I chose to do the summer intensive Floral Design program with New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). I have 1st day of school jitters, it’s been a few years since I have been in an actual classroom. I am so excited to be learning and playing with flowers.
The garden itself is beautiful, we started out with a welcome in the Ross Hall. There are quite a few students from Floral Design, Landscape and Garden intensives. Once our orientation is done we split into our specialties. One of the best things about the intensive is that you get a tour of the library and the herbarium. Oh what a treat that was.
The library is the biggest botanical library in the world, they have so many books, magazines and rare book room was phenomenal.
The book in the middle was so fun to look at, the pressed flower arrangements were made by women in a time period that did not allow women to be too science focused. But they were allowed to do floral arrangements so they took the pith of the plants soaked it, removed it, dyed it to make these beautiful pressed floral arrangements. The detail on some of them were unbelievable. You are not allowed to just wander into the rare book room but if you want to see a certain book the librarian will accommodate you to look at it at the library. In addition to the circulating books, they have almost every book ever published on the topic of botanicals. The wise advice the librarian gave is ‘just ask, we likely have it’.
The Herbarium was equally impressive. We got to see a couple of folks actively mounting some specimens to archival paper. It truly is a skill.
Rows and rows and rows and several floors filled with shelves full of preserved specimens. The shelves are sealed to keep critters out of the old specimens. Once of the specimens, right most picture on the top row, is from one of Captain Cook’s voyages. They showed us a specimen of the rotting flower and also techniques used to collect underwater plant samples. There is endless knowledge and several rabbit holes to venture off into if you choose to explore more. Nonetheless, I felt like a kid in a candy store seeing all this preserved goodness.
Then off to lunch and class time in the afternoon.
Day 1 PM segment
The afternoon started off with a bang. We dove right into it with form. Needless to say all of us were giddy knowing that we are about to play with colorful flowers. There so much technical stuff to learn too. How to really care for flowers from the moment they arrive to getting them in an arrangement.
Selected, cleaned and prepped our flowers. Got them ready for arranging. Look at all those flowers in the cooler at the end of the day. Tomorrow we make arrangements. I am a happy and tired gal. Now go home rest, rinse and repeat! I could do this all day.
Bloom & Ink 