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Beautifying the Home
with Dried and Permanent Botanticals |
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Written by Karen Hall
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With Dried and Permanent Botanicals
Home is important to many people, and because of this
they want it to look nice and are willing to spend the time and the
money on such things as dried and permanent botanicals in order to make
it their castle, says Marie Robbins from Smith/McKay Florist in
Hamilton, Ont.
“I think that’s the way people are thinking these days,” she adds. “And maybe that goes hand-in-hand with more people working out of their homes. Now having said that, we are also much more citizens of the globe. People are traveling and they are seeing the oriental flowers, the poppies, and the things that we aren’t used to seeing...and they want to replicate them.”
According to Steve Baumgartner, vice-president, sales at Winward Silks in Mississauga, Ont., people are willing to spend a bit more on permanent botanicals if the value proposition is there.
“Because what’s happening is what we call a race to the bottom,” he says.
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Photos courtesy of Vyn Flowers
Seasonal Dried Wreaths:
Dried floral wreaths are losing their outdated reputation as the home décor item of the 70’s. New styles, designs, and colours are now available to offer customers a modern version of this retro favourite.
Vyn Flowers Inc. in Ancaster, Ont. offers a selection of trendy decorative wreaths for every season. This 22" natural branch wreath is ideal for the long winter months (1), which can easily be replaced with this 22" dried floral wreath (2), which is a great alternative to fresh evergreen wreaths. Although spring isn’t always associated with dried flowers, Vyn Flowers designs several spring wreaths including this 22" natural dried flax wreath (3) to help extend the dried flowers season. This 22" dried floral wreath filled with rich autumn colours is perfect to be displayed during the late summer and fall. (4)
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“The big mass merchants are putting price point on downward pressure for price, price, price. And we’re feeling with our specialty retailers that they can get a little bit more if the value is there. They say, ‘I’d rather spend $5 on this flower vs. $1 where the colour is loud...and there’s an extra bit of detail.’”
When it comes to the design styles, Baumgartner says what’s popular today is grouping one flower as opposed to a mixed bunch of flowers.
“And that’s really been fostered by people at HGTV (Home and Garden Television) and the Martha Stewarts of the world,” he says. “All the decorating shows are promoting six gerberas or six hydrangeas in a vase for example – one colour, one grouping. And that’s also crossing over into what we call tabletop home entertaining.” It’s not a new trend, Baumgartner says, but Winward Silks has reacted to it with its Chelsea Petites line.
“Traditionally the artificials are in a longer stem format which has been designed for flower shops, designers, and crafters who take it, cut it, arrange it, and do the traditional flower design,” he says. “But this line is specifically designed with a shorter length of stem so this allows the customer to just put the flowers in a vase on a table.” Kremena Petrova, designer and owner of Exquisite Blooms in Ottawa, Ont., says the simpler the design, the better.
“That’s the look that’s really in style right now,” she says. “And I find people buy a lot of stems so they can change them more often, arrange them themselves, and have a clean and sleek look rather than too many flowers arranged together.”
Reine Auday, owner and president of Holland Dried Flowers in Mississauga and North York, Ont., agrees and adds people want a very clean, simple, uncomplicated look. “It goes with the home décor and the vases that are out there from Thailand and the Philippines,” she says. “They’re all very nice and clean looking so you just need some sticks to put inside the vase for example. We’re really seeing more kind of clean looking dried flowers – big leaves and big sticks.”
Another trend Auday is seeing is mixing dried and permanent botanicals together. “The accents that are the dried flowers...look beautiful with silk,” she says. Baumgartner also finds grasses are very popular.
“It’s a simple look where you’ve just got grass in a container,” he says. “There are different colours and textures...and we have variations of thin grass and wide grass. Also within this trend...plastic is back again on certain finishes. So the grasses have a glossy high-finished look.”
According to Robbins, greens are now used to augment flower arrangements whereas they used to be the background and something you had to use to cover your mechanics.
“I would say there’s a much more dramatic use of greens today,” she says. “It’s definitely a part of the style and a part of the arrangement. Greens make a statement, give a flow, give size, and give a feeling.”
What else is popular?
“I would definitely say the gerbera is the hot flower right now,” Baumgartner says. “Alongside that the hydrangea and the peony are strong ones. And the other area that’s hot is in the orchids.”
Auday finds bamboo and curly willow are still in demand.
“And I’ve got other products that are called buri – they’re sticks that come from the Philippines,” she says. “And we’ve got tinting with beads in them. They’re very thin long sticks and there are beads throughout them.” When it comes to popular colours, Auday says dried flowers, like any home décor, are linked very closely to what’s happening in the furniture world. “So the colours are obvious – chocolate browns, bleached colours like off-white, beige, and black,” she says. “They’re all the design colours that are in right now for furniture.”
Baumgartner sees a trend to natural colours, and Robbins finds lime green, terracotta, hot pink, bright orange, orangey-red, and the purple tones are very popular. Although Petrova says many people are buying a lot of whites and neutral colours, if something else catches a customer’s eye, they will buy it.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s the colour palette that’s in trend,” she says. “Everybody has a different taste, and when people buy permanent arrangements they try to match them with their own décor so they can enjoy them for a longer time. So I don’t think the trends change everybody’s style.”
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