At this time of year in my climate, there is nothing to bring in from the garden other than a few evergreens. But bringing the outdoors inside at this point makes it feel even more wintry. For the moment all my bouquets and arrangements are in books.
We've just begun the process of turning our guest room into an art studio for me. While the room was looking good for the holidays I snapped some photos to remember it in this incarnation. These bookshelves are entirely filled with garden books, my garden journals and Ikebana baskets.
I'm trying to reduce my garden library by a good two shelves of books to make room for art and sewing supplies as part of this change into a working art studio. I counted around twenty titles devoted to flower arranging alone! I've looked at those particular books many times over the years and done a few displays based on ideas I found in them. But despite having creative ideas, excellent photos and lots of instructive details, I rarely turn to them for Monday "in a vase" inspiration!
Over time, I've come to think of them more as respites from winter cold and snow than as how-to guides. Recently I've pulled a couple of big stacks of books from these shelves that I've marked to give to Olbrich Botanical Gardens for their library collection or their sale. Looking through these flower arranging books was like a quick history lesson in the changing fashions for flowers. I've gone though all those styles and eras along with my garden.
I just grabbed a few books from the shelves for a photograph (above). In case you are interested I've included brief descriptions below, as they all have something to offer to those of us who like to put our garden offerings into vases.
"Arranging Cut Flowers" (1985). The esteemed design duo — photographer Kathryn Kleinman and photo sytlist Sara Slavin — make this one lovely mass market paperback from Ortho Books.
"Lee Bailey's Country Flowers" (1985). Bailey wrote a series of terrific cookbooks as well as maintaining a shop devoted to cooking and entertaining within the confines of the late Henri Bendel. Famed graphic designer Rochelle Udell gave this book its lovely look but Bailey took the photos and wrote the text.
"Fresh Cuts" (1997). Respected landscape designer Edwin von Gal turned her hand to creating bouquets using quirky natural materials in this small book. She was among the first to really look at what an arrangement might contain in addition to — or instead of — flowers.
"Bringing Nature Home" (2012). The text and photos are by Ngoc Minh Ngo while the arrangements are by designer Nicolette Owen. I first saw Owen's work in Veranda magazine where she was combining flowers that actually bloomed and grew at the same time. That was unusual enough to make me remember her name and buy her book.
"The Flower Workshop" (2016). I ordered this in the winter when I was desperate for flowers. Ariel Chezar puts together great bouquets but I found the type small enough that it discouraged me from reading. I enjoyed it more as eye candy than a how-to guide.
I would love to come into your room and browse through all of those books. When we did some remodeling this fall I tried to thin out some of our books. We took two huge sacks of books to the library for resale, and gave two bags of birding books to a friend who wanted to browse through some "older" birding books. Amazing that we took away so many books and the shelves still look full. Where were all of those books shelved before???
Posted by: Lisa at Greenbow | Monday, January 22, 2018 at 06:50 AM
Looking forward to the reincarnation, before and after is always fun to follow. This time of year is perfect for cleaning out and moving on.
Posted by: Jane Miller | Monday, January 22, 2018 at 07:45 AM
For the moment, Mark has built me a work table with sawhorses and a door. But he made it the right height that I can use it standing up so I can figure out if I want that option. He made a scale drawing and cut out all the pieces of furniture I might want to use to scale and we played with layouts. I have to use the room a while to figure out how I want to use it long term before we do anything permanent.
Posted by: Linda Brazill | Monday, January 22, 2018 at 08:05 AM
So true. No matter how many books we get rid of, we seem to bring new ones in immediately and never really end up with more shelf space.
Posted by: Linda Brazill | Monday, January 22, 2018 at 08:05 AM
I greatly admire the way you carefully plan and experiment before doing anything permanent. My glass studio is made up of things that came my way (free things on the side of the road mostly) and I made them work. Happy new studio to you! I'm sure the OBG will be delighted with your gift.
Posted by: Peter/Outlaw | Monday, January 22, 2018 at 09:52 AM
How exciting to have a new studio in your future.
Posted by: Susie | Monday, January 22, 2018 at 03:05 PM
Even though it is very makeshift for the time being, it is nice to know there is a place I can leave a mess and not have to clean off the table in order to have dinner!
Posted by: Linda Brazill | Monday, January 22, 2018 at 04:01 PM
Your guest room turned studio is already charming, Linda. I have a similarly robust collection of garden books, even though I winnowed it down quite a bit when we moved 7 years ago. Strangely, I've no books dealing with flower arranging, although I have a few now dealing with growing flowers for cutting.
Posted by: Kris P | Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 11:08 AM