Part 1 of 3; Floral Art Masterclass--9 Flower Arrangements Live at OFAD 2026

So, it really gives me goosebumps today to introduce to you someone who took classes in my department like 30 years ago, who went on to be an event and wedding florist in the Bay Area and did that for almost 30 years. And she was extremely popular, doing flowers every week. But while she was in classes, I was absolutely astounded at her artistry, especially with the use of color. I was really happy to be able to ask Catherine to do a program for us this year and excited for what you are about to see. So, Catherine, thank you very much. Thank you, Stephen, for that introduction. So, I'm going to create kind of a large focal point with the giant dahlia. You know, it's hard trying to buy for a show like this because I have to have a concept of what I want to show, but I also have to be open to what's gorgeous at market. So, I kind of have a concept of the type of arrangement I want, but I'm not like completely set on the exact colors or materials because sometimes you'll walk by something and go, oh my god, I have to have that. So, that's sort of where we're at. I mean, I'm just very inspired always by the materials, and I try to keep everything very garden-y. And I talk about this every week on my YouTube show about how the greenery you use is important, you know, like this would not look the same if I just greened in with a bunch of leather fern or something that doesn't look right with it. I want it to look kind of woodsy and natural. Oops, we didn't need that piece. And this is a beautiful material called, it's a stand by me clematis. I'm growing this this year. Mine are not like this. These are not for my garden, but mine do have some blooms, but they're kind of small. This I bought at Torchio. It's very expensive. It's an upright clematis that needs a little bit of a support, but it doesn't need to climb. So, I have a growing inside an obelisk, a wooden obelisk in the garden, so that it has support. Okay, this is what we have right now. Then I have these beautiful roses. This is a rose called Queen Myra. It looks like a David Austin rose I actually grow called Ancient Mariner. Mine, of course, it's been 100 degrees in Walnut Creek where I live, so we don't have much blooming, but this looks sort of like it. I love these garden style roses. Okay, that's what we have. Then we have something that looks sort of like scabiosa, but it's a little bit more weedy looking. Does anyone know what this is called, Stephen? I don't know what this is called. It's sort of like scabiosa, right? Is it a type of scabiosa? Okay, so this is sort of a vegetative style, right? It looks like it's growing out of the arrangement. I have these really beautiful purple anemones that I left out of the fridge since Tuesday, but they're still not blooming, and so I've reserved a spot in here for a whimsical little bird cage. I put a little nest inside. This is just something I picked up at a home decor store. If you ever watch my channel, I do a lot of this where we're going to Home Goods, Hobby Lobby, places like that to look at interesting home decor items that we can incorporate into our floral designs. Should we add some of this beautiful chrysanthemum? I have just greening pins securing it. These beautiful mums. So we have our first arrangement. Second arrangement is inspired by this velvet gift box that I found at Home Goods. So what's in here is just a square container, you know, from cookies or whatever. I save all these containers all the time. And then we're going to do an open present arrangement. This is all greenery I cut from the garden this morning. Some potassium and some ygelia. So for the materials, I have an assortment of roses in these beautiful sherbet-y colors. This is a wonderful rose called Pink Expression. Look at that. It's huge. Love this rose. Lasts really well too. And I love the look of that garden style rose. It's not. This I bought at the flower market. It's an Ecuadorian. It looks like a David Austin rose, but it's much longer lasting and you can buy it in large quantities. More of the Queen Myra rose. The first one, the big one, it's a Pink Expression. Yeah, it's got a lot of petals and they open beautifully and it's very long lasting and they're very long stem too. I think these were 60s that I cut down, 60 centimeter roses. So on my YouTube channel, I show different arrangements every week and often it's from flowers for my garden or just novel ways to use flowers, display flowers for mostly people who want to do flowers for their own home because I figure that's what most people do, right? You're doing flowers for an occasion like a shower or a brunch or just to decorate your home. And so that's kind of my perspective. So a lot of times what I do is just sort of decorative items from the home that you can use as a container. So you'll rarely see me use like a base. Just adding some of this stock. The stock is looking a little tired and we just want the color. So I'm basically doing like a one-sided arrangement. Some beautiful blue tweedia. Right now I'm going to put the box lid on to see how we're doing in terms of space and it just rests on here. Sometimes you could put like a fork or something like a plastic fork in here just keep it upright but this seems to just hold it fine with the big roses. This is a beautiful rose called carpe diem. Seize the day. A little bit of this pale green lisianthus. This gorgeous porcelain blue tweedia. One of my favorite things at the market. Tweedia. It's a beautiful little blue flower and they have this in white as well but the blue is just gorgeous. It's a true blue. It's not purple. It's not periwinkle. It's actually a beautiful sky blue. I thought it would echo our box. I have a little in the garden. It comes back every year. I think it self-sows but not a lot and it blooms for a short time. It's pretty full sun. Yeah. So if you ever see a tweedia plant try it in the garden. Try it in your garden. Sorry. Showing you the back of the arrangement. Just like the mix of bright pastels in the sky blue box. This next arrangement is inspired by those Flemish still life paintings. I've always been fascinated with those paintings. I was an art history major at Cal and I've loved those still life paintings and I just read that they used to paint them over the course of a year or 18 months because things were out of season. They would have different things. Roses with tulips with you know all sorts of different plants all in one arrangement and they didn't have like the flower market we have now where you can buy everything at any season and so they would paint them over the course of