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

A joyful day in the garden turns a crop of perennials into a charming garment

Photography by Alex Dickey

Andee Zeigler owns Three Sepals, a Portland, Oregon-based studio for ceramics, floral art, and bouquets. She grows flowers to share with neighbors, occasionally selling buckets of blooms to DIY designers. She embellishes her pottery using creamy, earthy, and aqua blue glazes in distinctive scallop patterns. That detail appears in Zeigler’s most recent botanical creation, a ruffled skirt with sections of feverfew placed in scallop patterns, and curved sword fern scallops across the hemline. She fashioned the skirt, purely for the joy of it, collaborating with her husband Alex Dickey to photograph the look one recent summer’s day.

“I love making botanical couture,” Zeigler proclaimed. With a “unicorn” property equivalent to four city lots that add up to just under one-half-acre, there is plenty of soil for the Three Sepals garden. Each year at the end of the season, she harvests everything still in bloom to create wearable looks for herself, her family, and her friends. “I spend all year growing this garden and there’s an abundance of everything here. Why not be ‘in the garden, in the garden’!”

People ask, ‘What do you do with it?’ when they see what I have created. Some might ask, ‘Is this a waste of time?’; ‘Is there a point to it?’; or ‘Are you wasting resources?’” For Zeigler, the answer to such questions is that art is an essential expression of who she is. “I make a lot of art and I have never quite wrapped my head around melding my art with the world of capitalism. I grow flowers mostly to give to my community. We have a Free Library and it is like a little house with two sections. On one side are books and the other side is full of pottery and flowers. From the beginning of July until our first freeze, every Saturday, I put out free flowers for our neighbors. When I have extra pottery, or even rejects, or when my studio feels overwhelmed, I add those.”

Giving away bouquets of flowers feels right, she added. “It doesn’t even look like I picked a single stem!” Making floral fashions also feels right. When a small crop of feverfew – three varieties, including ‘Magic Lime’, ‘Virgo’, and ‘Magic Single’) — expanded into a four-foot-square patch, the proliferation inspired Zeigler to make something with all those fluffy stems. She harvested the feverfew, filling three large buckets, and set up production in her pottery studio. A dress form made it easy to attach dozens of feverfew bundles to a chicken wire skirt, their downward-facing heads forming those botanical scallops. Thicker wire runs vertically through the mesh prevent the weight of the flowers from collapsing the flared skirt form.

Zeigler attached the curved sword fern shapes as the final trimming. It’s a detail she has used in the past, thanks to all of the fern plants inherited from her garden’s prior owner. An opening in the back of the skirt allowed Zeigler to step into it; small twists of wire hold it closed. Underneath, her leggings kept the mesh from scratching her skin. A dark green top complements the verdant look. Earlier this season, Zeigler planted intentionally to ensure she has plenty of dahlias, annuals, and perennials to harvest for multiple floral garments. “I’m growing for our ‘Fall Ball’ in September. There will be 10 of us and I’m plotting to make some sort of floral garment for every guest to wear when they arrive. We’ll be in our backyard with everyone wearing their own botanical couture style.”

It’s fun to dress up in your garden’s bounty, she said. “I just think there are too many people hung up on ‘What am I making this for?’ and ‘Do I need to be marketing this to someone?’ instead of doing it for themselves.” The gardener-maker has an inspiring philosophy: “Dress Like Your Garden,” and it’s one all flower lovers should embrace.

DETAILS:
Three Sepals, threesepals.com
@three_sepals