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♪ Good evening, and welcome to Making It Grow!

We're so glad that you could join us tonight for a rather unusual, but we hope, a show that you're going to enjoy.

The Columbia Museum of Art has a new program called Art Blossoms which combines people making floral arrangements that are inspired by pieces of work in their collection, and at the end of the show I'm going to make an arrangement as well.

Terasa has reached out to some of our viewers and asked them to share some artsy Gardens of the Week.

Terasa?

<Terasa> Thanks, Amanda.

We did reach out and ask you to help us create a special art themed Gardens of the Week, so let's take a look at your submissions that illustrate the intersection between art and gardening.

♪ [classical music] ♪ Thanks to all of you who submitted these wonderful ideas and pictures, and to those of you who send things to us every week.

We love seeing them on Facebook even if we can't use all of them.

Glenna Barlow is the Curator of Education, and she took me on a tour of the Columbia Museum of Art to look at certain pieces that she hoped might give me some inspiration for my arrangement.

I think she was hoping I would do a better job than I often do with my hats, so let's go take a tour of some of the marvelous work that's combined and collected at the Columbia Museum of Art.

♪ <Glenna> So here we are in front of the painting Eos , and this is the Greek goddess of the dawn, so we might call her Aurora in Roman mythology, but you can see there's this lovely sunrise behind her, and the woman who painted this is Mary Evelyn Pickering De Morgan, and she's one of these pre-Raphaelites.

Basically they're interested... it's kind of what it sounds like.

This is some of the art that came just before Raphael, so early Renaissance.

Think Botticelli, beautiful Venuses, that kind of esthetic.

So we have our lovely figure here, and because they're in this time period, they're also into the Victorian era idea of flowers and the language of flowers.

So the pre-Raphaelites, like Mary studied botany so that they could depict flowers naturalistically, but they're also interested in the symbolism of them.

<Amanda> Well, and I think one of the lovely things about this is we're talking about this and it's spring time, and we've got a lot of different bird species here.

This one is almost hidden.

Look at this one down here.

And then we've got teeny tiny things that kind of ephemerals that come up in the spring that I love so much, and then we also have, of course, the wonderful roses that are just kind of the background of everything.

Also, even though it's been an awfully wet spring, apparently her tears which were shed for her beloved son.

<Glenna> Her son was killed in the Trojan War, and so unfortunately the tears were thought to be the dew that would water the flowers, so even though she's lovely, she has that kind of sadness about her.

<Amanda> She does.

<Glenna> Yeah, she's carrying a little urn, a little nod to her ceramicist husband who's featured over here.

<Amanda> Aha!

<Glenna> And then we have the tiny little dew drops along the bottom with such detail.

They really bring out the pearls in the bottom of her dress.

<Amanda> Thank you for telling me that.

I hadn't noticed that, and fortunately artistic license, because, of course, saline tears would not be exactly the dew that you would want.

[both laughing] But there are such things as saline resistant plants, so we'll just imagine that these are those.

Okay!

Well she is quite lovely, and the colors in her wings!

How wonderful to have an angel who just doesn't have those pure white wings.

<Glenna> Yeah, such variation in the colors, and it's really reflected down in the flowers below to the end.

<Amanda> Oh, it is, yeah!

<Glenna> So we've got the roses, which much like today, you think of the symbols of love.

That was the same in the Victorian era, but then we also... Now I know these as daisies.

I don't know if you would agree with that.

If we're thinking of daisies as I do, as innocence and kind of... You know, we still say 'fresh as a daisy.'

<Amanda> Yes.

<Glenna> So this idea of fresher face and that she's giving us this kind of ideal beauty standards of the 1800's.

<Amanda> And of course, these are composites, which these days means they're very important to pollinators.

So if we could just find a bee or a fly in the picture, it would all be perfect.

[both laughing] ♪ [gentle music] ♪ <Glenna> So I figured we couldn't go without seeing an actual still life.

<Amanda> Thank you very much.

<Glenna> So this is by Charles Ethan Porter, and I chose it because it's a beautiful image.

The roses are lovely, but he also has a great story.

Charles Ethan Porter was born in the 1840's, and he was African American, but in spite of the hardships that he must have faced, he was able to make his way as a successful painter.

It was not always easy to be an artist, and to be a black man, I'm sure, but he was able to study in France, and when his funds ran out, he was actually funded by Mark Twain, of all people.

<Amanda> Really?

Good heavens!

So a successful artist helping someone else to be able to continue in his studies.

