By 3 p.m. on Wednesday, my first day at the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival, I was ready for a sit-down. Fortunately, that was when
Floral Wars started. While I enjoyed walking around and gawking at all the displays and shopping till my legs ached, I have to say --
Floral Wars was probably just about the most fun time I had at the show! Floral Wars is a head-to-head competition between local florists who specialize in using local products.
Floral Wars was hosted by Debra K. Prinzing of
Slowflowers.com, a nationwide online directory to florists, shops and studios who design with American-grown flowers.
 |
| Debra K. Prinzing, author of Slow Flowers and The 50-Mile Bouquet |
Melissa Feveyear of
Terra Bella Flowers and Jessica Gring of
Odd Flowers Floral Design were the competitors on Wednesday. They were each tasked with doing three designs, and they had only 15 minutes to complete each one -- a floral arrangement, a hand-tied bouquet, and a "surprise" floral creation (which was different each day). On Wednesday they were tasked with creating wearable floral jewelry in the form of a cuff. The ingredients they were given to work with were all local (for a definition of local that included California).
During the competition, Debra roamed the audience, taking questions that the competitors were expected to answer while continuing to work.
 |
| Melissa has removed her vase from the pedestal and is moving it onto a lazy susan |
 |
| Melissa cuts a branch as part of her support |
 |
| Jessica makes a start on her arrangement by adding some hardwood branches as a support structure, and unlike Melissa has decided to leave the vase up high on the pedestal |
 |
| Isn't Jessica wearing just the coolest jumpsuit ever? |
 |
| Melissa has added Lilies and Pieris to her support branches |
 |
| Melissa adjusted the red tulips before adding them to the vase by opening the petals out, making the flowers look almost blown |
 |
| The guy from Corona Tools, whose name I've forgotten, talks about the adjustable bypass pruner |
Throughout the show, the guy from Corona took questions from the crowd and handed out tools to audience members. The show was sponsored by
Corona Tools,
Johnny's Selected Seeds and
Offray Ribbon.
 |
| Jessica contemplates what to add to her hand-tied bouquet |
 |
| Melissa works on her hand-tied bouquet -- watching both of them clutch the flowers and add to them made my arthritic hands ache in sympathy |
 |
| Jessica wins the day's prize -- an engraved trowel from Corona Tools |
 |
| Melissa's floral cuff |
 |
| Jessica's floral cuff |
 |
| Melissa's arrangement with its interestingly blown-out tulips |
 |
| Melissa's hand-tied bouquet lies on the table |
 |
| Jessica holds her hand-tied bouquet |
On Thursday the competitors were Jon Robert Throne of
Countryside Floral and Garden and Gina Thresher of
From the Ground Up Floral.
 |
| Jon started by rolling yellow dogwood branches up into a ball as a makeshift enormous floral frog to support his arrangement |
 |
| Gina seems to be having fun |
 |
| Jon works on his arrangement which is going in a decidedly horizontal direction |
 |
| Gina makes an adjustment to her arrangement |
 |
| Jon kept up a pretty continuous stream of mischievous banter throughout the competition -- Debra said he was "unfiltered." |
 |
| For his hand-tied bouquet Jon took a large bunch of redtwig dogwood and began to braid and weave them into a support for the flowers |
 |
| Gina adjusts the branches that she's using in her hand-tied bouquet |
 |
| Gina teased Jon that he was supposed to be making a hand-tied bouquet, not weaving a basket |
 |
| It looks almost like a badminton racket |
 |
| His hand-tied bouquet was massive -- I think it must have been meant for Wonder Woman to carry |
For their "surprise" challenge, they were tasked with creating floral crowns.
 |
| Gina ties on her own floral crown |
 |
| An audience member models Jon's floral crown |
 |
| Gina won the engraved trowel from Corona Tools |
 |
| Gina's floral arrangement on the left and her hand-tied bouquet on the right |
 |
| Jon's hand-tied bouquet sitting in a vase |
 |
| Jon's horizontal floral arrangement |
I have to say -- this was the most fun I've had while sitting down at the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival -- honestly, so much more fun and interesting than sitting in the dark looking at slides of photos of plants. I'm sorry if my pictures weren't the best, I used my iPhone's zoom (it's steadier than my point-and-shoot on zoom), but I'm sure you can still get the gist of what the competition was like.
