Diving In

Last week, I began my first official day as the HORT 1013: Floral Design Teacher's Assistant.  I spent the beginning portion of the day cleaning up our classroom and well doing what I do best: organizing.  I started off in one corner of the room and am still currently making my way around.  Organizing the ribbon cabinets was by far the most challenging task, as it was a bit frustrating to untangle ribbons which had previously been thrown into the cupboard haphazardly.  Oh well, if anyone could accomplish such a task, it would be me.  And naturally everything is now also color-coded.

I've still got a list of tasks to finish up my deep clean, but that will have to wait until sometime this week.  Life is sure keeping me busy and what I wouldn't do for a few more hours in the day!  Thankfully, there have been no major stress explosions.....yet.  During class, we went over the basics of lab procedure, how and when to harvest flowers, and the basics of design materials.  Form, line, mass, and filler flowers were discussed with examples to show the students what each term relates to in terms of flowers.  Next, it was off to the University of Minnesota trial garden to begin our first design.  Students were instructed to pick flowers of their choiced based on the requirements of 3 line materials, 3 mass flowers, and 1-2 fillers.

Back in the classroom, Neil and I both gave demonstrations on creating a bud vase line design.  I wasn't expecting to be giving a demonstration to 19 curious faces on the first week of class, but I did.  It may have not been my best attempt at speaking in front of a group, but hey it's a start.  My biggest struggle was working with the materials while trying to enunciate exactly what I was attempting to do.  When I work, I normally tend to cut the chatter and focus on my design.  This is definitely something I will work on improving for future weeks.  And naturally, the materials I was working with were not cooperating the way I had hoped!  I will take that as a lesson in learning to work with what you are given - something important in floral design as well as life. 

 

 

 

 

 

In my bud vase, I used some ornamental grasses as my line material, three sunflowers for mass flowers, and some beautiful yarrow as a filler.  It was really fun for me to actually get to make a design, as well as see what the students were creating.  I can already tell we have a lot of creative minds in the class, and they will be great designers!  It was also fun for me to look back on my designs from a year ago and compare/ contrast the differences and new skills I have developed in that time period. 

 



For instance, last year's design appears to have too much visual weight and is lacking sufficient amounts of negative space.  I was much happier with this year's design, even if I faced some struggles along the way.   I am especially looking forward to the upcoming week's design because it was one of my favorites last year: Oriental Line Design.