Creativebunch
Sun Herald
Sunday June 28, 1998
The look of tomorrow's floral arrangements is being established today by thee innovative florists.
THEY love to break the rules. Do the unexpected. Include the unusual, the unlikely or unheard-of.
Will Atkinson, Tracey Deep, Eva Seltner and Saskia Havekes are Sydney's hippest florists. They are so hip, they don't even call themselves florists. Floral designers or floral sculptors are their preferred labels!
You won't find baby's breath in their studios, nor those $20 premixed takeaway bunches in foil wrapping.
And carnations? Well, they're not welcome.
Exceptions, however, can be made and when singer Shirley Bassey visited our shores in February last year, Glebe florist Will Atkinson did manage to overcome his ambivalence about carnations and pull together a beautiful red bouquet for her Sydney show.
The important thing is that these four - who you can catch scouring the markets ahead of the rest of the pack at 3am - are setting floral trends through their sheer creativity. Approaching the flowers as an artist would a canvas, they are the florists the stars turn to. Watch how they work and you will learn how to combine flowers and other things into arrangements that can set the tone of your home.
So what's in? Rich contrasts, strange textures, exotic flowers, herbs, pieces of odd fruit or ornamental vegetables, deep foliage, pods, gourds, seeds, palm trunks and husks. Lilies, lilies and more lilies! Flowers with strong scents. And large bunches of one type of flower that ooze decadence.
And if you can't reach our fabulous foursome, ask your local florist to follow their lead.
Will Atkinson (Willflowers, 02 9566 2673) began doing an acting course for three years. He then spent eight years working for an advertising agency, before throwing it all in to set up his own floral shop.
He had acquired practical knowledge working part-time at a friend's florist, Litza, at McMahons' Point, with renowned Sydney florist Alison Coates.
"I thought, hang-on, I can do this for a living," he says. "I realised I didn't want to work in advertising ever again. I love what I do."
Will enrolled in a TAFE course in floristry, but was always getting into trouble for disputing the rules, such as the belief that a floral arrangement must always follow a triangular shape.
When Will opened his Glebe store, he had just one client, a $40-a-week account for house flowers. But with his unique blend of exotic flowers, sculptural arrangements and old-worldly insistence on fragrant flowers such as garden roses, he's built up his business to include numerous corporate and entertainment-field clients. They include Channel 10, advertising agencies, film production house Kennedy Miller, historic houses, magazines, casting agents, cafes and film production companies.
When Michael Jackson was married in Sydney last year, the singer's personal stylist dropped into the Glebe studio and bought some roses. "She then bought out the entire store," Will says.
With Will, every arrangement includes an unusual element and usually an exquisite smell.
He doesn't believe in preservatives and refuses to use glasshouse roses, which have been artificially grown and lack scent.
"I don't refrigerate flowers, it makes them last but harms their quality," Will says. He only buys quality flowers and enjoys making up a bunch where some flowers will take a few days to bloom.
Some of his favourite flowers are Calla lilies, Goddess lilies and Water lilies, ornamental cabbage, Parrot tulip, lotus pods, bromeliaed, the herb echiniaeca which has pink petals - particularly things that help build contrast. He recently used blue hydrangeas wrapped in banana leaves for a boy's christening. He wraps the stems of his creations first in wet tissue paper, before binding it up in recycled plastic bags, then using his trademark brown paper and purple tissue paper.
Over at Paddington, floral sculptor Tracey Deep (02 9328 7321) is busy loading a van with her latest "installation". As well as the usual weddings, celebrations, dinner parties, restaurants and private clients, Tracey specialises in creating floral sculptures for events, be they for corporate or government clients or award nights. For example, she was commissioned to do the Living Treasures dinner at Town Hall in February.
During Fashion Week, Government House asked her to do the main piece during designer Collette Dinnigan's show. For that stunning design, she created a simple sculpture, incorporating black bamboo, ornamental kale, large pale Anthirium flowers, all weaved together with vines including bush-tea vine.
"Some of my pieces are very architectural," she says. "They are living pieces of sculpture. I like simple and strong shapes."
The front of her studio overflows with branches, pods, husks, tree trunks, Middle Eastern pots on pedestals and rainforest vines. At the back, stairs lead you down to an underground world. It's a magical temple of flowers.
For Tracey, art was a big influence throughout her education. She fell into working at a flower shop after school, but always knew she wanted to do something creative and artistic.
"I always try to have an interesting element, that's what draws the eye in. Nothing frilly or fussy. They have to be rich and strong, or soft but still striking."
She might use an over-sized garden leaf or add some textural pods in a bridal bouquet. For a baby's birth where they wanted roses, she would keep it soft, but add lush succulent leaves and textural berries.
Some of her favourite flowers include exotic Lotus flower, Water lilies, Calla and Queen of the Night lilies and cream tulips. She uses kale, ornamental cabbage and bromeliaed flowers for effect. She loves flowers with big heads. She also loves weaving vines, such as bush tea-vine or liana vine, through arrangements. Foliage is very important to provide contrast and build up the design. Deep green, over-sized ficus leaves might set off a bunch of lilies.
Tracey set up her Paddington studio almost three years ago and now her clients include 20th Century Fox, Giorgio Armani, the Brett Whiteley studio, the Art Gallery Restaurant, Bel Mondo restaurant, the Centennial Park Parklands Cafe, Vogue and Belle magazines, Polygram, the Sydney Dance Company and city hotels.
Grandiflora (02 9357 7902) is known for its big eye-catching window displays in busy Macleay Street, down at the Pott's Point end. The scent of fresh flowers wafts down the street as you enter the light, airy studio, decked with impressive bunches of elegant flowers in glass jars.
Both Eva Seltner and Saskia Havekes also used to work for Sydney florist Alison Coates, before leaving to work in landscaping and gardening, then joining forces to set up their own store.
"Grandiflora is named after the magnolia, our favourite flower, and it means on a grand scale; which we have aimed for," Saskia says.
"If you are going to do something, do it well. So we might use big leaves, a massed display of cream tulips and go for a big statement."
Eva, who migrated from Germany seven years ago, has a particular regard for some of our quirkier natives, such as Gymea lily, or a variety of Western Australia gum nut, which flowers on one stem.
Some of their work appears in the movies Matrix and Oscar And Lucinda, and clients include PolyGram, the restaurants Oh Calcutta and Machiavelli and singers Bjork and Diana Ross, who wanted all white flowers during her last tour. Another major client was Princess Di, who attended a charity dinner for the Victor Chang Heart Foundation.
The order was for white roses, masses of them. "That was apparently her favourite flower and we used them en masse at the dinner, with just a small amount of foliage," Saskia recalls.
One of this pair's trademarks is their increasingly common practice of sending flowers in a purpose-designed vase, as they say this is commonly done in the US. The flowers are wet-wrapped, then the whole package is put in a box.
"When you buy the top-quality flowers, you want to make sure they last," Eva says. Other bunches are wrapped in crisp opaque architectural tracing paper, to set off the organic nature of the flowers.
CELEBRITY BUNCHES
The stars' favourites
Princess Diana: White roses
Shirley Bassey: Red carnations
Michael Jackson: Old fashioned garden roses
Diana Ross: White flowers, particularly white lilies.
Vogue magazine: White garden roses or several dozen of one colour
Bjork: Hot pink peonies (large fluffy flowers often painted on kiminos)
© 1998 Sun Herald
