housemartin

growing

Love these hanging vertical gardens by French botanist Patrick Blanc. They are so textural and sculptural with waves of different varieties of plants. Oh so lovely.

(posted origianlly on bandhini homewear design)

illuminating

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday folks - I've had the flu for the last week and am finally crawling out into the world. Was poking around blogland and found these wonderful assemblage lighting designs by British designer James Plumb (James Russell and Hannah Plumb). So clever and you know I always love a great re-use design! Have a great weekend everyone!

 

green tips - dig it!

OK - I am a little late on this - meant to post this  morning. I wanted to reiterate this info in case some of you may have not read it a few years ago here. These 3 Earth Day tips go out to all florists and floral enthusiasts. 

1. Compost your greens - You recycle glass and plastic bottles right? When you prepare flowers for use in a bouquet there is a lot of waste. Stem length and leaves need to be removed. In addition, there is just a natural overstock of flowers in a shop that doesn't get sold. MANY florists just toss this in the trash. Instead, COMPOST your clippings. We have been mulching our greens at ink & peat since the day we opened. I hope you will all consider this if you are not already. It is very easy - we just keep separate buckets under our work table, making sure not to let rubber bands and staples get into the pile. We bring the clippings to a central green bin daily that is provided in our trash room - I negotiated for this before lease signing. Many florists that are in a building with restaurants may want to research this as many restaurants have started food compost programs. This costs only $25 a month and is so worth the cost. It is helping to save the environment by reusing organic material. If there is no common space for recycling, consider keeping a bin in your back room and placing it out weekly for pick-up. Contact your city's recycling or lawn compost program.

2. Ditch the foam - Many florists use green floral foam for their arranging. It provides a nice full arrangement with less flowers and a support system. What many people don't know is that floral foam is not biodegradable. Also the main binding agent is formaldehyde which is a known carcinogen. So that can get on your hands and be dangerous for your heath as well as become part of the landfill where those ingredients can seep into ground water. Try NOTusing foam for 1 week - it's worth it and you will want to switch permanently.

3. Out of the box - Re-use your delivery boxes from regular weekly clients. Also flowers get boxes in giant cardboard boxes to bring them back to the shop. Bring your own back to the wholesale market instead. We used the same 5 boxes for flower pickup at the wholesale market for 1 year.

Hope this helps! I would love to know any other green tips you guys have on this topic - send us a comment!

scrap

Love these rugs made of carpet scraps left during the manufacturing process - made by Union Eighteen (link via Style Saves the World).

idea journal

OK - we talk alot about "this and that" designer - lots of fabulous high-end design...but every once in a while you gotta love things like this. A little notebook I picked up at Target last weekend after looking for Jovovich-Hawk printed tops. This little cutie has 70% recycled paper and has such a great pattern. But don't worry - I go through design notebooks so fast - I will surely have another great designer to show you soon!

greener greens

Today is Blog Action Day and bloggers all over the world will be focusing on the environment. Since I talk about flowers and weddings a lot, I wanted to bring up a topic that is simple to do yet important. One way to make your wedding (or any floral order for that matter) greener is by asking your florist if they mulch their greens. The process of floral design does create organic waste - stems are often too long for our desired uses and foliage below the water line creates bacteria and needs to be removed. So florists will cut away unnecessary plant material and some flowers just die in the process as well. Many florists will throw those leaves, flowers, and stems in the garbage.

At ink & peat, I mulch all of my greens. Since I am working from my home studio, I use regular bins as part of the residential recycling program. That means any unused greenery goes into the organic waste bin NOT the garbage. Although this may seem like a simple thing that everyone does, this simply is not the case.

Once I open the shop, I will have commercial bins as part of a program called "Portland Composts - businesses dig it!"

This is an issue that does not ever get talked about. In the world of design blogs, we are all focused on great green products or using recycled materials but this is something simple we can all get involved with.

So next time you are planning any floral event, ask your florist - do you mulch your greens?