If I were curious and conducting an interview, I would ask these questions of a garden club member who is a floral designer.
Here are my answers. What would yours be?
1. What brought you to be involved in garden club and specifically floral design?
Initially someone invited me to attend a garden club meeting. Then they invited me to join the club. That meant I had been voted in! I don’t think we realize how influential one invitation and an acceptance of it can be. It indeed can change the direction a life takes. Also a dear cousin was deeply involved in floral design as a National Garden Clubs flower show judge; her influence led me to take courses where one has to create floral designs!
2. What excites you about floral design?
I’m most excited about combining nature’s abundant, unique offerings of foliage, flowers, and branches into art. It’s exciting to see how distinctive each piece is. I enjoy finding relationships between nature and culture to create floral art that is interesting.
3. Where do you go to for design inspiration?
Basically everywhere: nature foremost; the work of other designers, flower shows, visual merchandising, museums, home tours, magazines, National Garden Clubs Handbook especially the design types’ descriptions. When I began looking at flower arranging as floral art many sources opened up. Things I had not considered before became points of inspiration.
4. Your favorite experience in the floral design arena so far…
It seems every floral design I create for a competitive exhibit is a learning experience and painstakingly time consuming. I usually challenge myself to choose a design I have never done before or incorporate a plant or other material I have not used previously which leads to lots of trial and error. My favorite experience occurred when I didn’t try too hard; one of my petite designs was voted best of the 20 petite designs club members brought to a meeting. I received a metal sculpture that had belonged to a designer/author I admire. That was better than a blue ribbon!5. What are you the most passionate about?
I am passionate about interesting others in floral design to see the possibilities and give it a try. I want my example to nurture the creativity others have. If I can do it, anyone can. To be able to share information is the reason I wrote a book on petite floral design.