Well I particularly like this one, because the modern roses that we so often... if someone sends you on Valentine's Day, are so perfect and so tight, and have such straight stems which just have nothing to do with the way you... Look at the beautiful, relaxed form of these roses, the openness of them, and that fullness that they have, so I think that these are the kind of roses that anyone who's making flower arrangements would want to have, and I'm so glad that he was able to so beautifully render them there.

And we can still enjoy them today.

<Glenna> Yeah, I love the way he put them there.

They're just so open, and they really have that nice quality to them.

He's really spread them around the picture plain here.

And still I often notice, there's usually one little element where something is a little different, or something is starting to wilt or decay.

You see something drooping a little bit here.

You don't see too much of that here, but also in a still life you'll find maybe a piece of fruit that's starting to rot, or a flower that's just getting a little bit wiltier or drooping, and that was just meant to be sort of a reminder that things are ephemeral.

<Amanda> Yes, there's a transience to life.

<Glenna> Exactly.

<Amanda> And since I'm a good bit older than you are, there's a transience to beauty, but those are all quite lovely, aren't they?

And such a wonderful story to think that this gentleman was able to achieve that, having been born in the 1840's in the United States of America.

A pretty wonderful story!

Thank you for including it.

♪ <Glenna> So here we have an example of American Impressionism.

<Amanda> Yes.

<Glenna> So you can see there's still that kind of filtering quality of the lights, and there's this sort of haziness to it, where it's not exactly crisp and clear.

It's just giving us an impression of this moment.

It's just a little bit more clearly delineated than a medium European example for someone like Monet.

<Amanda> Okay.

<Glenna> I just love this one because it just feels like early spring time to me.

<Amanda> Doesn't it, yeah.

<Glenna> It's sort of those lovely violets of maybe an early morning.

It's a little cooler, but you can feel that the sun is coming in and ready to warm the earth.

<Amanda> And obviously, outdoor spring is there, because of all the leaves.

The new leaves have come in, and the new leaves always have so many different colors.

A lot of times you get that particular fresh green, and then as things get more mature, they get a darker green, so it really does look like it just is that time when everything's coming out.

You said that he liked to paint women at leisure, and I'm thinking boy, here she is using the mirror to try to see if her hair is just right, and now we get up and have about two seconds to do that.

<Glenna> Yeah, the luxury of time.

<Amanda> Yes, the luxury of time.

We always are looking for ways of bringing the outdoors inside, and I think one of the things I like to do in flower arrangements is always to use sticks and branches, because we didn't have air conditioning, so I was always outside with my children, and so the outdoor plants were a lot more interesting than any other things, and so I always wanted to incorporate sticks, and so I have this great collection of sticks.

<Glenna> Oh, that's great!

<Amanda> So, she doesn't have a stick in there, but... <Glenna> She's got this floral print on her furniture here.

She's got a bit of an arrangement here.

I'm not sure what flowers those are, but those lovely little lavender blue.

<Amanda> And then look at all the differences in the size and shapes and colors of the leaves.

I think a lot of times we forget that green is a pretty big palette.

We don't have to always have much color in this way of flowers to do flower arrangements, so a good thing to keep in mind when you're doing flower arrangements, that green is a color.

<Glenna> Or if you're painting.

<Amanda> There you are.

Okay.

♪ <Glenna> So I thought we'd look at a few examples of pottery as well.

So the one that's closest to you, this is an example of Newcomb pottery, which is pretty well known these days, but actually started as part of Newcomb College.

<Amanda> Now it's part of Tulane.

<Glenna> That's right, so it was founded as a coordinate school, so kind of the female counterpart to Tulane in its early days.

But we can see the beautiful styling that you find on these pieces often.

This one was made by an artist named Sadie Irvine, and she was really drawn to the kind of twilight aesthetic and the misty mornings, that fog that you see sometimes.

We have this lovely example of Spanish moss, and probably what was like Eliza, common in Louisiana, of course, but we're no stranger to those in South Carolina either.

<Amanda> And on the back of it, we can actually see the trunk and spreading branches of this tree, and then I guess the moon is peaking out.

<Glenna> Yeah, I love the detail of the moon.

It kind of sets the mood, I think.

<Amanda> This one looks like... we're gonna talk next, I guess.

It looks kind of like spring bulbs, perhaps.

What do you think?

<Glenna> Yeah, well you're the expert certainly, but you can see there's a floral motif around this.

It's a planter itself, or a Jardiniere, if we want to be fancy, so it was meant to have flowers in it.

But there's also this lovely floral design, which is very in keeping with the Art Nouveau kind of aesthetic from this time period, but also this was an artist... this comes from the Grueby Faience Company, and they were interested in arts and crafts, which is a related but kind of separate movement.

<Amanda> It's not perfection.

