Graduation stoles are often decorated with symbols, colors, or text that represent the student's academic achievements or honors, so it’s fitting that the farmer-florists chose from their crops to design floral stoles.
RUBY DIGREGORIO created the tassels by threading several daffodil varieties, attaching them to the mortarboard caps. The construction of the stoles required two different mechanics. Virzi assembled her stole with a strand of tulips (complete with bulbs), attached to a long tube of chicken wire that draped around her neck. “It has so much movement because of the drapey quality of the foliage,” she said.
THE SHIRT
During the student brainstorming session, AERYN WILLINGHAM was doing what she often does: knitting. Then she heard Berquist suggest using spring tulips grown by the class, adding, “maybe Aeryn could knit something for it.” “My brain started going a mile a minute, because I love fiber crafts—I’ve been knitting since I was three and spinning since I was 10,” said Willingham, a food and farming major. She created a hyper-local knit tunic into which her classmates inserted a riot of tulips and ranunculus. There is a lacy openness to the soft, knitted garment, the gauge of which emulates chicken wire mesh. With Willingham serving as the garment’s model, several of her classmates added tulips to the knit bodice. They devised an ombre effect with darker orange flowers blending into yellow ones, working from the base of the top to the neckline and shoulders.
THE BACKPACK
SUSAN NADEAU chose the ubiquitous Jansport backpack to symbolize the student lifestyle. “At first, she was going to fill it with a bouquet of flowers, but then decided to design directly onto the outside surface,” Berquist explained. “She used cable ties to attach a ‘tube’ of chicken wire to the backpack; then inserted flowers into that base.” As both designer and model, Susan embraced the joy of a “just-aboutto-be-free” senior by giving her reliable accessory its own floral tattoo.
DETAILS
Stockbridge Floral Design is part of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
THE BOOTS
Two pairs of iconic farming boots symbolized the life of a farmer-florist, and the footwear was transformed with spring flowering bulbs, a beautiful embellishment that converted functional footwear into wearable art.
MELANIE MORGAN and CHARLOTTE BAYER served as designers and models for this charming agriculture-inspired floral vignette. Staples of many farmers’ closets, the leather Blundstones and Hunter rain boots owned by these students inspired them to use the boots’ openings as floral vessels. Specialty daffodils and tulips, plus ranunculus and lily of the valley stems, emerge as if growing from inside the boots, playfully dancing around the models’ ankles. The addition of a shovel as a prop brought vibes of the painting ‘American Gothic,’ reimagined as a joyful (rather than dour) scene.
“It’s cool that this photo shoot happened inches away from our plot where many of these flowers are grown,” Berquist said.
jenny m. diaz
Fifty floral quilt blocks for the 50 states.
Slow Flowers Society has relied on the creative talents of Jenny Diaz since 2016. Her contributions to our visual brand have been essential for building the Slow Flowers Movement. Jenny has an uncanny ability to listen closely, interpret inventively, and express ideas in highly effective ways. We are always eager to see how she takes the “wish list” of what we want visuals to achieve, because they far exceed expectations.
Since creating the logo art for American Flowers Week in 2016, Jenny’s influence on this national floral promotional campaign has been everywhere. In 2016 and 2017, she hand-illustrated our USA Map and 50 States of Local Flowers coloring artwork, still used each year by our members to promote their own American Flowers Week efforts.
Jenny has also designed four botanical couture looks over the years. She’s not a florist or a flower farmer, but she’s so intimately connected to the goals and values of American Flowers Week that her creativity has prompted her “floral fashionista” to conceptualize,
fabricate, style, and photograph a range of wearable looks—inspired by her love of local florals.
For American Flowers Week 2025, we invited Jenny to be our featured artist. And of course, she had ideas! Jenny joined Debra Prinzing recently to talk about it and give us a sneak peek! The project involves 50 original watercolors of state-bystate quilt blocks, recaptured into 8-by-8-inch paintings. Here’s a bit more:
AFW: Have you painted in watercolor much, Jenny?
JD: It’s always been my favorite medium to work with, just because in most of my other design work everything is so precise. Watercolor gives me a chance to let things flow more organically.
AFW: What type of watercolor paint are you using?
JD: I was using Winsor & Newton, but I also have a travel set of koi watercolors from Sakura. I’ve been watercolor painting outside when my husband and son do archery in the evenings. I also need this travel set of watercolors because my son, Dylan, has baseball practice and Ninja practice. I’ve got to take him everywhere, so the painting goes with me!
AFW: How are you able to make the paintings resemble fabric quilt squares?
JD: I noticed that a lot of quilters
like to use fabric that almost has a watercolor feel to it, so I’ve added variations to some of the pieces, allowing different tones to come through.
AFW: Tell us about your path as an artist!
JD: I’ve always been creative since I was little. My mom has always been creative and she has painted with watercolors; my grandma used to make quilts and do paintings.
AFW: Did you study art in college?
JD: I went to Fresno State University to become an environmental toxicologist. I love biology. I love bugs and animals. What I intended to do as a career path was study plants, insects, and animals to determine if those species are safe or endangered. But, I was still doodling and doing more art in my classes than actually paying attention to the subject. So I changed to an emphasis in graphic design because it seemed that’s where art was going. I went more digital in my design career. Lately, I’ve gravitated to working with people who love flowers; who love plants, so it’s kind of my full-circle moment as a creative.
AWF: Tell us how you came up with the 50 States Quilt Square Project for American Flowers Week.
JD: I love challenges! I was thinking of traditional Americana; something that might be considered old-timey, but still carries through to today. My brain just started doing tumbleweeds and I thought, “We’ve done state flowers. I know there are state
animals. I wonder if there are state quilt blocks?” I did some research and discovered that, yes, there are state quilt blocks. There are some variations, but I actually found a book from the 1970s, “The United States Patchwork Pattern Book: 50 Quilt Blocks for 50 States.”
AFW: What do you know about the story of each quilt?
JD: Some are an obvious reference to the state. For example, New Mexico has more of a Santa Fe look and Texas has a big star. For other quilt squares, I haven’t been able to find any story about the origins of a design. I’m hoping somebody who sees our project will tell us more stories after reading about it!
AFW: How are you transforming photographs of vintage quilt pieces into watercolor art?
JD: I’m trying to stay as true to each state as I can. I’ve been scanning the image of each quilt piece and then converting it to an 8-inch square (and there are some round patches). Once I print it onto paper, I put the design on my lightboard and I lightly trace the pattern. Then, I paint the watercolors freehand.
AFW: We loved seeing all 50 of these paintings assembled together as a quilt!
JD: Yes, it was so refreshing to sit down and say, “What state am I going to visit today?!”
