"I visit Holland every year with great pleasure, but my trip this year as part of Flower Council's 'Holland Trip' was truly remarkable. Although the 13 other designers and event planners on the trip are my direct competitors in the States, in Holland, we were all out of our element and really bonded as colleagues, sharing ideas and being inspired by each other and the wonderful flowers we saw. Our visits to the awe-inspiring Aalsmeer Flower auction, and to Horti Fair, where the array of flowers on display was amazing, simply reaffirmed what I already knew: Dutch flowers and the Dutch flower industry are second to none!"
 
Dutch inspiration
"What particularly inspired me on this trip to Holland were the colors. This especially struck me while visiting some fantastic flower shops in Amsterdam. The shops' interiors were painted all black or all white, and these single color interiors made the flowers the focal color, the people in the shop the color…. Having a neutral palette as the background in your shop works wonderfully well, because then the flowers and plants stand out so much more and really heighten your senses!" 

In Dubai
"I was recently invited to Dubai to help re-inspire the Hyatt hotel's floral design team. Although I was there to provide inspiration, I ended up being inspired myself, because I had to design in styles I'm normally not into: big, lush, voluminous arrangements in a monotone palette. But it was great. Instead of vases, we used all different kinds of interesting elements. We built a huge, 8-foot tall structure out of bleached grape wood, which we filled with Dutch gloriosa lilies. It was completely over the top, lush, but also modern. From a distance, you saw all these different forms and colors, but as you moved closer, it became something else, drawing you in. I had the flowers for my presentation designs all brought in from Holland.”   

Wood & feathers
"I love designing with odd extras, like cow horns and feathers. I'll very happily deconstruct a rose, putting the feathers between the pedals and using the different textures. I especially like using wood. Driftwood, birch wood…. Wood is so natural and organic. One of my recent designs featured a Manzanita tree, which is a huge, 10-foot tall desert tree. I placed the tree at the center of a table and adorned with a single line of white dendrobium orchids. It was very lush and modern, yet the tree's thick base seemed to grow into the table. The hard wood contrasting with the soft delicate flowers was spectacular." 

Deconstructed design
"I really like messy, deconstructed flower arrangements. All one color, or one flower. I love to do things like leaving the thorns on the roses, so people will think, 'Gosh, someone had to design with all those thorns. Wow!' I love the avante garde aspects and approachability of designs, the designs that make people stand around it and wonder how it was made, like they did in Dubai. As we were creating these huge floral designs in the lobbies, the hotel guests were enamored, asking us questions, like 'How did you get the flowers into that drift wood container?' " 

Hocus Pocus
"One of my favorite Dutch flowers at the moment is Hocus Pocus Anthurium. For an arrangement I created for an 800-person event, I took these Anthurium, left some intact and ripped all the petals off the remaining, using only the middle stamen. Then I combined it all together, using a shallow square container, designing the stems in a deconstructed, messy way. The mechanics of the design were hidden by floating water plants. It was a beautiful, deconstructed mess, using just the brown Anthurium petals and stems on a brown and amber tablecloth, so warm and inviting! This amazing arrangement looked like a pond with lots of little beautiful butterflies flying out of it!" 

Epoch
"My flower store, Epoch, is more of a boutique and gallery. There are no buckets of flowers on display. Instead, I adorn my shop with just a few funky arrangements, which aren't for sale. These arrangements are meant to inspire and show people the endless possibilities of floral design. My customers tell me how much they want to spend on arrangements and then give me carte blanche to create whatever I'm inspired by at the moment. And I never make the same design twice, because for a designer there really is nothing more boring and uninspiring than making the same design again and again!"