We had no idea what to expect when we asked Sarah Ryhanen of the famed Little Flower School and her own company Saipua to teach a flower arranging workshop here at the farm.
After conversing all summer with Sarah we picked a date in early October for workshop and titled it The Floral Harvest. The concept was that we would provide and only use seasonal local flowers to create unique arrangements in our own line of terra-cotta pots.
Sarah arrived early in the morning on Saturday with piping hot coffee ready to go even after she had just driven 5 hours the day before and set up that night in the greenhouse with all of our assistance.
Arriving students and Sunday staff were amazed by all that was cut and gathered for use making the greenhouse a wondrous sight.
The days leading up to the workshop the employees excitedly worked to prepare the greenhouse for Sarah's arrival. Each station was prepared with a piece of hand-cut chicken wire, pruning shears, sturdy liners for the pots and homemade stamped name tags. We also provided our own line of beautiful hand thrown terra-cotta azalea pots to everyone attending the workshop as their vessel. The staff here cut bountiful flowers and foliage from our own cut flower fields and surrounding gardens right here on the farm and prepared them for use in the arrangements.
When Sarah arrived Saturday evening she brought with her a caravan of flowers that she had grown, along with others she sourced from local farms in New England as well as right here in Maine. Once everything was all set the greenhouse was quite a stunning sight. There were so many different types of intriguing blooms, colors and the textures it made one melt. The centerpiece of this intimate event was of course, the Dahlia.
The morning kicked off with a quick meet and greet with Sarah as students and staff hungrily eyed up the mind blowing display of harvested floras they were about to work with.
Sarah kicked off her lesson on flower arranging by explaining, in detail, each individual flower that was to be used in the greenhouse. She was extremely thorough and spoke about texture, color and how important the placement and the angle of the flowers was in each piece created.
Sarah answered questions and gave advise for all the material that was to be used. Now things started to get exciting in the class atmosphere.
She began by bunching up her balled chicken wire and plunging it into her SHF lined terra-cotta pot. Then the magic began.
She quickly, in what seemed like no time, composed a signature Saiupa / Little Flower School arrangement that was suited for the workshop here at Snug. It was based on gray foliage particularly our plectranthus that she was surprisingly unfamiliar with. Her piece really came together with pop and contrast added from her favorite cream and yellow dahlias, and diminutive zinnias.
Then it was game on! Every participant was able to come up and choose, grab, and seize all the flowers and texture foliage they needed to start preparing their own arrangements.
Before we knew it, there were fabulous floral arrangements being created at every single table. Sarah walked around and helped each student with their arrangement to a tee. Everyone was having a blast and learning a tremendous amount of information about their own original talents as well as taking the new ones they had just learned and honing them in beautifully.
The fun was an understatement. Everyone including Albert pictured below was reveling in the day.
Following is just a small sampling of the over twenty five arrangements that were created by the participants in this through, three hour, intensive workshop. There were aesthetically pleasing compositions in everyone's work. It was true eye candy for all.
At the end of the day, we all felt as Molly Ringwald looks in the picture below. We were high on the total experience, and overwhelmed by the educational wisdom that was taught. All the visual beauty took us by surprise from flowers, texture and techniques to composing botanical art .
It was a pleasure to host Sarah and we are already planning for her next workshop this coming spring of 2014 possibly with Nicolette Owen, her partner from The Little Flower School.
If you missed out on this Autumn Harvest workshop be sure to keep a look out for the next big event here at our special little farm.
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