It's not machined at all.

You can see that the curves and all have changes in them.

<Glenna> They did develop this really unique green glaze too.

That was kind of one of their signature glazes that they developed.

It's kind of this matte green quality to it, and it really highlights, of course, the organic nature of what you're going to put in it, but it's a nice vase for the flowers and especially the leaves that you noticed.

<Amanda> Well, what I particularly like is the way they've got the leaf raised in parts.

See how that's done?

And that's giving us some reflection, and so instead of just a flat service with not a lot of come and going, even though it's one color, there really is a good bit of dominism, don't you think?

<Amanda> Yeah, there's a lot of variation even though it's basically one color glaze, just because of exactly what you said, how some of the areas are a little bit more raised up.

♪ <Glenna> So here we have an example from part of our Asian collection, and this is a Japanese charger, and you can see it's kind of large, but it's made of Cloisonne, which is another one of those terms that comes to us through the European kind of filter.

Originally in Japanese it's called shippo, but basically, it's just a technique of enameling, and it's incredibly detailed, so it's using little copper wires as sort of filaments to separate out different areas from each other.

<Amanda> So each of those different petals is separated.

Is it is painted between that?

<Glenna> There's actually enamel.

<Amanda> Enamel.

Oh, okay.

<Glenna> So I like to think of it as almost like stained glass, but just much more smaller and even more delicate and elaborate.

<Amanda> And the background would have been a metal as well?

<Glenna> Metal as a base as well.

<Amanda> So that is a heavy piece.

<Glenna> I'm sure it is, yeah.

So the original term shippo comes from this Buddhist idea of seven treasures, and so they come from different Buddhist texts, and so they vary a little bit, but it's things like silver and gold, coral, lapis lazuli, pearls, so different kinds of treasured objects, and you can see that even though this may not be lapis, for instance, there's those colors, very reflective.

<Amanda> Oh, yes, very, very rich colors.

<Glenna> Lots of flowers.

So we've got four different types of chrysanthemums here, and I don't have to tell you, we've got irises, wisteria we noted, and then at the top, or along the tree, you can see the apple blossoms as well.

<Amanda> Oh!

And then also look how twisted and twined some of the branches and stems are, which of course is what makes things so much fun, because there's just nothing more boring than a straight line.

And then, of course, we've got some beautiful little birds.

They almost look like Carolina wrens.

<Glenna> They do, don't they?

<Amanda> That little flipped up tail.

And then the wisteria, which sadly, Asian wisteria grows so incredibly well here, but we now have some native cultivars that you can use, so we don't have to get rid of our wisteria.

We just need to say that the Asian ones are best for Asia, and the native ones are best for here.

I think this is just beautiful, because the delicacy of the flowers, as you expressed... just imagine the time, little tiny wires separating that.

And then did enamel have to be fired to make it set?

Is that how the process went?

<Glenna> Yes, it's put in a kiln and then it's fired, just like you would do with ceramics or something like that.

The detail in this is really astounding, so you can see all of the individual petals, and we talked a little bit about how there's Asian varietals that are very similar to ones we have here, and it is a lot of overlap in terms of the flowers, but... <Amanda> Well, the iris, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

<Glenna> But the interpretations are often different.

We talked a little bit about the language of flowers, and in East Asia and places like Japan, often chrysanthemums, especially white ones, are associated with truth, purity, grief, so they're often at funerals.

<Amanda> Because on Mother's Day, if your mother's living, you wear a red rose.

If she's not living, you wear a white rose.

Your husband wears it on his suit jacket.

<Glenna> Right, yeah, so it's got interesting, different interpretations in different parts of the world, but we certainly still have those ideas about the language of flowers, but they just shift a little bit with time and place.

<Amanda> A nice way to end up.

Thank you.

<Glenna> Thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure having you here in the gallery.

I really appreciate you being able to join us today.

<Amanda> Lots of ideas, and I'm going to go look for crooked sticks right away.

<Glenna> Okay, great!

♪ >> Well, making flower arrangements.

Whew!

It really is a lot of fun, but it is so much easier if you know a few things and have a few things in advance.

I want to thank Ruthie Lacey, who taught me everything I know.

The first thing she taught me was that you have to take everything with you except the kitchen sink, and I almost did that today coming to Sumter.

But I want to tell you about some things that will really make it easier when you get started.

The first is that you need something to help you hold the flowers unless you just have a very narrow necked vase, and so there's several things you can do.

These are called pin cushions, and they come in different sizes, and some people... my husband loves to use them.

They're very sharp, and so you can just stick the stem of the flower down in there and it will hold it very steadily, and so this is kind of an old fashioned way of doing things.

