Dahlias have started at the farm! I feel as if I must be some kind of wizard, like I need to shop for a trailing navy blue robe with golden crescents and stars on it, and don a pointed hat to match. DAHLIAS!!! I can’t even spell the word!! They are my all time favorite …
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We had our first harvest this week! We cut all white cosmos including this one above that thinks it’s a dress designed by Issey Miyake. We’ve had stellar luck with regular rain, which has been key because it turns out you are supposed to put landscape fabric down after the irrigation tubing. More on that later….
We had the happy luxury of jamming tea tins full of blooms in fluorescent shades on Friday. Exotics like long stemmed Rothschild lilies, Icelandic poppies and parrot tulips mixed well with old-timey bee-balm, begonias and geranium on the Shanghai Terrace at the Pennisula where our spectacular bride greeted guests for cocktails on the eve of …
We are living the dream of starting our own flower farm this year. We’ve been growing flowers for ourselves at the Chicago Honey Co-op for a while but this is a whole new scale. Successful farming necessitates super-human amounts of savvy, physical endurance and years of dedication, but our primary aim is just to make …
It’s suddenly Spring. I, like many Chicagoans, am stumbling around pasty and shell-shocked, blinded by this gigantic alien orb in the sky. This handful of garden greens heralds as a kind of victory flag over this intensive winter. I’ve heard of massive defections from Chicago due to last winter and I’m fine with it. Fare …
We were recently asked to create decor for a donut themed breakfast, and these “clean, elegant” donut vases emerged! After having 300 donuts arrive at the studio in waves over the past few weeks, I learned that donuts are not an everyday food. Finally, I had to tell Kristin to tell me that they were “all” …
This year we had the pleasure of donating our planning, invitation design and decorating talents to DVLC’s annual fundraiser, with sold out results! We scouted the Cliff Dwellers club for the evening, which was recently renovated by SOM. The club was one of the last places where Louis Sullivan found refuge among friends and colleagues towards …
New kids in town, MatchMade Events chose us to purvey the flowers for their clever Robin Hood concept shoot at the stunning Bishop’s Hall bed and breakfast in Oak Park last fall. I went for a druidic vibe for the bouquet with cascading ferns and cyclamen. Photo by the brilliant Chad Husar. Cafe au lait …
Had the great good luck to spend Thanksgiving in the U.P. at a family friend’s 500 acre farm near the wilds of Escanaba. The landscape was so staggeringly gorgeous I was afraid I’d drive the car off the road. An orchard of frozen apples, a field of dried sunflowers, wild clematis puffs…all miraculous to my …
Carnations made a such a big comeback in the early 2000s New York flower scene that Vogue ran almost monthly editorials heralding the news, with gorgeous bowls of them priced at $300 and stars in the field bitterly feuding over who was responsible for their redux Now the show stopping chrysanthemum is officially back. ( Joy! …