Yardwork is Fun!

The yard of Ben White Florist has undergone an intense makeover. I'm not talking about the lame kind where you get a new outfit and put on some makeup and bibbity bobbity boo, you're made over. I'm talking about the kind where they give you chemical peels, plastic surgery, a new wardrobe, and basically get rid of all your old clothes because you are just too fabulous to be wearing those grungy old sweatpants. The yard of Ben White Florist used to be a pair of those old sweatpants; comfortable, yet sad with neglect and laziness.

The photos you are about to feast upon are only after shots. I did not think about turning this into a blog entry until after all the work had been done and I thought to myself, "Wow, the yard looks fantastic, I should blog it!" Keep in mind we are in the worst drought ever, so while I think the yard looks great, you might think I'm crazy because of how dead it looks. Well, let me tell you, it looked worse before the makeover. Grungy. Old. Sweatpants.

The side/front of BWF. Please ignore the dead grass.

Check out the beautiful landscaped walkway!

Each tree/plant is landscaped.

Walkway looking into backyard.

Looking into front yard/Congress Ave.

More walkway.

Awesome. By the way, the entire length of that purple wall used to be covered in a crazy amount of sad, unusable, wild-looking plants. So nice and clean now!

Event of Greenness.

A few weeks ago, I really had to access that part of my brain that wants to be creative. You would think working in a creative field, that perhaps that part of my brain would be active all the time, but it isn't. Certain arrangements require that you follow a recipe, while a smaller percentage are designer's choice. It's much easier to follow a recipe, but it is very liberating (and sometimes scary) to make something with very few guidelines or rules. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and have to start over. It also helps to be in a good mood. Happiness is much more conducive to making happy arrangements. I believe I was happy the day I made these because I worked with Molly and Mallory, or as I called us that day, the dream team (cheesy hashbrowns, fruit salad, and yummy orange juice also helped).

The color scheme for this upcoming event is green and gray with a lot of texture. Most likely it will include mixing and matching the various green arrangements. Keep an eye out for the final products in October!

Enjoy.

ball of green trick dianthus, kermits, a few succulents, and hanging green amaranthus.

two small cubes of horsetail, one larger vase of green carnations, dianthus, spiders, amranthus, etc.

zen-inspired.

Plants vs. Zombies!

Unfortunately, we do not sell zombies, but sometimes we employ them. Some of us are obsessed with them. Sometimes, I am one. What we do have for sale are plants, plants, and more plants! About once every two weeks (maybe more, maybe less), Mari orders plants from our local greenhouse, Vickery Greenhouse. Either we will have them delivered to our shop, or Chance, our morning delivery driver, will go pick them up (and quite possibly buy plants for his own home while he's there).

It's usually a pretty chaotic day when the plants arrive, especially if we order a lot. The floors of the design area become covered with lovely growing green things, which we have to try and not run into as we answer the phones:

love that hisbiscus bloom.

Plant day usually ends up taking up an entire morning (or afternoon), with at least two people working on getting the plants ready to go out for sale. The day this shipment came in, Mari made some lovely mixed plant boxes with this crazy mess:

random 4 inch plants.

a very messy design table.

Mari turned all of those plants into this:

Mixed Plant Box.

If you like the look of the Mixed Plant Box, you better get it while we still have it. We are very close to being out of those patina containers. No, this is not a sales gimmick, we are seriously going to be out of that container forever (finally!). In case you were wondering, you can find all of the plants we currently have for sale here, and just to answer your question: Yes, we only sell house plants (so please, do not plant these outside). The grass here is sad and dead, the least you can do is try and bring a little life back into your life, and a little green into your kitchen.

Make Your Romance Gentle.

Ever wonder what actually goes into making a floral arrangement? I hope your answer is "yes," otherwise the rest of this post is going to bore you (and I don't want that)! The majority of my day is spent arranging and designing wonderful flower arrangements. This usually means standing in the corner at a table for 8 hours a day, walking in and out of the cooler multiple times an hour, or pausing a moment to tweet a photo of a floral arrangement I just created, until I'm finally lucky enough to take a break in the office to write a blog about how awesome Ben White Florist is. This is obviously one of those times.

Gentle Romance is one of the first custom arrangements Mari ever created for our website. Mini green hydrangea, stargazer lilies, and an assortment of greenery make up an arrangement anyone would love! In an effort to be more of a custom, local-products only kind of shop, we have been making tons of custom arrangements for sale on our website over the last several years. This is how we do it (this is how we do it, it's Friday night...yea).

To begin: Get your supplies ready! Vase, water, clippers, knife, greens; all necessary tools in the realm of floral design.

knife, clippers, vase, greens.

The next step is to green the vase using a variety of greenery. If you're a pro, this should take about 30 seconds:

Viola! Lemon leaf, myrtle, seeded eucalyptus.

Wow, that was fast! Now comes the trickier part: arranging the flowers in the vase you just greened. Because this is a BWF-created design, it actually has a recipe in our amazing Ben White Florist recipe book. It's a cookbook for flowers. In this case, I am using three mini green hydrangea and three stargazer lilies.

Gentle Romance!

Lovely.

Chill Your Sweat (It's Cooler Time!)

We all know that it is hot outside, but it is really really hot outside. The AC can barely keep up with the demands of the intense Texas sun and the massive high pressure system that will just not leave the state! Seriously, I was a little embarrassed at my electric bill this month. Anytime I walk into an air-conditioned space these days, it's like the long-forgotten chilled air washes away any haunting memories I have of this, the 40th something day of triple digit heat. Then, I open the door that leads me back into reality and I remember: the humidity of drought once again fills my lungs and I no longer breathe a sigh of relief.

But then I get to work and my spirits are lifted because she is there, in all her cold glory, this little (big) baby:

the entrance to the air (and flowers) of your dreams.

The walk-in cooler here at Ben White Florist is pretty awesome. She doesn't have a name, but I'm inclined to call her Big Bertha. Bertha was my van's name, and she was big, too (however, the cooler runs much better than my van ever did). She was installed several years ago during one fateful Valentine's Day week as I am told, and has really changed how a customer (that's you) gets to pick out his/her flowers. Instead of keeping the majority of our flowers in the back (like the olden days), out of sight, out of reach, we keep all of our flowers in the front cooler for everyone to see (and touch and smell and play).

A chill, 43 degrees of awesome.

An insider's view.

This cooler is the only cooler I have ever known, but I can only imagine (from stories and my brain) how it used to be, because it is still how many florists are. A small cooler with a few arrangements here or there, but not quite as customer-friendly. Perhaps a little something like this:

Having such a large cooler allows our customers to walk in, look around, and physically grab whatever flowers they want, with or without our help. It's definitely a more hands-on experience, which I think is pretty cool (and hopefully our customers do, too). Plus, it's 43 degrees inside, which is excellent in the summer and quite a relief for anyone who has just come in from the 100+ degree outside world. So, come visit us, if only to chill out in our cooler and buy a single stem of something or another. You'll be happy you did. She (the cooler) will thank you for it.

"Thank you!"