The other thing you can use is what is called wet floral foam, which is kind of a tongue twister.

The brand that most people use is called Oasis, and you can get it...

Oasis you can go to a floral specialty store, and you can buy a box of it.

I do that.

I buy it in the normal brick size.

This one's been cut in two, but this is kind of the normal brick size, and then I also buy it in the big size, because maybe you want to do something in a punch bowl.

Well, this just saves you so much time.

It is so easy to cut.

I have a knife here somewhere, and I'll show you how easy it is to cut, but if you don't have a knife, you can even just use a pair of scissors.

So easy to cut!

You put it in water, and you don't submerge it in water, you let it float and sink to the bottom, and the bubbles will stop coming out, and then it's ready for you to use.

One trick with this is that if you were going to use it in a container like this, first of all, this container has a plug in the bottom, so I could use it for... fill it up with potting soil and put a plant in it, but it's got a plug in the bottom.

Don't believe it.

It will leak, and so that's why we need to go and get contractor black bags, and any time you're using something that might leak, and anything that's like a pail, or if it's been welded at the bottom, is going to leak, or things that are wood, and so put the contractor bag in it, and then start putting your Oasis in.

Oasis, suppose you've got a nice big block, and that would almost fill up this container, and you say well I just need a little piece for the top.

Don't put the little piece on the top.

Always put the big piece on the top, and I'll tell you why: because it works by capillary action, so if you have the big piece on the bottom, you have to add water above the height of the big piece for this piece to be able to take up water, and that's going to fill this thing up so much, you're hardly going to be able to move around with it.

So go ahead and put the smaller piece on the bottom, the big piece on the top, and then you only have to add this much water, a lot less water.

It'll be much easier for you to work with, and it won't be so messy.

Wet floral foam, suppose you have something like this, and you don't want to see all the stems.

If you have aspidistra in your yard, you can put a piece of aspidistra down in it and let that cover up most of your stems.

Or, they make something that's the same thing, and this is called floral wrap, and you can buy this, and it looks kind of like variegated aspidistra, and you can put it inside it, you can put it on the outside and wrap a ribbon around it if you want to, or you can put it on the inside, either way you want to, if you don't want to just have to look at a bunch of stems.

Okay, so moving right on, this is called floral tape, and this is the larger size.

I prefer the smaller size, but sometimes you have to wrap things together, and there's one that's half the size that I prefer, but this is fine.

It's sticky, and it's sticky even when it's wet, because everything gets wet when you're doing this.

The trick is when you are cutting a piece off, and I never have time for my scissors, you have to use your teeth.

You have to give a smile like some Hollywood movie star, because if it gets on your lip, it'll pull the skin off your lip, so you have to go like this.

Do not keep your mouth together when you do it or you'll be very sorry, and you'll have to get Chapstick and worry about your mouth a lot.

Okay, wire.

I have a lot of different kinds of thicknesses of wire, but wire is very important because there's always some time when you need it, and I use FELCO pruners.

Everybody has their own brand that they like.

Mine have swivel handles.

My husband is very kind about keeping it sharp for me.

FELCO is made for people who do flower arrangements because there's a little tiny notch at the bottom of the blade, and that is there just for you to cut wire.

I also have sticks with wire already on the top.

All these can be purchased at specialty floral shops, or sometimes at your craft store.

I have different size sticks.

Some of them are just barbecue skewers, and then sometimes you can find some in color.

I have a lot of different sizes.

I tell you why these are important.

If you are using daffodils, things from the narcissus group, guess what?

They have a hollow stem, and so you have to put this in it, otherwise when you try to push it down into the Oasis, it's going to break the stem up, so you just run that up the middle of it.

Amaryllis are the same way, so if you ever get something with a hollow stem, you're gonna have to run a dowel, or small skewer, up into it, and then sometimes you even have to take your tape, particularly with an amaryllis, and again, Hollywood smile, wrap that around it.

Guess what amaryllis do once they're cut.

This is so cool.

The stem starts unraveling and curling up, so if you don't wrap it at the bottom, it's going to start curling up, and it won't stay where it's supposed to.

Alright, so... Oh, rubber bands!

You just never know when you need a rubber band, so I always have rubber bands.

The other things you can have, sometimes in your tool kit it's nice to have a corkscrew and perhaps some Band-Aids, and also some bug spray, but I would start assembling your own little toolbox with the tools of the trade, and that will make it so much easier when you get started.

Also, part of making flower arrangements is covering up your mechanics.

When you finish, you don't want anybody to see the Oasis, or see all the little things you've done, and so you want to cover it up a little bit by tweaking it.

