Longwood Gardens Trip

I am so excited for January's end of the month trip to the premier gardens of the nation, Longwood Gardens, located outside of Philadelphia. For anyone that is a lover of plants and/or nature, you must see Longwood (http://www.longwoodgardens.org/). This will be my 5th visit (photos are from my visit last April) and I still haven't explored all that I would like to see within the 1000 acres. In addition to the exterior gardens, Longwood has an amazing conservatory, including a new children's garden. Of course with it being mid-winter, I will be spending my time in the conservatory. What a great place for inspiration for the upcoming wedding season.

Besides wanting to see the conservatory, my main purpose for the trip is for continuing education. As I mention on my website, I believe it is very important to continually learn and grow. I will be participating in a floral design workshop especially for weddings! My goal is to acquire more skills and techniques that I can apply to my weddings this year! I am so excited!

Floral Design Workshops

Join me at the Ohio State University in Febuary 2010 for one of my floral design workshops! Please go to http://chadwickarboretum.osu.edu/upcoming-events/fall-plant-sale/index_html for more information. I hope to see you there!

The reception tables included an arrangement of pumpkins, gourds, and edible squash randomly placed. Antique bottles holding single stems of zinnia, ornamental peppers, pumpkin peppers, sprays of mums were interspersed amongst pumpkins, gourds, etc.

Fall Wedding

Fall Weddings are so much fun. This past weekend's wedding was particularly cool. The bride and groom requested local supplies. If not local, they wanted organic. Both requests were very possible. There are so many options available locally for pumpkins, gourds, squash, bittersweet, broomcorn, and mums. The dahlias and zinnias were purchased from an organic cut flower supplier in California, but other than that, everything was locally sourced.

Six/Lambert Wedding

This wedding included a combination of mostly local cut flowers or Fair Trade cut flowers. For the reception tables, I used pots of perennials that, unlike cut flowers, can be planted and live year after year!

Be sure to ask me about local and Fair Trade options! Actually, I'll probably bring it up anyways!

Dirossi/King Wedding

Sometimes it is difficult to get good photos of my work while I am racing around arranging and then setting up for an event. These are some photos I didn't want to include on my website because of the quality.

Learning Design at the OSU Learning Gardens

Looking back at some of my photos from earlier this summer, I am reminded of what a great opportunity I have to take care of these gardens at Ohio State.