american flowers week ~ June 28 to July 4 ~ Celebrating American Grown Flowers in all 50 States

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A collective of Seattle area florists reimagines judicial collars with botanicals

            Tammy Myers, founder of Seattle-based LORA Bloom, designed a stunning dahlia quilt for American Flowers Week’s Botanical Couture collection in 2019 to honor the Karuk Tribe and her grandfather’s Native American heritage. See below American Flowers Week 2019 (c) Missy Palacol.

            This year, Tammy is honoring a contemporary influence, the U.S. Supreme Court’s late Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Tammy has long viewed Justice Ginsburg as both a fashion icon and a female role model. “Ginsburg frequently wore jabots over her judicial robes, something we also see Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor doing. I have often wondered how her neckwear collection might appear as flowers instead of lace or beadwork. In my research, I learned Ginsburg had favorite pieces that communicated subtle messages of the Court’s decisions. We know flowers can speak in similar ways.”

            A Time Magazine feature on Ginsburg’s collars and jabots (images shown above) further captured Tammy’s imagination. Author Tessa Berensen wrote in November 2020, “over time, Ginsburg’s collars came to symbolize more than just a long-overdue feminine energy on the Supreme Court. To her, each one developed a special significance. The style of the collar sometimes reflected the substance of her work; perhaps most famously, the liberal Ginsburg often wore a bejeweled collar that looked like armor on days she dissented.”

Read more about THE COLLARS OF RBG: A Portrait of Justice, by Elinor Carucci and Sara Bader

Order your copy here

            Tammy saw an opportunity to celebrate Ginsburg’s feminine energy for American Flowers Week. She turned to the floral artists who are part of her LORA Bloom platform, an online, direct-to-consumer e-commerce site for locally-grown flowers. “This project is quite ambitious for a variety of reasons. Because LORA Bloom represents a collective of local florists, we asked six florists to design a floral replica from RBG’s collar collection,” she says. Four Slow Flowers members, Anne Bradfield of Analog Floral, Maura Whalen of Casablanca Floral, Sharlet Driggs of Sharlet Floral, and Lori Poliski of Flori participated as designers, as well as Sophie Strongman of The Old Soul Flower Co. and Kristal Hancock of Sublime Stems.

            Tammy tapped her friend Riva Juarez, a model, lifestyle blogger, and designer who covers DIY beauty and fashion as @rivaladiva to construct the “base garment” to showcase the floral collars. Riva transformed a boxy, black judicial robe into a stylish garment. The resulting piece, which Riva modeled for the series, is a modern take on the classic courtroom robe. Riva gathered the sleeves into dramatic cuffs; she tucked volumes of fabric into a flattering empire-style waistline, and shortened the hem to a flirty length, completing the look with black tights and heels.

            To embellish the robe, Tammy searched for as many “black” or “almost black” botanical elements as she could find. She cleverly deconstructed the leaves of a plum-black leucadendron to adorn the bands enclosing the robe’s front zipper and created a gorgeous crown of blooms on the back of the garment using anthurium, scabiosa, calla lilies, and other deeply-hued botanicals as focal detail. There is beautiful contrast in the shapes, forms and textures in all dark petals as they catch the light and add interest to the otherwise generic black cloth. One indulgence: Tammy added feathery fern accents as a fluffy “skirt” detail. “It’s business in the front and party in the back,” she jokes.

Ginsburg frequently wore jabots over her judicial robes, something we also see Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor doing. I have often wondered how her neckwear collection might appear as flowers instead of lace or beadwork. In my research, I learned Ginsburg had favorite pieces that communicated subtle messages of the Court’s decisions. We know flowers can speak in similar ways.

tammy myers, lora bloom

            Each botanical collar is highly inventive, influenced by the beading, lace, and fine metalwork of Ginsburg’s judicial collars. By reimagining materials grown and gathered from nature, pairing them with embroidery, crochet, and jewelry-making techniques, the designers show an evident affection for their subject. “Undeniably, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the most distinguished, respected, and educated women in modern history,” Tammy observes. “She manifested beauty inside and out. She walked where few women have. Perhaps we can express our gratitude for the path she forged so we can achieve ours through the language of flowers.”

