How to ID cut flowers!

If you are completely new to plants and flowers, it can be overwhelming to learn how to identify flowers. You will need to have a good library of flower ID under your belt before you begin work at an event company, flower shop, or working with your own clients. It is also helpful if you just want to delve deeper into floral design as a hobby. Knowing flower ID will help you place orders with your flower shop, local flower market, or growers. If you’ve never spent a lot of time with flowers before, it is difficult to know where to start learning to recognize flower varieties.

Most florists learn flowers through familiarity, shopping, and working with floral ingredients everyday. We find our favorites, that work for our recipes. We find the color varieties that speak to our brands. The truth is though: WE DO NOT KNOW EVERY SINGLE FLOWER! Flower varieties will vary per your climate, your local offerings, and the seasons. We are all learning, all the time! Nobody knows every flower and every plant. We are constantly learning and researching.

That said, you must have a good library of flower ID under your belt if you want to work with flowers professionally or even as a hobby.  I often tell students, the best way to get started with floral design is to make one arrangement per week. In the sourcing of the flowers, working with the stems, and researching, any questions you have along the way, you will begin to become comfortable with identifying flowers. 

But here are a few more tips to get you started:

If you are not sure where to start with flower identification, I recommend searching through flower supplier catalogs to start learning the basics. Here are a few:

Florabundance

Fifty Flowers

Peterkort Roses

Most florists do not have a degree in botany, but it is a great thing to study and will help you identify plants, particularly if you have an interested in foraging. To get started on the basics of botany, learning leaf shapes, and flower petal arrangements I recommend these books:

Flora: Inside the Secret World of Plants

Botany for Gardeners

Botany in a Day

Plantnet app is a great app for giving you a start in Identifyíng a flower but you need to double check it with Google. 

Additionally you will find a lot of tools and resource for flower ID in my book, Field, Flower, Vase.

Be sure to follow over at our flower school Instagram as we post quick flower ID info there.

P.S.

In our FLORAL DESIGN SCHOOL we introduce you to a library of must-know cut flowers. Each flower has a guide that includes common and Latin names, best use in arrangements, conditioning methods, and botanical drawings and photographs to help you identify the flower. 

Taking a few moments to make an Easter or weekend lunch or dinner table pretty for yourself, housemates, or family, is a lovely way to sink into some joy! Tabletops have been an absolute favorite over the years for me to style. I have styled tables for Kinfolk, Williams Sonoma, Bon Appetit, Rosanne Inc., and so many more! I’ve also styled many personal tables whether it is a springtime lunch for one or for a big family gathering. Over the years, my style has become more casual, unfussy, and quite frankly undone. I mean, who is really going to have an urn on their table? Bringing in a sampling of nature to complement your meal brightens your meal and makes the table a happy place to be. 

1. Keep things simple! Arranging a few cherry blossom branches that complement the green of your spring salads can brighten up a table.

2. Keep the food the focus. 

3. Keep centerpieces tall and airy (like thin branches and blossoms in glass vases) or low and rambling, like a vine growing around your entrees!

4. Don’t overthink it! What is blooming on your balcony? What is the neighborhood florist offering this week? Keep your centerpieces seasonal and local!

5. Add plants and intersperse them with stems.

6. Make a low, lush centerpiece in a bowl. (Join us this Saturday to learn how!)

7. Mix and match. Keep a subtle color scheme and mix prints and patterns on your linens and plates.

8. Consider adding edible flowers into the mix: lilac water with dessert, nasturtiums on your salad, or violets or pansies on a cake!

Photo credits: All photos by Chelsea Fuss for various clients and all photos photographed by Chelsea except photo 1, 12, 14by Lisa Warninger, 2 by The Bounty Hunter and photo 3 by Aran Goyoaga.

On Monday, we had our last live flower class for March. We made spring wildflower wreaths! This is the demo. Making a wreath with wildflowers, grasses, and seasonal blossoms is a wonderful way to welcome a new season. In this particular class, I went over braiding and weaving methods to make a fresh wreath. Using no wire or twine, I wove this wreath together with fresh materials.

Decorate a wedding, event, or just your front door with a wreath like this. The circlet will dry and then you can continue to add materials in to the wreath. We also went over how to keep it fresh for an event or special day. If you celebrate Easter, this can be a lovely way to liven up the day! Tie it to the back of a chair, on a door, decorate a patio, or balcony. Just keep it in the shade and mist it. 

To get the latest live class schedule, sign up to our list here.

Spring is the busy season here! We are busy leading workshops for corporate groups and private parties! The classes have been really fun and the students are happy to have some flower joy infused into their work days! Here are a few of the demos from recent classes.

Sometimes our students need flower kits, so we send the flowers and supplies from our organic flower supplier. That way, the students have everything they need to complete the assignment and it makes the process seamless.

You can see more info on these virtual flower arranging live workshops, right here.

