The Art of the Bouquet

Cultivating creativity is an art form all its own

Every week I head to the garden with a bucket and clippers. The garden beds shift like listening to a great playlist throughout the summer. We go from daffodils and alliums to different types of clover and yarrow to now rudbeckia, sunflowers, cosmos, dahlias, and zinnias. I clip the plants because it allows them to continue to bloom, seed, and grow. I love this practice and the routine it creates.

I have never set out to grow flowers, but I have found them to come into my life nonetheless. I have fallen in love over the years with the things they offer in our garden. I even swore I never would plant a dahlia tuber and yet now I find clicking on a “buy now” button every winter for $80-100 worth of new tubers to bring into the collection of things we grow.

Each growing season I fall in love with new flowers as I fill the gaps of the growing season so I can enjoy every single week with something new and beautiful. Some women love shoes or clothes, but I love plants (particularly flowers)…they are my weakness. Though I love our garden of veggies and herbs too, the flowers speak a whole other language amongst the tomatoes and corn stalks that grow this time of year.

My routine of clipping the flowers every week has become a newfound way of meditating and cultivating my creativity in new forms. Being a parent can sometimes leave creative space hard to find or tend to, particularly in the summer when much of our days are busy with sandy feet and snack making. The peaceful hour I take to clip the garden and pay attention to every single bloom, bug, and more while the kid’s play has become a respite in a summer that has been full on many levels.

When I come back in, I carry the bucket to the back porch while the kids play inside without my guidance, a dream even if brief. We somehow all find a balance with this routine now late into this season. I take an old yogurt container or bucket that has a touch of water in the bottom and I begin placing the flowers.

Over the years as a gardener I have made many bouquets and the more I do it the more I find a flow with it. I have no desire to be a flower farmer or to create a business of bouquet making. It isn’t in me to do that. It is hard work and I am not consistent enough in my life to be a great farmer. Instead, bouquet making is much like being a painter and I believe in making art out of even the simplest things in life.

In college, I studied art. Though I was a graphic designer, I had to go through two in-depth art history courses along with theory classes in color, composition, and more. In hindsight, these classes became highly influential beyond my career and have informed much of the way I write, create, cook, and live life. I still sit and use techniques from my color theory class to observe the colors that flow through our garden in various seasons.

I took time to study art in Paris for a few weeks and have always loved a day in an art museum. I learned to see what made design work and how to communicate an idea in a simple and natural way. It isn’t easy and takes a ton of awareness, presence, and theory.

From 6 weeks in Paris studying the art and culture of design in the city it erupts around every corner.

What I learned though is that anything beautifully designed holds a system in it whether it be the rule of thirds or the theory of triangle composition. All of it is important to creating something truly balanced and beautiful. These theories and concepts came from the great artists who lived whether joyfully or painfully with their creative genius. These concepts transcended style, conversation, and more in art and still inform the most beautiful things in life. Much of this came from noting the way nature itself is designed.

Now here on my outdoor table on my back deck in August they have given me a guide to creating a bouquet that captures the wilds of these untamed gardens and creates a conversation that is absolutely stunning, life-giving, exciting, and nods back to the likes of Rembrandt himself.

As I stand here with the empty bucket like a blank canvas I look at the colors I have to work with in this bouquet. There are the native Bluestems and the Anise Hyssop or the branching and floating textures of the Cosmos. The Zinnias shine in every color and unique layers all their own. Then there is the Sunflower with its temporary perked face and intricate mathematical center. The wild Rudbeckia comes in various colors, textures, and sizes. Then the Virburnum with the blue/purple berries and the textural seeding heads of the Dill and Goldenrod. All of it is like having various colors on my painting palette with their textures and personalities they bring.

Layering them all is the art I have learned and my job as the artist is to move you from one beautiful thing to the other. This involves blank spaces, varying and surprising textures, heights, and lengths to draw you through it all. No two flowers may be the same but one cosmo may carry into the other. I watch as it comes together as if in some way the design I create in the garden with nature can be transposed into a tangible piece of art called a bouquet.

Many of the things I choose aren’t what the market of flowers would say is quote-on-quote beautiful, but I find that to be a shame. Though Sunflowers are magical in every single way a sunflower can be, a bouquet with only them leaves much to be desired about what makes this season just so very profound and dazzling. A celebration of only the Dahlia would miss the magic that comes from the double click Cosmos in white and magenta or the floating beauty of the Joe Pye Weed mixed amongst the Goldenrod or the buzzing chorus that surrounds the spike of the purple blossoms of the Hyssop. Everything in August is worth celebrating and as I make my weekly bouquets, I am seeing just how they can speak to the very magic that is held in this precious season.

With each stem that is dropped into the bucket, I think of the art of a great bouquet and how even the unmarketable blooms are worthy of their show in the greater picture of a work of art. If anything creating with what is beautiful and wonderful in this season and not just with what is marketable has taught me to do the same with my own creativity and work. In some way choosing to just freely trust my artistic knowledge, creative intuition, and a natural eye for what I personally find worth celebrating in nature has also allowed me to do the same in my writing and creative play once again.

Connecting with the unexpected and beautiful things that grow in a wildly untamed garden can bring not just a sense of awe, but an invigorated feeling of relearning what we can trust as beautiful and worthy outside of what the world has told us is of value or marketable. This is necessary, particularly for creatives. Whether it is translating our knowledge into making bouquets just because it is fun or even just writing because it feels good to let our ideas flow.

Creative expression simply because it feels good is necessary because it may inspire others to see the world around them with a new eye and that is the job of those who decide to cultivate their creativity in this life.

a wild corner of the garden where I just let it all blend together to show me how beautiful it is to be wild and free

This week I may clip one more bouquet simply because the wildness is too good. Soon enough the flowers will fade beneath the ice and first kiss of the cold. I know their time with me is temporary, but the practice of creating and flexing these muscles I learned while wandering the Pompidou or Louvre in Paris or the museums in Spain, London, or NYC will play out in how I connect and create with nature in a way that feels right to me and my brain. I will share it because the beauty is too much not to. The world needs more beauty always, we must each find the art amongst the bouquet or any other part of our life that can easily feel too simple. I believe when we do this, we will surface the joy that comes with beginning to trust the instincts that reside in our souls.

August is a time to use the palette nature has given us to create the fullest and most beautiful moments in our lives. After all, life is simply art but only if we choose to make it so.