Bouquet of the Week: Pussy Willows on The Playground
As part of our recurring Bouquet of the Week series, Garden Collage continues to present a weekly inspirational bouquet that incorporates intriguing new elements into the traditional practice of flower arranging. This week, Garden Collage styles a bouquet using a signature tactile ingredient: pussy willows.
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Pussy willows and cattails were the first two plants to pique my curiosity as a child, largely because I had a fixation with their velveteen texture and inconspicuous form. At a Spring Street Social Society dinner a few weeks ago, a friend who doesn’t ever work with flowers and I happened to get the opportunity to arrange a bouquet using seasonal elements from what was themed as “a garden party”– an event full of floral, seasonal elements. Pussy willows (Salix caprea) were included in the botanical selection made available to us, and I found myself gravitating towards the bud-bearing fronds despite the fact that they seemed to clash with the other spring blooms we had at the ready (among the selection were anemone, delphiniums, buttercups, euphorbia, and early-season ranunculus– I ended up using them all, but pussy willows became the bones of my bouquet).
The beauty of working with flowers on an almost daily basis, is that handling them has by and large become second nature at this point. While my friend and I chatted about work and life over pre-dinner cocktails, I arranged this bouquet without really thinking or paying attention to what I was doing– an errant reach for a flower or some clippers to cut a stem felt as routine as scratching an itch, and I didn’t think much of how arranged them, as I tend to approach any floral concept with that very Allen Ginsberg-ian je ne sais quoi of “first thought, best thought”.
Five minutes into the process of arranging this bouquet, my friend stopped me, laughing, and said, “Wait– are you kidding me right now?” At this point we both had a laugh: my friend works in finance and claims he’s not artistic; his bouquet looked ratty and rundown, as if it had recently emerged from the losing side of a fight.
My bouquet, next to his, looked lush, even, and full– a cute little specimen harkening to the Garden Collage aesthetic, if I do say so myself. “Your bouquet is perfect– this isn’t fair!” he joked, after I acknowledged that his bouquet and mine looked like the “before” and “after” pictures of one of ABC’s extreme home makeovers. “I’m just the flower whisperer,” I said, forsaking an ounce of modesty. We both laughed.
The next morning, after I took home the bouquet, New York City was blessed with radiant sunshine, and the yellow beams streaking through my curtains beckoned me to the playground across the street. I took the bouquet with me as there was something special about it and I wanted it near; I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but then I realized that it’s never occurred to me to put pussy willows in a bouquet before, and now I don’t see why one wouldn’t: the texture and structure the buds give to an otherwise homely arrangement feels simultaneously rugged and refined. I sat pretzel-style on top of the slide and read a book in the sun, stretching out next to the arrangement. There was no real reason for me to take the bouquet out of the house like that, but I wanted to enjoy its beauty. On this particularly beautiful day in the sun, this felt like reason enough.