And so I go out and collect Spanish moss, which is a living plant in the pineapple family.

It's flowering, and I keep it at the house on a chain fence around a dog pen.

It's perfectly happy there.

It does not have bugs in it unless you pick it up off the ground, but if you're worried about it, don't put it in the oven or something like that.

If you're worried about it having bugs in it, just put it in the freezer for a minute and it'll be fine, and then take it out, and you can keep it hanging on that fence, and it'll be perfectly happy.

I also, when I'm going out to the big dump, where it's really sandy, I find reindeer moss, which is a lichen, and I have it in several places in the yard just sitting on the ground.

It gets real dry when it's dry, but then when you need to use it, you just moisten it, put it in water, and it's perfectly flexible, and you can use that and tuck it all around, and you get a real difference in color, so it kind of depends on what you're doing and how much variation in color you want in your arrangement.

Alright, so I think we've talked about all the mechanics that we need to talk about, so I will take just a moment and move these things and bring our flowers in a little closer.

It was so much fun when Glenna was taking me around, because some of the things that she showed me were from the 16th or 17th century, and then we went all the way through.

I think the most recent thing she showed me was probably from the Arts and Crafts movement in the 1940's, or maybe a little bit later, but I'm thinking art always evolves, and there are lots of changes, and since this was for the Columbia Museum of Art's Art Blossom show, I said well, I should have a container that is made by an artist and this is made by my friend, Jeri Burdick.

I've been collecting her work for many years, and she actually has a piece in the state arts collection.

I think we're going to show you a picture of that, and this is from the Edisto series, Edisto beach.

It's got a nice organic feel to it, which I thought was kind of fun, and the inside of it, you can see I've already worked on my Oasis, and I've got the shorter pieces at the bottom with the taller pieces on the top, but I wanted y'all to see that the inside of this has a very different texture to it.

It reminds me of a seashell.

You know how a seashell on the outside is all crusty sometimes, and then you open it up and it's very beautiful and smooth on the inside, so that's why I thought this would be a really fun piece for us to use for our arrangement today, a very organic piece made by a South Carolina artist.

What could be more appropriate?

So then you have to start putting things in, and I usually start with some of the larger flowers and I want to thank Chris Kessinger at Specialty Cut Flowers, who let me piggyback on an order so that I could get some things that wouldn't otherwise have been available for me.

He was very kind, and so when flowers come from the florist, the first thing you have to do is spend a couple of hours cleaning up the flowers.

I know that sounds silly, but they usually have just too much stuff going on, so I sat down yesterday for several hours and took thorns off the roses and removed a lot of the foliage.

Everything that I got, these beautiful ranunculus had foliage all up and down, but the foliage was no longer attractive.

Ranunculus foliage just isn't that pretty, and so everything that I got, even these wonderful things that I found growing through the fence in Sumter, this wonderful spirea.

I had to spend a lot of time not only cleaning it off, but actually removing some of the green leaves so that you would see the flowers and not be overwhelmed by all the foliage, so it just takes a long time.

Be prepared.

If you just use them as they come, which sounds like you could, it's going to be too dense and too green, and too compact, and you won't be happy with your final arrangement.

Generally, you start with some of your larger flowers, and I'm going to start with these garden roses, and they've got some extra buds on them, and I just don't think the buds add much, so I'm going to remove the buds and probably put about three of them in on two sides.

I like to cluster things.

Remember that in a garden, the best way to plant a garden is not just to put a string, a little line of soldiers, you want to cluster your flowers, and the same philosophy and technique takes place in your flower arrangements, so I'm going to do that with these roses, and they don't have much smell, but they sure are pretty.

These are garden roses that I was able to order, and they just are so much more attractive than some of those roses that just sit there like that.

So we're gonna have...

I'm gonna try to get them at slightly different heights because that's more the way things happen in real life, then I'm gonna repeat that over on this side once again.

I'll leave one of the buds on.

We can do that.

I'll leave one bud on here, and make this one slightly different.

De-bud this one.

I can take these home and put them in a little container, and over a couple of days they'll open, and then I'll have sweet little roses on my kitchen table for when we're eating supper, and that'll be nice too.

When you are putting your flowers in, suppose I go...

I'm gonna push this in and I go like that, and then I go oh, my goodness, I didn't want it to be that short.

I want it to be taller.

If I just lift it up, the bottom of my stem is no longer in contact with the Oasis, and that means that if the water is a little bit lower, the capillary action will not fill that void, and so if you put something in, and decide that you want to pull it out a little bit, you have to take it completely out and start an entirely new hole.