Creative Team:
Floral Palette: Domestic U.S.-grown botanicals from Washington, Oregon and California
Creative Concept/Creative Direction: Tammy Myers, LORA Bloom, lorabloom.com, @lorabloom.flowers
Model: Riva Juarez, rivaladiva.com, @rivaladiva
Hair/Makeup: Riva Juarez
Photography: Missy Palacol, Missy Palacol Photography, missypalacol.com, @missy.palacol
Collaborating Slow Flowers Society florists: Tammy Myers; Anne Bradfield, Analog Floral, @analog_floral; Maura Whalen, Casablanca Floral, @casablancafloral; Sharlet Driggs, Sharlet Floral, @sharletfloral; and Lori Poliski, Flori, @flori.flowers
Other florists: Sophie Strongman, The Old Soul Flower Co., @theoldsoulflowerco and Kristal Hancock, Sublime Stems, @sublimestems
Location: University of Washington Campus, Seattle, Washington

2024 Botanical Couture Look Five: A trailing skirt “grows” from the garden

Linda created the full-length skirt from a base of chicken wire, attached to a waistband. Openings in the metal mesh accommodate hundreds of water picks to keep flowers fresh and hydrated. “I spent days putting the water picks into the skirt,” Linda admitted. Each tube held clusters of flowers in place.
 
Photographed in late spring, the verdant train takes its inspiration from a cutting garden, with peonies, bearded irises, alliums, sweet William, baptisia, hellebores, lamb’s ear foliage, and nepeta “in bloom” against the background of hosta foliage and other greenery. “I wanted my garment to be fresh and seasonal,” Linda pointed out. “I didn’t want to use anything that wasn’t growing at that moment.”
 
White statice accentuates the skirt’s front openings, emulating ruffle trim, while threaded craspedia (Billy ball) drapes across the model’s torso as strands of oversized beads. Rhubarb leaves, harvested from the garden of Nan Matteson of Queen City Flower Farm—Linda’s past botanical couture collaborator—line the underskirt to provide a soft finish that protects the model’s legs from scratchy chicken wire. 

The garment is styled with Linda’s take on “slow jewelry,” a necklace created from willow saplings and foraged bark and feathers, with honeycomb pieces contributed from a local beekeeper. For the photo shoot, a task assigned to Linda’s son Zachary, the “prop” is a planted Victorian parlor chair. Where tufted velvet once cushioned the seat, there’s now a planting of moss, herbs, and spring perennials. “It’s definitely a growing chair,” she joked.
 
Linda sees herself as a “maker” for whom the garden and flower fields are her favorite art supplies. “There’s something about the natural world, and this botanical couture garment is a way for me to be in the natural world and be creative.”
 
Later this summer, when customers visit In the Garden Flower Farm to harvest from Linda’s you-pick field, she will put the planted chair on display. “It will be adorable and perfect for photo ops!”

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DESIGN + CONCEPT: Linda Spradlin, In the Garden Flower Farm, @inthegardenflowerfarm
DESIGN ASSISTANT: Nan Matteson, Queen City Flower Farm, @queencityflowerfarm
FLORAL CONTRIBUTIONS: In the Garden Flower Farm, Queen City Flower Farm, City Farm Studio, CCS Blooms, The Flower Lady OTR, Maygical Garden
CamFlor Inc., Watsonville, California, camflor.com | @camflorinc
MODEL: Ericka Leighton-Spradlin
PHOTOGRAPHY: Zachary Spradlin
VENUE: In the Garden Flower Farm, Seven Mile, Ohio

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2024 Botanical Couture Look Four: Feminine Power Suit

Niesha Blancas has been an essential partner in the promotion of American Flowers Week since our early days. Beginning in 2021, she joined the ranks of creators whose botanical couture looks elevate local and seasonal flowers with avante garde garments that have told narratives ranging from 1990s pop culture to the Bridgerton phenomenon to her family’s Mexican-American roots.

