(soft music) - [Announcer] J Schwanke's Life In Bloom is brought to you by: Albertsons Companies with additional support from the following companies: The Ball Horticultural Company Cal Flowers Design Master Colortool Golden Flowers Sunshine Bouquet And TheRibbonRoll.com (soft music) - This episode in Life in Bloom takes an artful turn with a flower filled event at the Grand Rapids Art Museum.

We'll visit with P. Allen Smith, and tour the gardens at Moss Mountain Farm.

Plus I'll show you my take on flower artistry.

(soft music) I'm J Schwanke.

Welcome to Life In Bloom.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

We talk a lot on Life In Bloom about the scientifically documented benefits of having flowers in our daily lives.

It's true, flowers make us happier people.

It's also noteworthy that flowers inspire and influence art, and are present in our everyday lives on a large and small scale.

Whether it's that beautiful floral touch on your cappuccino, or a stunning painting of lilies and carnations, flowers have found endless ways to make us smile both in and out of the garden.

Join us today on Life In Bloom as we explore the many ways flowers have inspired others, and let flower art inspire you.

(soft music) Flower arranging is a time when your creativity can expand, and making an artistic centerpiece that can be used at a party or an event is a fun way to engage with your creativity, and, of course, flowers.

So today we'll be making an arrangement in this container using some found objects.

I've got some driftwood that I've collected over the years.

I've got different kinds of rocks, and I have a succulent and a tillandsia.

Also, when you're looking for design elements it's a great idea to look to the professional florist, or a craft store.

Either place may carry interesting things.

Flower foam, for example.

We'll be using a sphere of soaked flower foam today to place our flowers.

A sphere of foam is something you can pick up at the professional florist, or a craft store.

Remember them as a resource for tools, containers, or just inspiration for looking at the different types of flowers and foliage we can use in a creative arrangement.

So let's get started and create something artful with this container and these objects.

(soft music) Everyone's arrangement is going to be different based on the materials that you're going to use.

Selecting unusual things that might be used in unexpected ways is helpful.

(soft music) Placing a succulent or a tillandsia on a piece of driftwood is unexpected, and the contrast in textures is exciting.

Using different types of foliages, flowers, and branches can also add interest to your arrangement.

I like to find something unexpected.

For example, this brunia.

It's an interesting member of the protea family.

The silver core of the berries almost look like a flower.

(soft music) Whenever I'm working on an art piece I try and remember my color palette.

The interesting blues and sea foam colors are activated by the vibrant blue iris.

(soft music) So much art starts in the garden.

Whenever I think about an artful garden, I think of my friend P. Allen Smith.

He does everything with an eye towards art.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting with him at his Moss Mountain Farm in Roland, Arkansas.

So, Allen, it is always wonderful to come to the farm.

- We love having you J.

We love your creativity and your talent.

You're always welcome here.

- Well, thank you, I've always admired how art plays such a big part in what you do.

- Well, thanks, I think art really leads what we've done here at the farm, actually.

I think landscape design is an art.

This farm is a large canvas to paint on.

We've been painting on it now for about 10 years.

The farm is really a ferme ornée or ornamented farm.

Mr. Jefferson, our third president applied those principles of Monticello, and essentially what you're trying to do is create something that is functional, but you want to make it beautiful.

This very levee we're walking on I think is a good example because five years ago if we were standing here we'd be in a ravine.

- Oh, wow.

- Yeah, so what we created was a 65 foot levee that span across here and it created this beautiful pond, which is an attractive feature to the farm, but really more importantly it stores the water, which allows us to irrigate the vegetable garden, and all the flower gardens.

- [J] Wow, so function and art.

- Function and art, function and aesthetics working together.

Hey, why don't we head down to the rose garden.

- Great.

(soft music) - J, you can see even here in fall we've got some flowers, roses still blooming.

- Right.

- But we're very much at the end of the season, but, of course, you remember it in May.

- Yeah, it's one of my favorite parts of the farm.

- Well, thank you, it's a joy for me because roses, well, they're one of my favorite category of plants, and what we've tried to do here is collect the first class of American roses called the Noisette class, and they were developed around, well, the first quarter of the 19th century.

There's about 38 varieties of Noisettes in here, but, actually, the Noisettes are the beginning, and then we go all the way up to current hybrids of roses.

We have over 200 years of American rose hybridization right here in this garden.

- It's a magnificent collection.

I just love the view from the top, but also from down here.

Any way that you look at it's just a beautiful piece of art.

- Well, thank you, I mean, that's the way you try to think of these things is to look at every angle and every season, and, hopefully, you create something intriguing.

- So let's talk about the flower gardens, too, the cut flower gardens.

- Well, yes, the terrace gardens were the first gardens that were made here.

In fact, the terracing was done before the house was built.