Otherwise, it will not be getting watered, and you know as well as I do, how incredibly critical it is to have water with flowers.

Okay.

Oh, to hear that peonies were available!

It used to be that I could grow peonies in St. Matthews, but with the differences in climate, the plants come up fine, but they don't flower for me anymore.

But they had some peonies available.

What a marvelous flower peonies are.

It almost makes you want to move up to where it's super cold in the winter, but fortunately, you can order them from the florist and not have to be quite so drastic.

So I'm going to put these in next.

That's my next major group of flowers, and I've got these beautiful, beautiful pink colors.

I just can't believe how exquisite they are.

And I'm again going to work in three's, which is just a good way to work.

Three's and five's, just like all the things they teach you in landscape design.

Odd numbers are always the best.

So let me turn this around, and I don't know why people think that this is just la-di-da kind of work because everything that you do concerning flower arrangements is heavy.

This already weighs about, I'd say, 25 pounds.

You can hear it [thud sound] clump.

So if you've got somebody to help you carry things around, be glad and fix them their favorite cake occasionally.

I'm gonna actually... you can actually help flowers open just by taking your hands gently and pulling them on a little bit.

And we'll have another grouping of peonies.

I can take this lower leaf off.

We'll have one that's a little bit taller, maybe just for fun.

Let's let him be up there with one of the roses for variety, and then we'll let this fellow come out in a whole other direction, so that wherever you're looking, you'll see something pretty and colorful.

And I think this fella's in the wrong spot.

Again, I'm going to pull him out, and when I put him back, be sure that it goes down and it's touching the Oasis very well.

There we go.

Okay.

Wonderful peonies!

Alright!

Then I thought that it would be fun to have some blue involved in this, and this is a wonderful flower, Origanum, I believe is correct.

Star... isn't that pretty?

And as you see, the flower in the middle is smaller, lower, and so I'm going to cut that one out because I think that's a little bit awkward.

I'm gonna cut this a little bit and thin it out a little bit.

So I'm going to start putting some of this in, and actually, it's just a little bit airier.

I may be able to let one or two of them be a little bit higher.

It's got a pretty thick stem, however.

Here's another one we're gonna use.

And since the stem is so thick, I'm actually going to trim it down a little bit so it's easier for me to insert.

Since there are four on that one, I'm going to go back and only leave three.

I think that works best on that particular stem, and let's get one more.

Where did I have those?

Well there are more... oh, here we go.

Like I said, you've got the kitchen sink, and sometimes you can't find the drain, you have so much stuff.

Again, you can see these are pretty big, and I spent a lot of time cleaning them up already.

I'm gonna thin them down.

And think how much fun I'll have, I'll have all these little leftovers that I can use at home, and that'll be a lot of fun for me.

Cutting the stem a little bit so it's easier for me to insert.

Again, using three's, but not grouping them quite as much as I did the roses and the peonies.

Okay, well let's have some more color in here, and I've got...

These are all kind of big.

I've got some of my native azalea that's blooming now, and that's got a very different texture.

Plus the fragrance, if you don't grow the deciduous native azaleas, they're really available now, and I would encourage you to plant some in your yard.

We did a show on Making It Grow with a really marvelous collector, Mike Creel, who worked for DNR for a long time, and he just has the most wonderful collection in the world, but again, as I say, they are very easily accessible now, easy to grow.

So put some out in your yard.

All of our native azaleas are deciduous, and so the flowers come before the leaves, and they're very, very conspicuous and beautiful.

And they do just smell like magic.

I'll cut that one back a little bit.

And then I've got some larger ranunculus that are just exquisitely beautiful, and I think will repeat that beautiful yellow color, so let's fill in a little bit lower with some of these gorgeous ranunculus.

Aren't they just so much fun?

Look at that beautiful, green center.

What could be more delightful?

And they certainly brighten their corner.

Just eyepopping!

Now, remember the foliage that came on them, some plants have beautiful foliage.

Ranunculus foliage just isn't particularly pretty, so I just cleaned them up when they came in.

Tuck them all throughout because they're just so lovely.

Okay.

You have to work sometimes to get something in just the right place.

And again, I grouped to start with, but now I'm just being a little more scattered, which I feel like I can do with kind of the secondary flowers, if that makes any sense.

That's how I'm kind of considering these, as the secondary flowers with the roses and the peonies being the dominant ones.

Get that down just a little bit more.

Cut it a little bit.

This one still has an offshoot on it, so I'll take that off.

And you can see that the foliage really didn't amount to much, so I just went ahead and took it all off, as I will with that little bit that's remaining there.

Put this kind of edge over the side a little bit.