“Unwritten,” Niesha’s fifth botanical couture design, is her most personal project yet. This year, not only does Niesha get in front of the camera as the garment’s model, she uses the medium of flowers to tell a personal story of healing.

Her ensemble includes a bralette, a tailored jacket, and high-waisted pants, fully cloaked in vivid green foliage with accents in red, pink, purple, lavender, and blue flowers. She continues earlier themes, including opera gloves as her preferred fashion accessory, with the addition of a floral pillbox hat. Leaves from spotted laurel (Aucuba japonica), have factored prominently in the four prior looks Niesha has designed. But this year, when she visited CamFlor Inc., in Watsonville, California, to select her botanical ingredients, she was unable to find Aucuba.

“I have included this leaf every single year, and I couldn’t not have it this year,” she insisted. Fortunately, her mother, Cathy Blancas, found the plant at a local garden center, so Niesha plucked a single gold-flecked leaf and used it as her jacket’s “pocket handkerchief.”

Niesha clipped hundreds of individual pink and green ornamental kale leaves and shiny green Israeli ruscus foliage to attach to her base garments, using florist cold glue to cloak the pants and jacket with overlapping layers of greenery. There’s a pleasing contrast between the rounded kale edges and the pointed ruscus tips, as the varied leaf shapes create a pattern of their own. The foliages cover olive green vintage pants and jacket, which Niesha found months ago on her many thrifting excursions.

“I thought it would be smart to use green pieces,” she noted. Any hint of fabric disappears from view because of the predominance of foliage.

Niesha selected a mix of florals for the jacket’s color-blocked details that appear on shoulders, sleeves, and cuffs. Anemone, cornflower, dahlia, delphinium, dianthus, kangaroo paw, statice, pincushion protea, peony, ranunculus, and sweet pea create mini tapestries that relate to many of the headpiece blooms. For Niesha, this year’s botanical couture project represents a year of personal growth, as she experienced trauma that came with the loss of a close relative.

“I have been on a journey of inner healing, and I wanted to put something beautiful out into the world that told my story,” she explained. “Each picture showcases a different form of support and how much it has meant to me.”

The image with four gloved hands reaching toward her reminds Niesha of the power of an inner circle, friends and family members. “Each hand symbolizes the love and support of my inner circle as they left—and continue to leave—a lasting imprint throughout this journey of mine,” she explained.

The portrait in which Niesha holds her beloved cat “Rami” (who wears a kitty harness completely covered in botanicals) symbolizes the emotional support that pets can give. “Out of my four little ones, Rami was chosen. Just like his brother cats, he possesses one of the purest of souls and knows his way around a photoshoot just so he can load up on treats,” she jokes.

There’s also a photo of Niesha’s green-gloved hand reaching for another’s purple-gloved hand, which is symbolism for welcoming vulnerability and seeking support in therapy. As she continues her symbolism through the accessories, Niesha expressed another idea with the pillbox hat. Covered completely with botanicals, the hat is a nod to positive mental health.

“The idea is to remind ourselves to focus on the common goal of protecting our peace, maintaining a healthy mind, and always striving to carry beautiful thoughts,” she said.

As she modeled the garment, Niesha relied on her friend Ana Quinata to capture these storytelling moments. “It was reassuring to keep in my mind that I’ve done this creative process before—but with my muses. This time was special, because I was my own muse and shared my emotions . . . that’s pretty cool.”

Her ensemble is styled beautifully. Edgy, romantic, and original . . . 100 percent Niesha.

