Slow Flowers Podcast

Episode 440: On the elements of floral style, with floral artist, teacher and author Christin Geall of Cultivated

02.12.2020 - By Debra PrinzingPlay

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The author shows off her new book (left) and a Baroque-styled arrangement from Cultivated

On Vancouver Island, along the western edge of Canada, gardener, designer, writer and teacher Christin Geall grows flowers and shares her designs through Cultivated by Christin, a creative studio launched in 2015.Christin's eclectic background includes pursuits that are equal parts physical and intellectual. She apprenticed on a Martha's Vineyard herb farm, interned at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and homesteaded on a remote island in British Columbia. Academic studies in ethnobotany, environmental science and a creative writing MFA led to editorships, university-level teaching and a regular gardening column for local newspapers.

Today, Christin's artistic focus centers around her urban flower farm-design studio in USDA Zone 8, the tiny hub of a multifaceted floral business.

A few years ago, I interviewed Christin for an August 2018 Florists' Review profile, which we titled "Creative Fulfillment -- Growing a floral-centric life on your own terms." I loved that chance to speak with Christin about her art, writing, floristry and teaching.

Click here to read the article "Creative Fulfillment."

An arrangement to illustrate the concept of "torque."

Many of you may already be following @CultivatedbyChristin on Instagram, where she posts luscious, seasonal arrangements that originate in her Vancouver Island garden, located just 10 minutes from downtown Victoria, the provincial capital. There, Christin maintains six 32-foot-long beds where she rotates flowers using West coast-style succession planting. As well, there are perennial borders, and a wild meadow in the front, which means pretty much all of the grass is gone, she says. Meals and workshops take place beneath a 32-foot-long arbor and there is a very useful greenhouse. "It leads to a wild style, but I'm truly trying to maximize production on a small piece of land," Christin told me.

Gesture, line, mass - all expressed in Christin's arrangement (left).

Teaching writing concides with Christin's writing of essays and garden columns. Growing unique and uncommon flowers supports floral design and the photography of those arrangements. And naturally, teaching floral workshops brings it all together for this gifted creative. And it only makes sense that all of these passions found their way into a book called Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style, to be published this spring by Princeton Architectural Press.

A peek inside Cultivated . . . this from the study of tints, tones and shades.

Cultivated elevates floral design to

fine art in this richly informative work on the principles of floral style.

Christin emboldens designers, gardeners, and floral entrepreneurs to think

differently and deeply about their work with flowers as she draws upon the fine

arts and historical sources - whether exploring Baroque music, the paintings of

the Impressionists, or the work of floral innovators like Gertrude Jekyll and

Constance Spry.

Seeing color

Thanks so much for joining me today. What an inspiring conversation. If you're interested in meeting and hearing Christin speak in person, you can find her upcoming book tour schedule here.

Coming right up, as we discussed, Christin will appear February 26th & 27th at the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival in Seattle. She will be designing on the 26th on the DIY stage. On the 27th, she’ll be joining Jennifer Jewell, Lorene Edwards Forkner and me for a discussion entitled "Women at Work: Making a Living While Following Your Plant Passion,

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