If you have read my book or attended one my live workshops, you know that flowers, though they have been the focus of my career for 20 years, actually became part of my wellness practice about four years ago. In addition, this last year I have also focused more on gardening, yoga and meditation alongside foraging and arranging and the ocassional dive back into sourdough baking when time permits. I would say all five of these things live in my “wellness toolbox” that I reach for when times get complicated, with of course flowers being my focus.

Last spring, I had the chance to meet Jacklyn Denise in Lisbon. She had such a great vibe and I was intrigued with her background growing up in Newfoundland and her work as a meditation teacher. We have been chatting about wellness and nature, and how it can be a coping mechanism right now. I wanted to share a little interview with her on the blog! Jacklyn and I are also teaming up for one of this month’s workshops for a Make and Meditate workshop. Check out the details here.

Here is my chat with Jacklyn!

What is your definition of meditation? 

Meditation for me is a few things. It is a journey inward, a deeper connection to Self (even if momentary). It is the ability to move and be quiet still. It is a tool to gain clarity. It is peace, joy, appreciation for all that you can and cannot see. It is soothing. Meditation is a means to tune into what the heart has to say, while creating a more cohesive heart-brain connection. And if you dare, one of the benefits, is calm confidence. 

How do you approach meditation in your own life, everyday? 

As cliche as it may seem, with a beginner’s heart and mind. Whether we are brand new to a sit, or veterans to our cushion, the best experiences come from the ability to let go and surrender to what we do not know. This calls for a beginner mindset. It is a practice, truly. I remind myself and each of my students of this regularly. No matter how long we have been committed to a practice, it is indeed a practice. A practice of consistent commitment. Though I teach and guide, I am human too, and admittedly, I am not always consistent. I do not always graciously float through life with ease. However, I believe it is possible. And I choose to be in possibility, and to commit to myself — for myself — to keep returning to my practice. I choose to soothe my nervous system, to tune into that calm confidence. 

Do you meditate with or in nature? Can you describe the benefits of interacting with nature through meditation? 

Occasionally, both. I live in Canada, so for a good part  of the year (when I am here) the warmer months certainly make being outside in stillness a little easier. That said, nature truly is medicine. There is something magical about grounding, rooting, connecting to the earth. Even when I am not physically outside, I often like to bring nature indoors, through plants yes, but also through my senses, with indoors being the inner makings of my mind. Whether I am quietly guiding myself through a mindfulness practice, or leading the quiet practice of Yoga Nidra, I love to commune with nature and to invite full engagement of our senses into the journey. There is something freeing about feeling the ground beneath our feet, the soft breeze on our skin, the scent of glorious fresh blooms under our noses — even when it lives only within our imaginations.

What is the best way to get started with meditation?

Be open to possibility. Practice patience with yourself. Explore voices or styles that resonate with you, and know this will change over time. Remember that no matter how experienced you are, every meditation is different. The most “seasoned” meditators still have meditations where we come up against our own resistance. This is why it’s a practice. I think one of the greatest diservices that we can do for ourselves and our practice is to assume that because we’re new, a shorter meditation is “all we can handle”. I hear it time and again, “10-15 minutes is all it takes”, “I can’t handle more than 5 minutes”, “running is my meditation”. While all of this may be true in that moment it’s said aloud, my invitation to you, beginners and veterans alike, is this: why not try? We don’t know what we don’t know. I share this with calm confidence, as someone who has guided countless “first-timers” through Nidra (a full 40 minute practice). People who claim to have never meditated a day in their lives, or for more than 5 minutes. And let me tell you — they journey deep. Because we don’t know what we don’t know. Be open to possibility.   

You have such a calming presence. Have you always been that way or is that something you have developed through your work and passion for mindfulness?

I appreciate that, thank you. The truth is, absolutely not. I was a quiet child, with a soft voice, yes. Yet always with a fierce fire in my heart to change the world, and to feel heard. And for one reason after another (sometimes unknown to my conscious self), while my voice felt suppressed, the fire burned. Through my teen years and young adult life, I relentlessly pursued a fast-paced career in public relations and advertising — to the point of total and utter burnout. The irony is not lost on me, that a career built on communications and voice which drove me to exhaustion, is the same voice (leveled up by intuition and belief in Self) that lifted me out of that darkness. Throughout my 20s I found my own practice and for my 30th birthday my gift to myself was a 200hr yoga teacher training, along with additional functional movement training, and meditation modalities, including Nidra. Though trained in movement (as an aside to my PR career), I was most at peace guiding stillness. They say we are called to offer our own medicine. And for me, this couldn’t be more true. I’ve said many times, PR made me feel magic, and meditation became my strongest medicine. Over the last four years of teaching meditation, moving through my own intense health journey, supported by teachers like Dr. Joe Dispenza, I began to connect more and more dots with my love for Nidra and how I show up in the world. All this to say, while this is something I continue to develop, it certainly does feel like my most authentic Self.  

Thank you, Jacklyn! If you would like to join us for a one hour workshop that begins with a meditation before flower arranging, check out the details here and book your spot!