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DESIGN + CONCEPT: Niesha Blancas, Fetching Social, @fetchingsocial
DESIGN ASSISTANT: Ana Quinata
FLORAL SOURCE: CamFlor Inc., Watsonville, California, camflor.com | @camflorinc
MODELS: Niesha Blancas, Rami Blancas
PHOTOGRAPHY + EDITING: Ana Quinata + Niesha Blancas

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2024 Botanical Couture Look Three: Summer Romance

Last summer, Alanna Messner-Scholl expressed her fashionista talents in an Instagram post featuring a feminine and ferny party frock on a dressmaker’s form, photographed in the garden. Of course, we reached out to learn more and discovered that the Pennsylvania-based farmer florist once studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Experience in fashion, plus a subsequent career in healthcare, led to Alanna eventually establishing a flower farm called Waverly Flower Co. After finishing her post-doctoral fellowship, Alanna stepped back from the healthcare industry during the height of COVID to focus on raising her two children, now toddlers.

Today, Alanna has expanded Waverly Flower Co. into a bustling wedding and events studio with 32 weddings on the books for 2024. Alanna’s most recent creation for American Flowers Week transforms greenery and blooms into botanical couture worn by a human model.

The endeavor drew inspiration from her muse, model Lindsey Gerstlauer, a floral designer who frequently freelances for Waverly Flower Co., and the photography venue, Life’s Patina at Willowbrook Farm, the historic farm where Ashley Meier photographed the finished look. “Little Figgie,” the vintage roadster and iconic prop, played an important supporting role.

Past and Present features a lush, two-piece garment—a fitted bodice and a petticoat skirt. The design is based on a layer of greenery to which roses and other flowers are added. With an uneven hemline falling just below the knee, the tea-length gown is admittedly foliage-heavy, which is what Alanna wanted.

“To me, ‘garden-inspired’ also means a healthy proportion of greens, because that’s typically what we see in the garden,” she said, adding that she sourced entirely from her garden and flower fields. Knowing that large quantities of foliage would be required to cover the skirt and top, she trialed 30 different leaf types to determine the best varieties to last out of water for several hours.

“The vast majority did not hold well or retain their shapes,” she noted. “I was open-minded in the sense that I didn’t have to have particularly long stems, but the greenery choices were limited.” She found that the best options were magnolia, pieris, and wisteria foliage, and together, a cascade of these elements provided dimension and detail for the flirty skirt. Alanna wired the leaves to an overskirt made from soft window screening (the type that comes on a roll at the hardware store), which draped over the fabric petticoat.

A proliferation of garden roses, harvested at their peak, frames the neckline, crossing the torso to the hemline in a diagonal arrangement. ‘Desdemona’, ‘Earth Angel’, and ‘Wollerton Old Hall’ roses are accented by creamy white blooms of goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus) and allium flowers.

Life’s Patina at Willowbrook Farm is one of Alanna’s favorite local event venues and Waverly Flower Co. was an invited floral vendor and florist in residence over Mother’s Day weekend. The dreamy landscape, old-world stone barn, garden paths, arbors, and rustic fencing provided authentic character as setting for the photography.

To continue her narrative, Alanna procured the use of a stylish roadster called “Little Figgie.” The car is often rented for weddings and events, appearing at prior Life’s Patina events as well. Manufactured as a retro concept car by Nissan in 1991, the Figaro model is now a favorite of collectors. Alanna considered the cool blue-gray hue a perfect match for her blue-eyed model.

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DESIGN + CONCEPT: Alanna Messner-Scholl, Waverly Flower Co., waverlyflowerco.com, @waverlyflowerco
FLOWER SOURCES: Waverly Flower Co., Schwenksville, Pennsylvania
PHOTOGRAPHER: Ashley Meier, ashleymeierphotography.com, @ashleymeier26
MODEL: Lindsey Gerstlauer, @lindseygerstlauer
VENUE: Life’s Patina at Willowbrook Farm, lifespatina.com, @lifes.patina_willowbrookfarm
MAKEUP: Ashley Novak, Glam on Demand, glamondemand.com, @glamondemand
VINTAGE CAR: Little Figgie, @littlefiggie

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2024 Botanical Couture Look Two: Designing with Dried Flowers

In her new book, “Designing with Dried Flowers” (Clarkson Potter, 2024), farmer florist Hannah Muller of Wreath Room and Full Belly Farm shares unique methods to naturally dry flowers that hold their color and delicacy. Her book teaches readers how to design small arrangements for every day, wreaths for all seasons, and celebration showstoppers that will look gorgeous in the moment and for months to come.