a year each element and combine it into a painting and sometimes they were portraits of the wealthy patrons tulip collection. You know how the British have portraits of their horses so these are portraits of tulips. Unfortunately I wasn't able to buy any really great tulips just kind of ordinary tulips. I was hoping to buy those Rembrandt tulips or the parrot tulips but we'll have to do with the regular tulips. So this is going to be inspired by the Flemish still life paintings. What I have here I already greened it in just because you know we have two hours. I have nine arrangements so what I have is just stuff I cut from the garden. I have this is from my neighbor's garden. It's a bronzed crepe myrtle. I wanted that dark color because those paintings always have the dark backgrounds kind of mysterious to set off sort of the bright colored blooms. I have some of that rainbow nandina also from my neighbor's garden and that's what I have for the greenery and we're going to do one side arrangement because these portraits were always one-sided right the paintings so this is the most expensive arrangements because I have to buy like a lot of different elements a whole bunch of things and then we just use a few stems and so this is my attempt at that. So a hodgepodge of different materials, a lot of different colors. I'm going to start with some of these blue delphinium. Sorry I'm not good at the backwards designing. I'll just have to keep turning it. I was watching Soho Sakai doing her 2022 OFAD presentation or 2023 on YouTube the other day. I'm like she's so good at the backwards designing. I actually took Ikebana with Soho at City College. She's lovely. I saw her at market on Tuesday. She and I were both just kind of running around torchio. So this is sort of a classic tall arrangement sort of scaled down from something we would do for weddings for like ceremonies and things like that. Oh I can't forget my fruits. I'm going to use that beautiful pink expression rose again to set a low focal point. You know we're so lucky to get these materials now. The rose breeders have been hybridizing all these garden style roses because it's been the vogue for weddings for a while now. There's so many things to put in here. This is a few stems of a David Austin rose I grow called Lady Emma Hamilton. There was a few stems blooming so I cut it this morning. When I was at City College I would complain because we never got to use any really beautiful materials and we had to recycle them. Back then I think we always had carnations, oh blue dutch iris, liatris. I hate liatris. And then after we do our arrangement we had to take them apart and then the next class would use it. Yeah keep the cost down exactly. Oh this is foxglove, a red foxglove. You know this one looks like it will. Some of the ones I've bought look very droopy like they wouldn't but it's been very popular because these kind of botanically inspired arrangements are all the rage right now. So everyone's looking for things that look garden, you know, grown. So I see that a lot at the flower market now. All the garden-y style arrangement materials. This is a beautiful ranunculus. I'm going to run out of space. I have so many things to put in here. Oh before I run out of space I'm going to add my fruits. So I've got these little, I don't know, they're not clementines but a little citrus and I have them on picks to add in. They're like kumquats but they're round. They're, um, I'm not sure what they're called. Oh yeah, yeah, that's it. Kalamatsi. So when you see them, you know, they're just on a rack at Torchio. They almost always have this and they always look kind of sad. Just submerge it in water. The foliage will perk up and it will look fresh again. I found that out by accident. Last time I used this, I said, oh I should wash the leaves. They look kind of dusty and so I put it in a basin of water and when I went back an hour later everything perked up. So I said, oh you can submerge these. So I've got the fruits in here. These are blackberries from my garden. I have tons of blackberry in a creek, like a wild area, and I have them on picks because they are so hard to deal with because they have so many thorns. I thought instead of grapes, we'll do the blackberries. Oh, even wired they have thorns. And the thorns of blackberry, they grow like kind of backwards. So you have to, I use a rose stripper like this way because the barbs like are backwards like even worse than roses. I have some blackberry throughout now. I have to add some tulips. I did a spring show with an arrangement like this and they had beautiful tulips then, like the parrot tulips. Too many different kinds of materials, huh? Went out of space. Some white anemones. White anemones, they're just like growing all in weird fashion. This is a beautiful red rose called Red Panther. If you look closely at it, it's like kind of speckled. I like it because it makes the red sort of luminous. I have more of it. This one is not as speckled and it's a very long lasting rose also. Too many flowers. You know, I go all over. I'm like crazy at the market. Always takes me like three hours. So I have my favorites that I go to. I went to Neve, well, yeah, Neve first. They had beautiful, beautiful garden sprays. But we have to use our sponsor, Torchio. So I got the roses this time from Torchio. But yeah, I like Neve a lot. They are a grower, a local grower. They're in Petaluma and they now specialize in all the garden style roses. And they have these amazing deals like these gorgeous, gorgeous spray roses that look like David Austen's in sprays and they're like $12.50 a bunch. Yeah, so you have like one large head and all the side branches. I know, I was like, oh, I might need to get some of those. Had to be good, stay with Torchio. This is a shrimp plant, right? I thought it would be an interesting texture and kind of strange and mysterious to add in here. So this is a fun arrangement to do, but you see how it could get very expensive. I know, Stephen gave me a budget and I go, okay, well, that's the suggested budget. I'll do my best. I was thinking, well, I don't do the ikebana with one stem of anthurium. Just want to make it a little messier on the top because they're usually, you know, if you look at those paintings, they're never like a perfect, you know, triangular shape. They're just kind of all over the place. Putting my art history degree to work, like I like to joke about. So more of this beautiful stand-by-me clematis. Keep loading it up or are we almost done? I think we're almost done, right? I could keep going and going, going. Okay, and that's what we have for our Flemish Still Life Arrangement.