Plant Talk

There's a New Flower Shop in Town - Pistil Design High Atop Queen Anne Hill

Laurie Gardner has done flowers for weddings and special events for years, but Pistil Design is her first venture into retail. Her brand new shop, where the Counterbalance crests at the top of Queen Anne Ave., is sure to exert a gravitational force on flower lovers. When Met Market on the hill closed a few months ago, taking with it a vibrant flower shop, Laurie decided it was time to open her own shop.

I whipped into an illegal U-turn in the middle of the hill, and circled back around when I first spotted Pistil this week. The place is beautiful, filled with an extravagant and plentiful variety of fresh flowers. A big central table holds vase after vase of flowers and foliage. There's plenty of flower talk going on as friends and neighbors stop by to welcome Laurie to the neighborhood.

You can choose your own flowers (all prices clearly marked on the blackboard) or ask Laurie to pull a bouquet together for you. Pistil delivers if you want to send a bouquet to a loved one, or as a thank you... Better yet, stop in and savor this fragrant, floriferous experience for yourself...

The shop's charm spills out the door....here's the streetside scene

Less than a week open, and look at the assortment of temptations...

See if you can resist circling the table full of roses, garden flowers, exotics... grouped loosely by color....

Orchids, cabbages, and fern fronds...

Vases, urns, bowls of sedums...there are plenty of other temptations if you can see beyond the flowers..

Don't you love the gray wall? A perfect backdrop for orchids...

 

 

 

 

A Touch of Paris - Charming Floral Shop Lobby New at Nordstrom's

  Now you get to walk through a fragrant, floral tunnel on your way into Nordstrom's downtown flagship store. What a brilliant idea to fill an empty vestibule with orchids, mums, calla lilies, hydrangeas, lilies,and Toscanini roses among many other delectable flowers and foliages, all artfully displayed.

Fiori Floral Design has set up shop between the inner and outer doors of Nordstrom's main entry on Pine Street. This is the place to pick up a pretty hostess gift, a pave bouquet for your dining table, or just a place to pause for a moment amidst the holiday bustle and enjoy the sight of nature in the city. The flowers are displayed in metal buckets with handwritten tags - I was reminded of Paris, and the joy of coming on little flower shops on nearly every block.

Fiori delivers daily, changes the color palette weekly, and goes beyond the ordinary with mint, seed pods, kumquats, curly branches, berries and fruit as well as all those luscious flowers....take a look....

 

From Farm to Florist - Celebrate the Opening of the Seattle Wholesale Grower's Market

Seattle finally has its own flower market, which is really something to celebrate. Ever since I roamed around the Paris flower market last autumn I wondered why we didn't have one here - all that fresh bounty and seductive diversity of flower and foliage that makes its way into the flower shops. And now we do!

Although the Seattle market remains wholesale, for this year anyway, the public is invited to the Grand Opening Celebration on Wednesday, May 18 - details on the poster to the left. This is your chance to meet the people who do the hard work of planting, nurturing, harvesting and transporting local, fresh flowers..

The Market is at the original Rainier Brewery Building Malt House at 5840 Airport Way South in Georgetown.....see you there.....

Parisian Flower Shops

Nearly every block in Paris has its own little flower shop. Buckets of flowers, pots of plants and racks of sophisticated, silky little bouquets spill out onto the sidewalks. Flower shops are nearly as plentiful as boulangeries in the City of Light, their offerings as eagerly sought and appreciated as croissants and pain au chocolats. The flowers are as fresh as the pastries and nearly as fragrant, yet each shop is quite different from the one on the next block.

Some are flower markets, offering buckets of cut roses, hydrangeas, and lilies, as well as berried branches, sunflowers and pots of herbs for customers to pick and choose from. Others offer nosegays in bright colors, or small, elegant bouquets; all the arrangements are sized for apartments and affordable. I especially liked the simple, modern flowershops with tins displaying bouquets tied with ribbons; some shops were more elaborate and elegant. It's said that Paris is a city of neighborhoods, which for the flower lover could be defined by the number, quality and character of the flower shops - here are a few from Le Marais to Rue Cler.....don't you wish we had more little flower shops spilling out onto Seattle sidewalks??

The flower market on Île de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine River.