Botanic Garden quality Workshops with The Flower Sommelier

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Having honed my workshop design skills at Longwood Gardens, Laurel Hill, and the Philadelphia Flower Show, my plan is to bring high quality floral arranging and container design experiences to cultural nonprofits such as museums and historic sites, as well as colleges, universities, secondary and primary schools.  Depending on the size of the audience, garden conferences and festivals, garden clubs, master gardeners, plant societies, and other horticultural groups can be served by either model. 

As a practical matter, floral design class size is usually limited to 20 participants or less. Everyone needs a workstation and to be able to hear and see the instructor, as well as some individual guidance and feedback during the class. On the surface, expanding the number of people who can participate in a "class" may seem as unsolvable as reducing the time it takes everyone to get on and off of airplanes. In reality,  creativity with logistics and effective volunteer management can significantly increase class capacity. 

In my first career, I produced many events and also managed as many as 1,000 volunteers for a one-day program. When I say "managed," that includes: recruiting the volunteers, developing the training materials, leading the training session, equipping the volunteers, assigning the volunteers, and supervising and supporting their work during a citywide initiative (I was supported by a leadership team of junior staff and returning volunteers).  If anyone is wondering which organization or mission, it was the Committee of Seventy's poll watching tradition, which we evolved into the national model for non-partisan election oversight - I started with just 25 volunteers and a 6 page "manual." When I say non-partisan, I mean it - volunteers and funding came from across the political spectrum with the most significant support coming from centrist foundations. 

How does this translate to floral design or bulb lasagna? Well prepared volunteers are a great multipler of paid professionals and my ability to form an effective workshop team, whether it's parents/teachers/staff in a school context, museum docents, or members of a college club or team, is the way to scale up while providing a botanic garden level experience. I'm not going to share all of my management secrets here :-), but the point is to assure potential clients that I can build a cost effective design experience that is fun, educational, therapeutic, and engaging for audiences well beyond the traditional class size. 

In cases where a traditional sized workshop is desired, my logistical experience will help ensure that everything runs smoothly, even for a venue which is hosting it's first floral design program.

At this time, I'm not offering private events. After we perfect the school and museum model (expanding beyond horticutural/floral class rooms to other educational spaces), we'll consider programming in venues which are more of a logistical challenge.