Bouquet of the Week: Where The Sidewalk Ends, And Spring Begins
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 in honor of finally being outdoors again– not just in the garden, but on city sidewalks and stoops.
Certain undeniable signs of Spring have arrived: the smell of fresh dirt, the pleasant gust of warm air as you push open the door, and the parade of indecisive fashion on the walk back from the subway, as the weather oscillates between warm and cool.
Every day, there are more and more people out– restaurants have once again propped open their doors and unpacked their outdoor tables. It is no longer just the spartan smokers huddled out on stoops but increasingly people enjoying the buzz of the early evening sun. Last night, the sidewalk was teeming with people outside the restaurants and bars on my block, and for the first time in many months, I had to say “excuse me” to get by.
For me, Spring has always been the most electric time in the city. By the summer, everyone has already relaxed into the warmth, falling into a languid current of open windows and unavoidable heat, the novelty of bare legs and rolled up sleeves having long since evaporated. And while Fall has always been thought of as the season to visit New York, it has always struck me as overly busy– crammed with the start of school, the peak of fashion, and the ancient campaign of harvest time, somehow biologically etched on the collective psyche. The season’s famously crisp air– the first true harbinger of winter’s arrival– hurries people along.
Spring seems to have the best of both worlds.
To honor my love of early Spring and the enthusiasm for outdoors it seems to inspire, I styled a bouquet that utilized hues of light green and avoided overly bold flowers or blossoms– those are for later weeks, when Spring has officially arrived. I wanted honor those first patches of green emerging from the dirt in the warmer air, a time when there is an almost whimsical excitement about the new season, before everything has settled. In assembling the flowers, rather than removing the leaves from the stems, I left most of them on to preserve the green. I selected hellebores for their leafy crowns and muted shades, and added green ranunculus, viburnum, lisianthus, and a coarse variegated shrub to play with textures, shapes, and shades of pale green.