Hannah calls one of her favorite projects in the book “Billy Button Strands,” which elevates the spherical Craspedia globosa, a tender perennial from Australia that produces one-inch-sized “flowers” that resemble tiny gumdrops. This flower offers the ideal jumping-off point for home décor. Yes, these flowers can be used in vase arrangements, but when the stems are removed, they can be threaded onto strands for garlands and strands, she said.

“Their spherical shape and cheerful yellow color make them modern and perfect for small, simple designs.”

In the book, Hannah demonstrates using a needle with clear fishing line to make craspedia strands. For her garment, she opted to use gold bullion wire as “thread.” She explained, “That’s how I got a little bit more shape to the design, because the wire helps to keep the bodice pieces in place.”

Turning festive strands of flower heads into a wearable garment took some creative engineering. Designed, fabricated, and modeled by Hannah, the golden dress takes its inspiration from an extravagant Schiaparelli gown made from strands of 50,000 pearls, which celebrity Kim Kardashian wore to the 2023 Met Gala.

“Instead of dressing up in strands of pearls, I created the floral version of her look with strands of Billy buttons,” Hannah laughed.

Threaded lengths of craspedia drape around Hannah’s neck and shoulders; they encircle her waist and cascade from her hips; and as spirals, they form dramatic bust detailing. Hannah wore a strapless bra and a mini-skirt in natural-muslin fabric as the base layer against her skin.

“I just loved the idea of taking something dried and making it wearable,” she continued. “This flower is so small, you might not consider it a great option for a botanical outfit, but I really love the intricacy of their size in this design.”

A gradation of yellow hues adds interest to Hannah’s garment. Varying shades can occur in craspedia blooms, depending on harvest stage and whether they have begun to dry, she noted, adding that it’s easier to thread a needle when working with fresh product.

Hannah tapped her husband Elliot Schoenig, a botanist who often photographs nature subjects, to capture the finished look on camera. Her styling adds just the right amount of whimsy, with the addition of ranunculus “lashes” on her face, cheeky sunglasses—and an image of her blowing a huge bubble from yellow chewing gum.

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DESIGN + CONCEPT: Hannah Muller, Full Belly Farm, @wreathroom, @farmerhands
PHOTOGRAPHY: Elliot Schoenig
FLOWER SOURCES: Full Belly Farm, @full_belly_farm
MODEL: Hannah Muller
VENUE: Full Belly Farm, Guinda, California

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2024 Botanical Couture Look One: A Poppy State of Mind

The California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), also called golden poppy, has long been depicted by illustrators and artisans who work in pottery, stained glass, surface design, and other media. Poppies often appear in the Art Nouveau style of the early 1900s, entwined with graceful curves and natural forms.

Jenny Diaz was inspired by the work of Art Nouveau painter and illustrator, Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), known for his illustrations of women with flowing hair, diaphanous gowns, and lots of flowers, including poppies. In planning her fourth floral fashion for American Flowers Week, Jenny turned to Mucha’s style, interpreting it for her own.

“His work is whimsical, but feminine and elegant,” Jenny explained. “The vibe I wanted was whimsical, but also playful and ethereal.” You can just imagine her model looking at home in the California of the 1960s—barefoot and carefree.

Jenny is credited with designing many American Flowers Week and Slow Flowers Society projects—including our original AFW logo in 2016 and two popular coloring sheets, including one depicting all 50 state flowers on a map of the U.S., which features the state of California surrounded by poppies, perhaps giving Jenny a Poppy State of Mind for this year’s project.

For the photography location, a meadow near Shaver Lake in the Sierra National Forest, Jenny fashioned a trio of larger-than-life poppy flowers to appear as props. A true maker, she researched how to fabricate giant flowers by watching YouTube tutorials, picking up all the needed supplies to turn PVC pipe, construction paper, and pipe cleaners into imaginative, oversized blooms. The flowers frame model Kara Trukki, as she portrays a turn-of-the-century woman—straight from Mucha’s canvas.

