The Garden Studio

When all the weddings in 2020 were cancelled, rescheduled, or reimagined, like every other floral designer, I had to ‘let go’ of my planned calendar.  After the initial shock and horror of facing a worldwide pandemic, I began to use the quiet time alone to consider some other options for engaging my heart and hands. 

I threw myself into a new venture of growing cut flowers from seeds and cultivating a sunny flower plot that was available for rent.  Friends and family warned that it would be a lot to take on, but I was determined to cultivate that small section of a glorious meadow on the 50-acre horse farm in Middleburg, VA.  Fortunately, I was able to work in partnership with Heather Stroup, another floral designer (@bespokefloralart) whose passion for using locally grown flowers in her arrangements was a guiding force. 

We met at the farm once or twice a week to tend our little plot. We were both eager to be busy with the mundane jobs of planting, weeding, mulching, watering, thinning, staking, and pruning. If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, we might not have been so thoroughly invested in tending our little garden, nor do I think we could have possibly kept up.   

The flowers responded to all the love by creating prolific blooms. Each time we arrived at our little garden plot, we were overjoyed to see new flowers bursting open in the sun.  We were beyond thrilled to harvest a few perfect fritillaria and foxgloves in time for Mother’s Day.  As the summer sun got warmer, we were treated to an abundance of larkspur, bachelor buttons, nigella, poppies, bupleurum, scabiosa, strawflowers, yarrow, lisianthus, cosmos, sunflowers, zinnias, grapevine hyacinth, celosia, strawflowers, and dahlias, to name a few. With overflowing buckets of flowers, we needed to find a way to share what we had gathered.

As luck would have it, Heather and I were invited to lead floral design workshops at a beautiful local vineyard – @FleetwoodFarmWinery.  The winery was also struggling due to fewer customers and cancelled weddings.  They were eager to find ways to attract visitors by hosting creative events.  The Wine & Flowers workshops were a perfect way to use their gorgeous and expansive indoor and outdoor spaces, with plenty of room for social distancing and lots of tables for designing.  With just a little bit of promotion, people were eager to sign up for an excuse to get out of the house and  look forward to something.  

At a time when everyone was so constrained to keep away from others and keep safe from the virus, the Wine & Flowers workshops were intentionally designed to stay safe, but create an opportunity to ‘let go’ of rules, limitations, and fears. We wanted participants to enjoy the freedom to play with the flowers we had harvested and fully enjoy nature’s abundant beauty.

We shared different approaches to creating vertical and horizontal designs, tips on how to select either focal or filler flowers, how to wire stems when needed, a few mechanics for holding stems in the vase, and how to mass flowers for added drama.  But after the brief demonstration, we encouraged everyone to explore their own creativity and design with the exuberant collection of flowers, seedpods, grasses and greenery.  

I remember when I first ventured into the world of floral design and how intimidated I was by all the flowers. I can recall the fear of ‘ruining’ the fragile flowers. Heather and I knew what it was like to be restrained to rules of design and the limitations of creating arrangements for customers in a floral retail business.  We wanted to provide the Wine & Flowers workshop participants with a completely different experience.

Each participant was given a bucket of seasonal flowers just harvested from our garden, a rustic container, and necessary floral supplies.  Despite their initial apprehension, we expressed great confidence that all the participants would be making an arrangement they would be proud to take home. In fact, we assured everyone that they couldn’t go wrong, as the gorgeous flowers would speak for themselves. One look at their overflowing bucket of flowers and they had to agree. 

We encouraged everyone to ‘trust their gut” regarding the size and proportion of their arrangement and use their intuition.  A simple suggestion to “listen” to the flowers and greenery proved to be very helpful in guiding them to look closely at each stem. Paying attention to the unique features of each flower, the way in which they naturally bend, allowed the participants to take full advantage of each stem.  

The response to the workshops was amazing and the results were truly astounding. Each month we introduced new seasonal flowers and greenery from our garden plot and beyond. Despite everyone having the same bucket of flowers and greenery, every floral design created was completely different.  We were all amazed by the unique beauty of each arrangement. 

We got tremendous satisfaction watching the workshop participants gain confidence in their creative abilities and their excitement in using flowers, some of which they had never seen before.  At the end of the workshops, many were eager to take pictures of one another and share their arrangements with the world through social media.

In the midst of a pandemic, the sense of isolation and fear was forgotten for a brief time. We knew we had achieved our goal when workshop participants left feeling connected with a community of flower-lovers and more confident in their creative abilities.  Many were overjoyed to have had the opportunity to let go of fears and expectations and just allow themselves to be fully immersed in the beauty of the garden. 

Inspiring others to ‘let go’ during the pandemic was my greatest joy of the year.  Sharing the message to let go of fear in the creative process and instead trust your intuition proved to be incredibly freeing and joyful. Of course, sipping on a glass of wine during the designing process certainly helped participants to let go of some inhibitions.  

We heard from so many who had participated that they were inspired to create many more arrangements on their own by collecting blooms from their gardens and foraging in nature.  I’d like to believe that the experience of letting go, helped many to open their hearts and souls to new possibilities.

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Kim Pawley Helfgott, is a gardener and floral designer based in Northern Virginia. Her passion for sharing the beauty of the garden led to the creation of The Garden Studio. Her approach is to create garden-style floral designs that are lush, alive with movement, and overflowing with flowers, often just picked from her garden. She considers every arrangement an opportunity to create floral art to celebrate love and life's big events.