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.






                                                          Elegant Centerpieces await an elegant evening.




                                     Mini garden-style works of art for the Cocktail and Cafe tables.






                               Large-scale arrangement for the Cocktail hour. Almost finished.

The Team for the Lee Integrity Award Dinner: Cindy Conner, Me (Betsy Valentine), Georgia Nassikas, and Pam Kloman in Alexandria. Kelly Johnson is not pictured.  

                                                              Kelly gets organized.

Pam works on her mini works of art for the cocktail and cafe tables in the Grille Room.  Pam taped a small piece of oasis in a 6" saucer, covered it with damp moss, and used maple leaves, nandina berries and leaves, yellow freezia, rose hips, mambo spray roses, bupleurum, rosemary and a tangerine in each mini arrangement. 

                             

                                         

Georgia Nassikas designed a garden-style, asymmetrical arrangement in a brass compote, using nandina, holly berries, rose hips, dark milva roses, yellow ranunculas, orange dahlias, purple veronica, fall leaves, grasses and vines. Cindy and Kelly worked with Georgia to create these stunning arrangements, each unique, but similar. The petals of the dark milva rose roll back, when it opens, revealing a sort of salmon color, flowing into red. This rose is the same color as the walls in Red Room at the Metropolitan Club where the dinner was held. I visited the room 3 times to look at the color,and then remembered the dark milva rose is the same color when it opens. Using yellow helped to highlight the roses. The nandina berries were about the same shade as the rose. All the flowers worked beautifully together.



My large mass arrangement in progress.  I did this for the board table in the Grille Room for Cocktails.  Circus roses and belles of Ireland from the wholesaler, with limelight hydrangeas, crepe myrtle, and maple branches from my garden. I added pheasant feathers at the end to highlight the fall look.