The bodice of a long, flowing dress is covered with the foliage and blooms of amaranth, with shoulder details that include safflower, amaranth, bunny tail grass, and other blooms. The green amaranth foliage gives the bodice a pavé surface that extends to the deep V-neckline and a waistband patterned with safflower (in bloom and bud), dahlia heads, and clusters of statice. To emphasize the drape of the gown’s skirt, Jenny layered a delicate tracing of stems and petals as “botanical embroidery,” letting blooms trail downward from the waistline and creating a meadow across the hemline.

The photography echoes Mucha’s preference for pastoral scenes like this one, with a picnic basket and fruit continuing the narrative. It’s a perfect narrative for celebrating California’s iconic state flower.

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DESIGN + CONCEPT: Jenny M. Diaz, Jenny M. Diaz Design, @jennymdiaz
PHOTOGRAPHY + EDITING: Jenny M. Diaz
FLOWER SOURCES: CamFlor Inc., Watsonville, California, camflor.com | @camflorinc
MODEL: Kara Trukki, @luckytrukk1
VENUE: Shaver Lake, California

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Celebrating American Flowers Week’s 10th Anniversary

American Flowers Week encourages flower farmers, floral designers, flower enthusiasts, and gardeners alike to promote their blooms across social media with the hashtag: #americanflowersweek.

The campaign debuted in 2015 and has continued for a full decade as the original domestic flower promotion holiday.

The relevance and importance of local, seasonal, and sustainably grown flowers continues to influence the professional floral marketplace, as well as passionate consumers. By designating a single week to our promotion, Slow Flowers Society elevates awareness and highlights the many reasons to support local flowers, and those who grow and design with them.

During this week — June 28-July 4 — we will be sharing our beautiful botanical couture collection with you, including details about the designers and floral ingredients included in this creative project. Enjoy locally-grown, American-grown blooms as wearable art!

This year’s American Flowers Week botanical couture collection is uniique to the location and season where it was produced and photographed, with design narratives that elevate and reimagine flowers and foliage as botanical couture.

Read more about Lesley Goren, our American Flowers Week 2024 featured artist (see her illustration above). Download AFW social media resources here.

You’re invited to download and share these beautiful graphic badges for social media. Please right-click to download. Tag the designer, flower farmer and photographer (see credits that follow each item in the collection).

Use @slowflowerssociety and #americanflowersweek tags!

Poppy State of Mind

DESIGN + CONCEPT:
Jenny M. Diaz, Jenny M. Diaz Design, @jennymdiaz
PHOTOGRAPHY + EDITING: Jenny M. Diaz
FLOWER SOURCES:
CamFlor Inc., Watsonville, California, camflor.com | @camflorinc
MODEL: Kara Trukki, @luckytrukk1
VENUE: Shaver Lake, California

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Past and Present

DESIGN + CONCEPT:
Alanna Messner-Scholl, Waverly Flower Co., waverlyflowerco.com, @waverlyflowerco
FLOWER SOURCES: Waverly Flower Co., Schwenksville, Pennsylvania
PHOTOGRAPHER: Ashley Meier, ashleymeierphotography.com, @ashleymeier26
MODEL: Lindsey Gerstlauer, @lindseygerstlauer
VENUE: Life’s Patina at Willowbrook Farm, lifespatina.com, @lifes.patina_willowbrookfarm
MAKEUP: Ashley Novak, Glam on Demand, glamondemand.com, @glamondemand
VINTAGE CAR: Little Figgie, @littlefiggie

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Strands of Gold

DESIGN + CONCEPT:
Hannah Muller, Full Belly Farm, @wreathroom, @farmerhands
PHOTOGRAPHY: Elliot Schoenig
FLOWER SOURCES:
Full Belly Farm, @full_belly_farm
MODEL: Hannah Muller
VENUE: Full Belly Farm, Guinda, California

