A Hand Picked Romance

At Starbright Floral Design in New York City we’re inspired by the stories clients share with us. Roughly one out of every fifteen weddings we get to participate in decorating this season are for same-sex couples. Each one comes with a unique pair of individuals, with love in their eyes and a desire to give their family and friends an event to remember. We’re excited to share their experiences, and how those experiences have inspired us as we continue through the seasons.

Floral centerpieces — Centerpiece with late Summer garden flowers

A Hand-Picked Romance

“My partner and I have been dreaming about getting married for fifteen years. Being a same sex couple, I thought it would remain but a dream. When New York gave us the right to make it official we jumped at the chance. We booked a restaurant downtown for an intimate celebration with thirty or so friends. The floral designs were wildflower themed. I told Starbright I wanted it to look like I picked the flowers out of my garden. What they came up with from such limited direction was incredible. We got married in New York, with friends around us, with good food, surrounded by beautiful flowers. It was a dream come true. Starbright’s help in making this dream a reality can’t be overstated.”

– Shared by Jonathan V.

Jonathan and his partner’s earnestness inspired the Starbright team to craft arrangements that would imbue the atmosphere with the same sweet, everyday hopefulness that goes along with a bouquet of wildflowers.

Working With Wildflowers

Starbright-Flowers18

The trick to successfully using wildflowers for wedding decor is to know which varieties are in season. From early Spring to late Summer, new bloom varieties appear in the shop each week. Some of our favorites re-appear only briefly before they disappear again until next year. In Spring, blooms such as the lace-like aster, sweet smelling lilies of the valley, and the many petaled ranunculus are popular for weddings because they remind us of new beginnings and softer feelings. Late Summer wildflowers are a whole different ballgame. Be ready for bright colors, lots of texture and a trip to the wild side.

Late summer wildflowers tend to be wind-swept-and-wild. The colors, shapes, and textures are a great way to add a twist to standard floral fare. During this time of year, herbaceous florals begin to fill the Starbright Floral Design cooler; small, untraditional blooms stand out amongst twisted stems in shades of green. Great for adding dimension, texture, and scent, herbs first became popular in wedding arrangements during the Victorian era when they were used to also convey specific meanings. For the traditionalists, our favorite herbs to include are lavender for luck and devotion, rosemary to remember friends and family who cannot attend, and sage for a long life together. And for the bride or groom with stage fright, thyme or mint in the boutonnière is a must – the scents will help keep you calm and collected.

Unlike many popular wedding flowers, wildflower arrangements actually look better when they aren’t meant to be identical! The wild nature and shape of these flowers keeps them unified and also unique, just like the couple saying “I do.”

Today, weddings don’t have to mean what they used to. Mix it up! Define what’s right for you and then explore it. When it comes to the flowers, we’re here to help. From all of us at Starbright Floral Design, congratulations AND best wishes to all the happy couples!

Looking for flowers in New York City? Visit our Event Gallery for inspiration. Or see our daily selection at Starbrightnyc.com.

Flower File : Anthurium

Quick Notes /

Technically an herb, Anthurium is found across Mexico, northern South America and the Caribbean. It features a tall, thin flower in the hip of a broad, flat leaf. Great for floral arrangements, anthurium will last a while.

Visual Notes /

Anthurium comes in a wide range of colors, across over 163 species. With anthurium, the sky’s the limit! Most typically, you’ll see the waxy leaves in green, white or red, with the flower usually being matching or yellow in color.

History /

In 1889, the first anthurium was brought to Hawaii from London. For over 120 years, the anthurium has been Hawaii’s most-exported decorative item – this includes beating sales of hula skirts, ukuleles and hula-ing bobble women.

Inside Info /

These are poisonous plants! Not a good call for environments with small children, pets or college kids experimenting with veganism.

Color Profile : Green

Ever wonder where flowers got their “meanings”?

Color psychologist don’t. And they have loads of studies backing up their theories. The general model of color psychology relies on six basic principles:

Over at Starbright Floral Design, we get to work with lots of colors everyday and all of us have our favorites. But why are they our favorites and what does that say? Up this week, Marcela’s favorite :

Green

“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.” – Pedro Calderon de la Barca

What makes green so special?

Green is the easiest color for the eye to see and therefore considered balanced. Environments are significantly enhanced by the presence of plenty of green. On a primitive level, greenery reminds us of water and growth, and is associated by color psychologists with good-taste and a sense of security. Psysiologically, green helps balance emotions and creates a sense of calm. Consider a pair of green tinted shades – one study found that reading through a green tinted transparent sheet increased participants speed and comprehension!