Let's see if we need one more in here.

We're doing pretty good with that.

Okay, it is that time of year, and I thought here, we get a different texture.

We have a lot of things that are pretty open.

We have these very airy, I mean kind of bold, these peonies and roses.

These are kind of spiky.

Then we have the ranunculus that are kind of tight.

But then here we've got some tulips.

Tulips do not have a hollow stem, so you don't have to worry about putting a stick up their behind, so to speak.

You can just put them right in.

If you're having trouble getting them in, if the stem feels a little bit weak, you can always take a pencil, or stems from something else, like this, and make a hole with them, so that you don't feel like you're going to be breaking them.

So let's get a few tulips in.

These are kind of nice because they're falling over a little bit.

They have a natural curve to them, so we'll put some of those in.

If the foliage isn't pretty, just go ahead and take it off.

There's going to be plenty in here by the time you finish.

You can vary the height a little bit if you want to.

Things don't all have to be on the same plane.

The tulips are graceful because they do have a leaning aspect to them, which I think is quite attractive.

Clip, clip.

Snip, snip.

There we go.

Let's make this one a little shorter.

I don't know why it helps to stick your tongue out sometimes.

There we go.

Alright.

And then we've got one or two more on the back, and that's just about right because I've only got one or two left.

It's nice when things work out right, isn't it?

It doesn't always work that way, but certainly grateful for when it does.

So get this little fella nicely down in there, so he'll make good contact with the Oasis.

That one actually broke a little bit, so I'm going to replace him with another one, because I want him to come over the edge a little.

Whew!

Alrighty.

Now I've got a lot of things that are somewhat formal looking, and I was out and looked at some other things in the yard and had some scilla, and I like to use some yard flowers too.

So I'm gonna put that in, and that's another color of blue that I think will be pretty and maybe bring out the blue in that star flower a little bit, because it's a little bit dark and a little bit hard to see, perhaps.

So this will say oh, blue, more blue.

I encourage you to pay more attention to that.

And this again does not have a hollow stem, so I'm finding it pretty easy to put it in, and I may try to actually put these maybe in three's, because if you grow scilla, you know that it multiplies, and you end up having bunches of it in the garden, which is quite delightful.

There's nothing in the world wrong with that.

So we might try to replicate the way it grows in nature, which is in bunches in our arrangement.

So let's put a little bit more over here.

And I must say, with the peony, the blue of this scilla is really quite beautiful, so I'm going to put one behind one of the peonies, and one in front if I've still got one that's got a little bit of height to it, and I do.

Great!

[sighs] Okay, I think that this fellow is a little awkward, so I'm gonna take him out, and I'm going to actually reposition this a little bit, and moving it out a little bit now that things are coming together.

It's a little bit off, but I kind of like that.

I don't want everything to be just absolutely perfectly in the same vein.

I think we should change things around a little bit.

So now, I think we can actually start putting in some greenery, and maybe finishing up.

Oh, greenery!

I just think that our native oakleaf hydrangea when it comes out in the spring is the most marvelous thing.

The color is unbelievable.

It's just completely carefree.

Look at that beautiful color.

And so I got some of that, and I think it will be a beautiful way to really make this look like a spring arrangement.

Don't be afraid to prune and take things off if you think it's getting too thick.

So I went out this morning and got a good bit of it, and I'm happy.

It's beautiful, of course, when it blooms, but right now it's also quite beautiful just because the color is so remarkable.

Let's put a little bit down in the middle, so we have some color, so that everywhere you look, you get some sense of it being equally distributed, in this case, throughout the arrangement.

Okay, and good.

Still got a few more.

Great!

I guess we need some over here.

Everybody, whatever angle you're seeing this, we want there to be a little bit of this on view.

Okay.

And now, I'm really pretty satisfied with this.

I think the leaves that are left on the roses are just too dark, and I'm just going to reach in there and pinch them off, bless their little hearts.

Pinch, pinch, pinch.

They're very dark.

It was nice healthy foliage, but it's not quite what I want, and I think now we will perhaps just tuck in some of the lichen that I got.

Maybe one more piece of this.

How about that?

Right there by that beautiful tulip.

That just worked perfectly.

So let me clean up a little bit so I can see my nose in front of my face and get some of my lichen that I have here.

I think this color will be lots of fun, and I'm gonna start tucking it in so that you won't see any of the Oasis or anything.

And if you get close enough, you'll still be able to see a little bit of the beautiful inside of what Jeri did, that seashell-like texture that the inside of this, I think, pretty fun container has.

I think I've got a little bit more of this, thank goodness.