So we have the upper and lower terrace gardens, and at the centerpoint you see these four great vitex trees, and in June they're the glory of the farm.

Those gardens we grow all kinds of flowers in there, and espalier trees and hedges create garden rooms.

- [J] Nothing better than a flower filled room.

- Well, I agree with you except when I get hungry I started thinking about the vegetable garden.

- Exactly, exactly.

- We have an acre of vegetables of which you're well acquainted with.

We plant about 75 to 80 different varieties of vegetables a year, and they're trialing them seeing how they perform, and also their flavor is important too.

We use that as a place to demonstrate the importance of diversity.

We're trying to attract pollinators, and beneficial insects because we're all organic here, so we don't use any harmful sprays or chemicals.

- Wonderful, so, Allen, there's one more piece of art here at Moss Mountain Farm I want to share with our viewers, so can we take a look at that?

- Absolutely, let's go.

(soft music) So is this the place you had in mind, J?

- Absolutely, as a working farm you've got this amazing livestock with the poultry.

- Well, the poultry, yes, we've kept heritage poultry here for 10 years.

This is actually a Silver Spangled Appenzeller Spitzhauben a heritage breed from Switzerland.

- I like the hair.

- Little crest, yeah, that's why I chose her.

I thought there's a kindred spirit here for you.

- [J] Absolutely.

- Yeah.

In the 19th century poultry, particularly, chickens were often called the flowers of the barnyard, so I thought this would be perfect to share with you.

- Absolutely, I was fascinated when I saw them because they're little pieces of art.

- They are.

- So beautiful.

- Indeed they are, they've shown up in paintings, and mosaics for millennia, yeah.

- Well, thank you, Allen, it is, it's always a treat.

I have admired you for so long.

I'm so proud to call you my friend.

- Well, absolutely, I feel the same way, and I hope you'll make many trips back to Moss Mountain Farm.

- [J] Thank you.

- So how about let's go gather some eggs.

- All right, that sounds great.

- [Allen] Did you get teary-eyed, choked up?

(soft music) - Flowers can provide an amazing inspiration.

It can be in the garden, or it can be when we're making an arrangement, but another opportunity is to use flowers as an inspiration for art.

(soft music) Taking some time to paint flowers or draw flowers can allow you to create a personal piece of art that can be used as a greeting card, or hung on a wall, or given as a gift.

It's an opportunity to combine flowers and art.

(cheerful music) So today I wanted to create this beautiful arrangement in blue and lavender hues.

We'll start with our softer stemmed flowers first while there's plenty of room in the foam.

Hyacinth are the ones that I think about first of all because those hyacinths have a soft stem.

You'll notice the technique that I use.

I'll take that flower, and I'll push it in from the bottom of the stem rather than trying to push it from the top.

That would break the stem, so we just inch it into the foam.

Next I'll define the shape and form of the arrangement.

That's gonna be determined by this lilac branch because it's a bigger piece that I'm gonna use.

We're gonna take that in all in one piece to keep it very natural looking.

If I trim those pieces apart it starts to get a more arranged look, and I want this to be more natural because we've got so many cool flower varieties that we're using.

This stick looks great too.

You can just have that hanging off the front of the container.

Use a couple of the hydrangeas.

I'm leaving them with a longer length.

These little tendril pieces those are gonna be great.

One more we'll bring it back it.

You'll notice that sometimes I bring a flower in, and I might look at where I want it to go, and decide if it's better there, or maybe on another side, but I'll sometimes try them out.

The one thing that you always want to remember when you're dealing with floral foam is you always want to create a new hole if you change positions.

If you go back into the same hole you can create a chamber of air between the end of the stem and the foam itself.

Next we'll add our iris.

We're gonna bring the iris out in here.

These are gonna be great because this blossom is gonna open as well as those.

Those iris all kind of have a similar natural curve to them, so we're grouping them together in one spot.

Now you'll notice when I processed the Veronica the ends of them started to curl around.

We bring them in a grouping, and have all those going different directions.

It seems kind of random and they don't make sense.

I'm gonna try and keep them together, so that they're all heading in the same direction.

So I'm taking notes of how those curves are lining up, and we're gonna place those in a grouping together.

The signature style of a flower arrangement generally is different for everyone.

My signature I think is pretty flowers.

I don't ever like to do anything to the flowers that would make them seem less natural.

I like it when flowers look natural, and I like it when they're pretty.

Having a color palette that goes together I start to be able to blend textures together with the colors, and I think it's more impressive because it creates impact for the arrangement in color.

We're tucking those delphinium blossoms in towards the center of the bouquet.

Because this is probably the most dominant color I want to make sure that it's tucked towards the center.

We had it when I was a little kid the greenhouse.

We just had an open field where we'd grow them, so I think about the way the plant looks when I'm putting them into an arrangement.

