Spring Garden Arrangement Workshop for the Alexandria Committee of the Colonial Dames!

What a wonderful day I had on Friday, March 1 with the women of the Alexandria Committee of the Colonial Dames at Gunston Hall! About 35 women were there for my demonstration of a Spring Garden arrangement.  A group of the ladies stayed after lunch to create their own Spring Gardens in a workshop.  We used larkspur, tulips, alstroemeria, daisy mums, baker's fern and galax leaves, as well as moss, pinecones, bark, butterflies and Easter eggs, to create mini-garden arrangements in a long, low herb garden container. Everyone did a beautiful job!  See Spring Garden Arrangement Recipe at the end.

              Betsy's Spring Garden.  To see photos from the Dames' Workshop, click on link below.

Flowers for St. George's, February 2013.

Three arrangements I've done for St. George's in February.

                                                                                                                                                 All Photos by Ann Tebbutt

Altar flowers, Sunday, February 10, 2013. Coral lillies at an angle create a slice of color!

Betsy's Pop-Up Flower School Launch, January 31, 2013!

I launched Betsy's Pop-Up Flower School with 2 workshops on January 31 and February 2.  I demonstrated a layered winter arrangement.  I chose this design because it is suitable for beginners to advanced, is long-lasting, and is a design that is appropriate for many places in the home.  It's perfect  for winter, because of the use of greens and branches. The pedestal style container gives a lift to the branches, as they reach to the sky in a burst of energy.  Below is my arrangement with magnolia, larkspur and pussy willow. 

                                                                  All photos by Caroline Natvig, Kathy Wirtala, Kelly Johnson, Khaki Valentine, and Betsy Valentine.

Arrangement by Betsy Valentine

To see photos from the workshop, click on link below.

The Lee Integrity Award Honoring Justice Sandra Day O'Conner, October 18, 2012, The Metropolitan Club, Washington, DC.

I was delighted to do the flowers for the Lee Integrity Award Dinner honoring Justice Sandra Day O'Conner on October 18, sponsored by Stratford Hall. My team for this event was Georgia Nassikas, Cindy Conner, Kelly Johnson, and Pam Kloman, a highly talented group. 

 The overall design plan was fall garden-style.  Even though this dinner was being held at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, we wanted the flowers to look like they would be equally as comfortable at Stratford Hall, 100 miles away in rural Westmoreland County.  So while the arrangements were elegant and sophisticated, they were also loose, light, airy and gardeny. We used a combination of flowers from the wholesale florist and plant material cut from our gardens - perfect florist flowers combined with the down-to-earth beauty that is only found in nature.  They were fitting for the star of the evening, Justice O'Conner! 

                                                                                            All photos by Cindy Conner and Kelly Johnson.

Garden Flowers for Friends!

Reception at Dumbarton House, Georgetown, for CARH Annual Meeting and Legislative Conference, June 10, 2012.

The Historic Dumbarton House, headquarters for the National Society of the Colonial Dames in America, was the beautiful setting for this Annual Reception. 

All the flowers for this large scale mass arrangement came from my garden, as well as friends' gardens.   

Cocktails and Conversation with James Farmer, April 25, 2012!

        My very large, dramatic centerpiece for party featuring
                  James Farmer III, author of A Time to Plant. 
                                                    
                                                      All pictures from this event by Kathy Wirtala.

                                                                                                                   

This is the centerpiece I did for the food table at Cocktails and Conversation with James Farmer, author of A Time to Plant.  This party was to benefit the UVaClub of Fredericksburg Scholarshp Fund.  With the author of a gardening book as our special guest, I wanted the flowers to be gardeny, organic, wild and very large!  We succeeded.  I did this arrangement in a large garden urn and started with very tall branches of American Hornbeam trees and blackberry branches draping down the sides.  Then added flowers. I'll give more detail later.  The beautiful food is by the Silver Spoon Caterers of Richmond, VA.