Thank goodness for the wonderful sandy soil on the way to the big dock in St. Matthews where my friend, Linda, is always so nice to us when we go out there.

Okay, so.

And I just need a little bit of this in the middle, and it looks like I've used all I have, so I'm just gonna put a little bit of Spanish moss down in the middle so that you won't see the little bit of Oasis down in there, and it also just adds actually a little more texture and fun.

I don't mind that at all.

Really, yeah.

Give me a second I'm going to try to clean up so that you can see how this is going to look.

Hold on.

Well, since I don't have a teleprompter or cue cards or a script, of course I forgot to tell you something.

I forgot to water, so you want to put your finger down in here and slowly, slowly, slowly, add water until it gets to the height that you want.

Do it slowly because all of a sudden, you think that it's not doing anything, and then it'll start spilling over the edge, so slowly add water, and check that every day.

These little bottles are good for that purpose because they've got a top on them.

And then, of course, at the museum, and just like in your home, they spend a lot of time deciding what should be in what gallery, and we do the same thing.

We try to have things that relate to each other in our home, and I thought it might be fun in this case, since I felt like there was a lot that had to do with the sea with this vase, and a lot that had to do with water in the pictures that Glenna shared with me from a lady fixing her hair at the table with the flowers in the middle of the day.

Imagine having time to fix your hair, and somebody else did the flowers for you.

...to the goddess who was weeping, and then the wonderful Arts and Crafts movement things that had a live oak in it with the Spanish moss, but a lot of things that just remind... which of course you think of as being in the Louisiana places and swampy places.

So I have an oyster bowl, an oyster dish that Jeri also made.

It's one my favorite things.

I live for South Carolina oysters.

I do not eat oysters from anywhere else except South Carolina, because our oysters are the very best.

But then I had some mussel shells that were a little bit more artistic looking than oyster shells, and so I brought some of those along as well, and I had a scarf that I thought...

I tried to fix it so it kind of seemed like the billowy sea.

I do a lot of stopping on the side of the road.

That's where I get a lot of things, and so I've been looking for a stick.

I've really been looking for a stick.

Fortunately, Diane Baker at the Riverbanks Zoo and Botanical Garden had been collecting some rhododendron.

They had a little bit of rhododendron in an area down on that beautiful slope that they have down towards the river that she was collecting, and she gave me this marvelous piece.

So I'm going to add this to our arrangement for height and drama.

I have to find a place to make it...

There we go.

It's going in.

Some of the very best things you find are roadside finds, so I'm always stopping and looking for things, and I stopped the other day to look at a native crabapple, which was past its prime, but I found this wonderful surprise, and that is a native honeysuckle.

I couldn't see it from the road.

If I hadn't stopped the car and gotten out, I wouldn't have known it was there.

This is our native Woodbine, a beautiful honeysuckle.

So I'm going to clean it up a little bit.

And this is one that you can very easily grow in your yard.

The hummingbirds love it, and I think almost everybody loves it, and I thought it would be fun to perhaps twine it around our beautiful stick that Diane Baker so kindly gave me.

So let's see if we can make this work, because it is a twining vine.

That's exactly how it makes its way into the air so that it can photosynthesize and be part of nature, so they're gonna twine it around and let that beautiful flower show.

There's a little bit at the end there we'll take off, and I think we've got a little bit left that we can put on this piece here, and now we have what I think, I hope you will think, is an arrangement worthy of Art Blossoms, and one that perhaps will give you some ideas of how to do arrangements at your house.

Namely have a good, good time and enjoy it.

Thank you so much.

I hope you enjoyed seeing all the work that goes into arrangements.

The florists deserve great credit for all the hard work they do every day.

As I told you, I think sticks are the most important things of all, so I just used a stick for my hat today.

When I get a good stick, I keep it in the shed and bring it out for special occasions.

Now we want to show you the arrangements that different groups made at that wall on display at Art Blossom at the museum inspired by works of art.

♪ [classical music] ♪ They sure had a lot of talented people working on those wonderful arrangements.

Didn't you think they were fun to look at, Terasa?

<Terasa> I am absolutely amazed at the creativity and talent that was illustrated in those works.

I think you might secretly be giving lessons to folks.

Is that the case?

[Amanda laughs] <Amanda> I think I'm gonna take lessons from them, but anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed the show tonight, and we will look forward to seeing you next week.

Night night.

♪ Making It Grow is brought to you in part by the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, certified South Carolina grown helps consumers identify, find and buy South Carolina products.

McLeod Farms in McBee, South Carolina.

This family farm offers seasonal produce including over 22 varieties of peaches.

Additional funding provided by International Paper and the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation and Farm Bureau Insurance.