Flower March/April 2022

“My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”– Marcel Proust THINGS CHANGE. Our passions and pursuits evolve. Our tastes shift with experience and exposure. As I review our editorial content, I’m struck once again by how the pandemic has focused our gaze more and more on home (always with a botanical accent, of course, but home nonetheless). We’ve always loved our homes and taken time to fashion them to our liking. But spending such a vast swath of time in them over the past two years has inspired us, as a culture, to reimagine, redo, and remodel—or maybe just change a paint color. And we’ve realized again, or maybe for the first time, the power of personal expression in our environments—the power to create a…

READING LIST Essential Reads Beatrix Farrand: Garden Artist, Landscape Architect by Judith B. Tankard (Monacelli, March 2022), $60 As the only female founder of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Beatrix Farrand is remembered as one of the most significant landscape architects of the early 20th century. Throughout her career, she created grand gardens for some of the country’s most prominent families, including the Rockefellers, the Harknesses, and the Blisses. Farrand may be best known for her design of the landscape at Dumbarton Oaks, a once-private residence that now serves as a research center for Harvard University surrounded by a naturalistic park. To celebrate Farrand’s influence on succeeding generations of women in the field, landscape historian Judith B. Tankard highlights the designer’s finest works, many of which are currently being…

Garden • Travel • Entertain • Decorate: Color & Flowers Envision a field of Shirley poppies stretching into the distance, creating a patchwork of crinkled, tissue-thin petals swaying on slender stalks. Now, visualize the scene at dawn when all the blooms—each one unique—have been open for hours, preoccupying every type of pollinator imaginable. Place this picture in Upstate New York, about a two-hour drive from New York City, and then imagine waking up to that field of pulsating poppies every late-spring morning for the rest of your life. Now you know why Jenny Elliott grows poppies. Poppies have always fascinated Jenny, even as a child growing up in California. But she also loved music, and for awhile, that seemed to be her career path. She was playing classical guitar and…

Jenny Elliott could write a book about the challenges of working with poppies as cut flowers. And she has plenty of experience, as she grows 2,400 Shirley poppies and 2,000 Icelandic poppies annually. Seedlings are started as plugs in greenhouse humidity chambers before transplanting the Shirley crop outdoors. That’s the relatively simple part. It’s the handling of the cut flowers that involves a little more skill. Jenny cuts poppies in the evening when they are on the verge of popping, rather than in the early morning when the flowers have already been open for hours. Then she sears the stems immediately before plunging them into a bucket of water. With the best of care, a cut Shirley poppy can remain prime for three to five days. Arranging poppies comes easier.…

FARAWAY NANTUCKET, NANTUCKET, MASSACHUSETTS Recently opened in summer 2021, the Faraway Nantucket adds a fresh, trendy mix of luxe accommodations to the iconic island. The boutique hotel, nestled within four renovated houses, feels like a self-contained village on historic Centre Street in the heart of town. Rooms cluster around a lush courtyard, the central meeting place for guests to enjoy cocktails and conversation. Inside, Sister Ship features a cheerful, brassclad bar, as well as an inviting dining room that serves local fare. The décor is studded with treasures inspired by the seafaring life of Susan R. Bloomfield, captain of an all-female crew that sailed across the oceans in the 1800s. Sixty-two rooms and suites designed in inviting color schemes offer crisp, contemporary accommodations. One of the buildings, Roberts House, has…

In today’s world, everyone is used to bringing in a caterer when they entertain, but a waiter in a white jacket would look ridiculous here,” says Rick Davis of the parties and dinners he and partner Christopher Vazquez host in their Maryland farmhouse. As owners of Amaryllis Floral and Event Designs in Washington, D.C., the couple is wellversed in the language of elaborate, white-tablecloth events, but at home, they favor casual living, timeworn appointments, and old-school traditions. “It’s all about classic comforts,” says Rick of the colonial-inspired home he and Christopher built together almost 20 years ago. So when they opened their door to friends for an Easter lunch last spring, the designers eschewed the everyday tools of their trade and instead focused on sentimental notions that reminded them of…