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Unwritten

DESIGN + CONCEPT: Niesha Blancas, Fetching Social, @fetchingsocial
DESIGN ASSISTANT: Ana Quinata
FLORAL SOURCE: CamFlor Inc., Watsonville, California, camflor.com | @camflorinc
MODELS: Niesha Blancas, Rami Blancas
PHOTOGRAPHY + EDITING: Ana Quinata + Niesha Blancas

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Masquerade

DESIGN + CONCEPT: Linda Spradlin, In the Garden Flower Farm, @inthegardenflowerfarm
DESIGN ASSISTANT: Nan Matteson, Queen City Flower Farm, @queencityflowerfarm
FLORAL CONTRIBUTIONS: In The Garden Flower Farm, Queen City Flower Farm, City Farm Studio,            CCS Blooms, The Flower Lady OTR, Maygical Garden
CamFlor Inc., Watsonville, California, camflor.com | @camflorinc
MODEL: Ericka Leighton-Spradlin
PHOTOGRAPHY: Zachary Spradlin
VENUE: In The Garden Flower Farm, Seven Mile, Ohio

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We’re so excited to share this just-released story from CA Grown, the agricultural marketing and branding agency that promotes California’s crops — including cut flowers! It tells the story of Jenny M. Diaz, our Slow Flowers Society graphic designer, who also provides design services to CA Grown.

Jenny has designed four botanical couture looks for American Flowers Week – she’s a multi-media artist who fell in love with our campaign years ago and who has contributed some incredibly beautiful floral fashions over the years. This year, her friends at CA Grown asked to join in the fun. In addition to their story, the agency will also share social media posts during American Flowers Week (June 28-July 1). You can follow CA Grown here.

The 2024 American Flowers Week artwork was created exclusively for Slow Flowers Society by Lesley Goren, an illustrator and designer whose work focuses on the natural environment.

Lesley Goren is interested in “place,” be it the woods, the city, or somewhere in between. Her work depicts the beauty of California’s natural environments, and uses informational illustrations to explain plant life and fire ecology. She loves using images and text to make ideas more accessible, while her contemporary and lively drawings are scientifically accurate.

We first connected with Lesley in 2021 after following her on social media and falling in love with her focus on native plants, wildlife, and ecology. It’s taken a few years to pull things off, but we’re thrilled that Lesley was available to create our 2024 original American Flowers Week illustration.

Lesley has shown and sold her work in galleries, boutiques, and park visitor centers throughout California and beyond. She creates custom illustrations for clients, especially in the environmental-based nonprofit sector. She also creates commissioned art for clients and collectors. Lesley resides in Ventura County, California.

We love how Lesley thoughtfully research native flowering annuals and perennials “across America,” which supports one of our important insights for 2024. 

Recently, our founder Debra Prinzing connected with Lesley to discuss her story and her relationship with flowers and nature.

AFW: Lesley, can you describe how your studio started focusing on art inspired by nature?
LG: I found my niche working with native plants, but I was also doing logo design, surface design, and illustrations. I was doing so many different things, but over the past year, I have started saying “no” to many. It was a little scary, but it has been really good to do it. In the end, I feel that it’s better to be good and true at who and what you are.

AFW: What got you started down this path?
LG: I’ve always had art-related jobs, but I was usually someone’s assistant – architectural restoration, decorative painting, digital arts. After I became a mom, the idea was that I would go back to work when my children were both in school. I assumed I would find something similar to my past jobs, but I really wanted to start my own studio. My life was about the natural world, the environment, native plants, gardening, being out on the trails, so I decided to align my personal and ideological selves with my professional self – and it just clicked in a way that my work never had before.

AFW: What were some of your first projects?
LG: It started very small. I was printing my own cards and it got to the point where I’d be up at three in the morning trying to keep up with orders. I took lots of baby steps, like having the cards professional printed. Then people started hiring me for client projects. That pace has continued for the past five years.

AFW: Can you point to a specific project that shifted your focus to native plants?
LG: Yes, the California Native Plant Society contacted me two or three years ago. They needed a logo for their “Bloom California” campaign, which was aimed at getting more growers and nurseries in California to grow native plants.

