It’s another Flower Friday. And we’ve got some flower craft for you!
One of the things that Kayde wanted to learn and practice was flower arrangement. A few years ago, we put in a dedicated cut flower garden that was aimed at increasing our flower supplies that could make that a reality.
The effort of flower arrangement (also known as floral design) might “seem” like a simple task of picking flowers and putting them into a vase. And to some degrees, it is. But, in truth, floristry is a human craft practiced since the earliest times of civil society. It was practiced by the Egyptians 4,000 years ago, all the way up to modern day where you can purchase such arrangements at your local supermarket and even gas stations.
The skillsets involved in practicing floristry are surprisingly quite deep, of which floral design is just one. We also practice the cultivation of various flowers and it’s a challenging one to say the least. While modern day practitioners might think of floristry as an art form, we think it relies too heavily on the amazing nature of life and existence. Flower design very much flirts with the philosophical debate of whether art mimics life or life mimics art. This philosophical debate is called memesis and it’s been going on since the days of Aristotle and Plato.
There are many geographic forms of floral design, often representing the deeply held beliefs and preferences of those people. For example, the Japanese tend to focus on a three line design, representing heaven, humans and the earth. Europeans emphasized more sophisticated symmetrical designs, commonly preferring triadic colors with great contrast. The French prefer pastel colors that feature no particular focal point, allowing the mind to wander across the piece. American floral design introduced the use of wildflowers, grasses and seed pods, often reflecting a newly born life with fewer luxuries.
In a way, Kayde practices a unique subarctic version of floral design that borrows from all of these various influences, along with the choices we make in cultivation. She enjoys using spike based flowers such as Stocks, Lupine and Delphinium to establish great peaks and valleys in her pieces. Those valleys are often filled with pastels or contrasting colors, representing the striking differences between our summers and winter. A signature flower might draw your gaze, borrowing from the European design preferences, often showing off a particularly great specimen that we grew. The design is always unique, short lived and a signature of that very moment of our flower gardens.
Flowers and floral design are used to signify the greatest achievements in life and the deepest lows in life, regardless of culture and history. We are grateful to have such beauty in our lives, just because we can. Our flowers bring us a lot of joy and are definitely one of the high points of our short summer seasons. At the same time, they provide a fantastic symbiotic relationship between our food gardens and pollinators.
The reasons we celebrate Flower Fridays here go deeper than you could possibly imagine. We hope that our weekly tributes bring a highlight to your weekend and help you to think differently about the importance of flowers in the world!
