California GArden Archives

FROM THE ARCHIVES

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION

These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.

Reprinted From: May/June 2011, Volume 102 No. 3

In 1968, public safety concerns closed Balboa Park’s crumbling Food and Beverage Building, a survivor of the 1915 Exposition. When the replacement structure opened with the new name, Casa del Prado, the San Diego Floral Association and San Diego Botanical Garden Foundation celebrated a return to their Balboa Park headquarters with plant and floral exhibits. Floral designers exhibited some radical departures from tradition, according to this review. –Nancy Carol Carter

March-April 1972

Flower Arrangement is a Changing Art

By Dorothy Marx

[The opening of Casa del Prado on November 14, 1971, brought out the best horticultural displays each plant society could offer anmany flower arrangements by San Diego artists whose medium is plant material.

The unusual variation in arrangement styles and materials shows that this art is changing as rapidly as other phases of life today. Here, too, it is popular to scorn the traditional. The arranger “does her own thing.”

Little conscious effort is made to obey the principles of design, and those who discuss these guides seem dated. But no matter how unfettered the arranger, how unusual her combinations of material, or how ‘far out” her container, the real artist will create a balanced arrangement which is well-propositioned and has satisfying accents and a feeling of movement (rhythm) . . . simply because she herself will not like a composition of 30 years ago.

Today we use color, texture, and space boldly. Contrasts are sharper. We use fewer flowers, which requires more skill, but we make larger and much, much taller arrangements. Distinction and originality, fine use of space created by skillful manipulation of material, and third-dimension are qualities more and more highly prized.

It is hard to believe that we were once taught not to combine chrysanthemums, associated with fall, with spring plant material or to combine native materials with exotics. . . . Today there are no “holds barred”.

. . . Those of us who love the art of creating do not think of it as therapy, but we would admit there is excitement in finding something new and using it well, a tonic which can keep us young and happy. Probably there is no more pleasant way to achieve the creativity which is good for us and to escape from today’s pressures than to take up flower arrangement as a hobby.

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION and © Mary James.
These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.