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Elizabeth Hemphill owner of floral design studio, Rose & Thistle, on North Ashland Avenue. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
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Elizabeth Hemphill owner of floral design studio, Rose & Thistle, on North Ashland Avenue. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
After working in the floral industry in California for nearly two decades, floral designer Elizabeth Hemphill moved to Central Kentucky in 2016, opening her first brick-and-mortar floral design studio, Rose & Thistle, that summer. Specializing in weddings and high-end events, Hemphill draws from European training and an aesthetic developed on the West Coast to create lush and luxurious floral designs. On the following pages, she shows that creating your own stunning holiday centerpiece is easier than you may think – with a few professional pointers and locally sourced materials, you will be on your way to welcoming guests during the festive season with a gorgeous arrangement of flowers on your dining table.
Photo by Emily Giancarlo
Tips on sourcing winter materials:
For fresh flowers, grocery stores and local floral shops both tend to have a nice selection of blooms. If you’re looking for orchids or amaryllis, you can always buy them blooming in a pot and cut the stems to use in your arrangements. Nurseries have a variety of holiday greenery this time of year, and don’t forget to look in your own gardens and backyard for interesting textural materials. The produce department in your favorite market is a wonderful place to look, as well – from pears to pomegranates, festive fruits can double as beautiful seasonal accents for your centerpiece.
1) Select a container. Choose a clear one if you want to see the stems or an opaque one if you’d rather not. The size of the container determines the scale of your arrangement, so for centerpieces it’s best to stick with low urns, compotes or bowls that are around eight to 10 inches in diameter and no taller than eight inches.
2) To prepare the container, first make sure that it’s as clean as your dishes! Bacteria left behind will quickly infect your fresh materials and cause premature decay. Fill it with a solution of water and flower food, which you can find at the grocery store floral department in small packets. Follow the instructions on the packet to keep the recommended proportion of food and water – the wrong proportion will either render the food ineffective, or worse, shock your flowers. Decide on which mechanic you’d like to use to keep the stems in place while designing. While floral foam is easy to use and widely available, there are other options that allow your stems to drink water and are more environmentally friendly. I use a plastic pillow floral cage, designed by Holly Heider Chapple, or you can fashion a cage out of chicken wire (both pictured at right). Secure your mechanic to the top of your container with waterproof floral tape so that it sticks up above the edge half an inch to an inch.
After determining the scale of your display add a base of seasonal greenery, which can be sourced from local nurseries or even from your own backyard. In this display, Hemphill uses magnolia, pine, cypress and pine. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
3) Prepare your stems. This recipe calls for about nine to 12 stems of mixed greenery (I used Magnolia, Juniper, Cypress, and Pine) and 12 to 18 stems of varied flowers (here, I used peonies, garden roses, tulips, astrantia, amaryllis, eucalyptus pods and astilbe). Choose a color scheme to help guide your choices, taking into consideration the linens that will be nearby, the color of the room and the holiday you’re celebrating. Equally appropriate for Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s or any winter celebration, the arrangement featured here is designed in a crisp winter color palette of white and emerald green, with a gold container to complement the forest green velvet linen. Lay your stems out on your work table and remove any foliage that will be below the water line.
4) Arrange your stems. Starting with your greenery, establish the overall dimensions of your centerpiece. The proportions that designers use are 1 ½ or 1 : 1½. That means that the height of the materials above the top of the container should be either half the height of the container itself, or 1 1/2 times the height to look balanced. For a dining table, I recommend keeping it low so that guests can still see each other over the centerpiece; the width, however, can be quite grand. Following the same rules of proportion, the length of the stems beyond the sides of the container should be either half the width of the container itself or 1 ½ the width. For example, with an eight-inch-wide compote, the larger width would be 32 inches (12 inches on each side of the container plus the 8-inch container width). To create an elliptical shape for a rectangular dining table, use the larger proportion on two sides and the smaller proportion on the other two sides. Once you’ve added the base greenery and established the scale of the display, arrange your flowers, starting with the largest blooms. Cut the stems to the appropriate length, holding them up to the arrangement where you want them to see how much of the stem you need to remove. Nestle the biggest flowers close to the center and create depth by layering your flowers – use the smaller, more ethereal-looking blooms toward the outer edges of your greenery and above your larger blooms. Accent your centerpiece with textural items like pine cones or fruit. To insert pine cones, wrap floral wire around the base of the cone, leaving a tail you can use to anchor it between flowers. For fruit, insert floral stakes in the base of the fruit and place it toward the center of the arrangement.
5) Maintain your arrangement. It should last almost a week if you keep the water topped up and keep it away from direct heat sources. As flowers fade, replace them – the greenery will last a long time.
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Photo by Emily Giancarlo
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Photo by Emily Giancarlo
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Photo by Emily Giancarlo
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Rose & Thistle Floral Design Workshop at the 2018 Holly Day Market
Friday, Nov. 30 at 1 p.m. // Lexington Convention Center, 430 W. Vine St.
The Lexington Junior League’s Holly Day Market will this year feature a floral design workshop led by Elizabeth Hemphill of Rose & Thistle. Workshop attendees will have the opportunity to learn how to create their own winter floral centerpiece, which they can then take home. Tickets are available at www.lexjrleague.com, and include admission to the market, all materials and instruction.
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Floral designer Elizabeth Hemphill moved to Central Kentucky in 2016, opening her first brick-and-mortar floral design studio, Rose & Thistle, that summer. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
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Floral designer Elizabeth Hemphill moved to Central Kentucky in 2016, opening her first brick-and-mortar floral design studio, Rose & Thistle, that summer. Photo by Emily Giancarlo