AFW: How do you approach your client commissions?
LG: Generally, unless a client has something very specific, the easiest way for me to start is to select the color palette. Once I have that, I’ll pick the plant species based on those colors. For example, right now, I’m working on something that includes blue, purple, orange, and creamy white. The design includes milkweed, poppies, goldfields, lupins, and baby blue eyes. I’ll then block out a composition based on those colors and research the flowers so I can make sure they’re scientifically accurate, even through the illustration is going to be stylized.
Working with a mood board with reference images and colors, I’ll move on to the line drawings. From there, I’ll send a loose sketch and color palette to the client. Once we have those elements figured out, I start refining the drawing and basically, I “digitally paint” it.

AFW: When you say “sketch,” are you still using a pen or pencil, or can you do that digitally?
LG: I use Procreate, which is an illustration app on the iPad, and draw with an Apple pencil. Of course, it doesn’t feel like paper, because it’s a glass surface, but besides that, it’s very similar to drawing on paper. It’s just a faster process. If a client asks me to move three flowers to the bottom of the illustration, it’s literally a two-second change. For a hand-drawing, that would be a lot more work.

AFW: Do you miss hand-drawing?
LG: It’s super important to continue doing it – even if not for a client project. Hand-drawing keeps your skills sharp and fresh as an artist, so it will always be part of my practice, even if not for a specific design.

AFW: If you’re out on a hike, are you mainly using the camera on your phone to snap images of real wildflowers or do you take a little sketch pad with you?
LG: I draw the plants. I love drawing from nature even if it’s something no one else ever sees. It’s such a meditative process that teaches you a lot more about plants. There’s only so much you can see from a photo, but when you can get around a plant and see it from all angles, even smell its scent, you just have a different tactile experience with it.

AFW: You talk like a botanist! Have you researched and studied the plants you illustrate?
LG: Yes, I’m reading a lot and trying to go to in-person events that are led by botanists

AFW: Do you consider yourself a botanical illustrator?
LG: It’s a little different. There are so many people who draw similar plants that I draw, but they tend to have more of a traditional watercolor style, which is so beautiful. But I am setting out to do something a lot more design-forward and contemporary. It would be meaningless if I didn’t have the science behind it, though.

AFW: Yes, your work feels very contemporary, but retro at the same time.
LG: Yes, I’m constantly looking at inspiration from the turn of the last century to the 1970s and 1980s. I love looking at old World War II posters and victory garden era images from the 1940s. I take different color palettes and bring them more into the contemporary environment.

AFW: Other than your American Flowers Week illustration, can you share about some of your recent or current projects?
LG: Right now I’m working on an illustration for Los Angeles Times Plants’ digital feed. The project is about how “all blooms are super.” Another project is with a landscape architecture firm.

AFW: We’re excited to see those pieces! Let’s talk about your wallpaper designs, too!
LG: I’ve created wallpaper for the gallery space at Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants. It coordinated with my display of small digital paintings. Also, I recently designed wallpaper for an architect that was installed in a beautiful Craftsman home.

AFW: What motivates you as an artist, Lesley?
LG: I’m sometimes asked, “What can you possibly do with the plants you’re drawing?” And I think my objective is just that you can’t have a connection to something if you don’t know it. Maybe someone will send one of my cards to a friend and the friend thinks it’s a cute drawing. But then, they turn it around and read the plant name, maybe even the Latin name. And the next time they’re out on the trail, they see the plant and recognize it.
Whether it’s really small-scale or more obvious, my mission is helping other people with their mission.

AFW: Tell us about your own garden!
LG: When we moved here, the previous owner had made this unbelievable garden that I could tell was a passion project with about 40 roses. But as I’ve learned about gardening, over time, I started replacing those plants that were high-water-use with drought-tolerant plants. With the help of Nicole Calhoun, of Artemisia Nursery in Los Angeles, we’ve converted the front of our house to native plants. And all these little baby natives now are taking off!

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Click below for the full list of native plants featured in Lesley’s artwork.