So we've got taller spikes in the center, and then the shorter spikes towards the outside.

Look it, it's natural when it comes right to the edge of the container.

So now we've got the passion vine.

I'm just gonna strip that back, and go into our last area of foam.

That leaves those passion flowers right there at the front.

It's definitely a different style of arrangement because it was inspired by the flowers.

Seeing beautiful flowers like that makes me create an arrangement that's befitting them.

Looking at the way they might be growing towards the light, or the idiosyncrasies of the stem itself.

It's very natural.

It's almost as if we've lifted a portion of the garden, and placed it inside our container.

(cheerful music) So I'm here with Dana Friis-Hansen, the director of the Grand Rapids Arts Museum.

This is an amazing flower world project.

- I've just been walking around the exhibition space.

It's so impressive.

It's like people just don't get it until they see what flower artists are doing today.

If you can see a familiar work with fresh eyes that's a gift that many of these artists the 19 flower artists that have made works here are giving to our community.

It pushes the boundaries of what people think of flowers, and, also, of art and it brings the two together.

(soft music) - [J] So what was the first flower or foliage that came to your mind when you saw it?

- Definitely, I've been playing around lately with composite flowers, so a composite flower was the first thing that came to mind, and then succulents were kind of like a secondary.

- [J] They're so hot right now.

- [Rueben] Yeah, I mean, very trendy.

(soft music) - What was your first reaction when they gave you this painting?

- Relief.

- Okay.

- Last year's painting was very structural, very boxlike.

- Black and gray.

- Black and gray with one orange square, so this, I was like, oh, wow.

- [J] Right.

- [Gary] There's a lot you can do here.

- [J] What was the first flower or foliage that came to your mind when you saw it?

- I thought about the Juliet garden rose because that picks up the peaches, and stuff that's within the painting, and it opens up so beautifully, and it has such a nice fragrance, and I thought fragrance and the art museum that would be a good deal.

(soft music) - You are here at Art in Bloom in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

- Yes, again.

- So how many times have you done this?

- They've had it four times, and I've been in it four times.

- So what was your reaction when you saw the painting for the first time?

- Oh, I fell in love with it because I'm a nature boy.

This was right up my alley.

- [J] So what was the first flower or foliage that you thought of?

- Oh, moss, all the different varieties of moss, so it's really marvelous, I mean, I could just picture myself walking through this painting, and just feeling the mosses, and looking at the rocks.

- And I can imagine myself being this big, and climbing through your ...

I got lost in it when I went up, it's wonderful.

(soft music) When you saw your painting for the first time what did you think?

- The first time I saw it I thought what am I gonna do because everything was teal, and there's no real flowers in teal except your succulents, so I started concentrating on the rocks, and the structure first, and then went to the flowers after that, so I was limited to my flower selection.

That's why I went with the browns that would be more complimentary to it.

(soft music) - [J] How many times have you been involved with Art in Bloom?

- This will be my third time participating.

- So when you saw your painting for the first time what was your reaction?

- I was, hey, great, I mean, I know Rockwell Kent as well.

It's an American landscape quite well-renowned, so I was very pleased with the piece, and the colors alone I just thought was fantastic.

I mean, there's blues and purples, and I immediately thought of delphinium, and stock in layers to represent the hills.

Then I also saw deep down in front this heavy green.

I saw the artichokes and I thought of the carnations, and just layers.

- [J] The texture.

- [James] The texture, yeah.

- [J] That portion of it is amazing.

- [James] Yeah, that was a lot of fun, and then the lily grass just 'cause you can you got to kick it out a little bit.

- [J] Exactly, just dancing.

Dancing around the arrangement.

- Exactly, used the whole space.

(soft music) - [J] As you can see, flowers enhance our life, and our creativity in and out of the garden.

For Life In Bloom, I'm J Schwanke, see you next time.

Why do you think flowers are important?

- Well flowers are important for lots of reasons, but, I mean, I think they bring just joy to people.

- Because it's beauty and art that's natural.

- For me it's just my whole life because I've done it ever since I was 18 right out of high school.

It just happened at a job and a man trained me, and made me wash plastic flowers in a basement for a whole summer and then said, if you can do that I'm gonna train you.

- I have two sisters and a brother, and we were in 4-H, and they took in their animals, I took in my flowers.

I always get the blue ribbons, so flowers have been my life.

- That's awesome, well, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

- You're very, very welcome, thank you.

- [J] J Schwanke's Life In Bloom is filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

- [Announcer] J Schwanke's Life in Bloom is brought to you by: Albertsons Companies with additional support from the following companies: The Ball Horticultural Company Cal Flowers Design Master Colortool Golden Flowers Sunshine Bouquet And TheRibbonRoll.com (soft music) Closed caption funding provided by Chrysal.

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