For the Home

Give us a call to talk about bringing living greens into your space – we offer select seasonal varieties of . Green is a cool color and has a calming effect. Green is also a reassuring color. In the presence of greenery, people are subconsciously reminded of the presence of water – or the absence of famine.

Money Tree from Starbright Floral Design — Money Tree

For the Teacher

Starbright Floral Design’s succulent gardens are a low maintenance solution for a busy teacher. And worth your while as well! A study at The Royal College of Agriculture in Circencester, England, found that students demonstrate 70 percent greater attentiveness when they’re taught in rooms containing plants. The same study reported that classrooms with plants reported higher attendance than those without plants. This effect carried over into a study that showed that students were more likely to join and continue to participate in after school programs and activities that took place outdoors or had greenery present.

The Greenhouse from Starbright Floral Design NYC — The Greenhouse

For the office

What works for students works for me. Green plants in an office space promote concentration and perspective. And why stop at plants? Starbright Floral Design also offers a number of green floral arrangements to satisfy a person’s need for green.

Looking for flowers in New York City? Visit our Event Gallery for inspiration. Or see our daily selection at Starbrightnyc.com.

Friday Flower File : Succulents

Succulent at Starbright Floral Design — Succulent

Quick Notes /

Some well-known succulents include cactus and aloe, but this unique type of plant goes well beyond those household names. From colorful echeveria to hardy sedum, there is a wide range of beautiful and versatile succulent plants that are getting lots of attention from gardeners, landscape architects, and wedding planners.

Visual Notes /

Succulents are notable for their appearance; their leaves or other parts tend to be broad and fleshy so that they can absorb and store water in dry environments. They tend to be short and their roots close to the grounds surface. The lobes can be waxy, hairy or smooth depending on the variety.

Flower History/

The best-known succulents are cacti (family: Cactaceae). Virtually all cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti. A unique feature of cacti is the possession of areoles, structures from which spines and flowers are produced.

Inside Info /

Hairy succulents collect water by trapping dew.
Waxy coatings on many succulent surfaces prevent the release of water back into the atmosphere.
The smaller a succulent is, the higher in elevation is its native habitat. You can find some sedums in alpine areas.

Color Profile : Yellow

Ever wonder where flowers got their “meanings”?

Color psychologist don’t. And they have loads of studies backing up their theories.

The general model of color psychology relies on six basic principles:

Over at Starbright Floral Design, we get to work with lots of colors everyday and all of us have our favorites. But why are they our favorites and what does that say? First color up for consideration, the king of the color psychology world:

Yellow

How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun. -Vincent Van Gogh

Yellow is most often associated with happiness and competence. Due to the amount of light that is reflected, yellow is the most visible color of the spectrum. Because it is so easy to see, yellow is more attention-getting than other colors. It also stimulates stronger reactions in people than most other colors.

To an office

A little yellow in an office goes a long way. Physiologically, yellow stimulates mental activity. It can help to increase the speed of analytical processes and logical reasoning.

To support and encourage

A bouquet of yellow flowers can increase the recipients energy, confidence, and happiness level. Bright yellows also relate an optimistic outlook, while pale yellows may be better for also communicating sympathy.

To congratulate

Help aim the spotlight and say “well done!” with an arrangement that calls attention to the recipient.

Looking for flowers in New York City? Visit our Event Gallery for inspiration. Or see our daily selection at Starbrightnyc.com.

Flower File Friday : Sunflower

QUICK NOTES /

Native to the Americas, but grown in Europe from the 16th century in large numbers, sunflowers are cultivated and used around the world as cut flowers, a source of oil, and a source of food in the form of seeds. Because it was introduced during the Age of Discovery, the religions of Europe didn’t have any qualms with practicioners using sunflower oil to cook during Sabbath – it’s popularity was as much a result of it’s beauty as it was it’s usefulness. It’s thought that sunflowers point their blooms towards the sun throughout the day – while this behavior, known as heliotropism, is sometimes observed in young plants, typically flowers end up facing east (and staying that way!)

VISUAL NOTES /

Sunflowers come in a wide variety of yellow, red and golden hues. The “seeds” of the sunflower are actually little tiny flowers – on some varietals the seeds will actually open, while in plants with a dark center the seeds are closed. Sunflowers grow on hairy stems that are stiff enough to stand up eight to twelve feet straight.

FLOWER HISTORY /

Native to North America, the Sunflower was domesticated as early as 3000BCE. Much later, around 1500CE, Spanish explorers brought the bold headed flower back to Europe. Though the flower was generally thought to be ornamental in Western Europe, by 1716 an English patent was granted for squeezing oil from sunflower seed and by 1830 Sunflower oil was manufactured on a commercial scale. In Russia, during the same time, farmers were growing over 2 million acres of the sunny flowers for foodstuffs. “By 1880, seed companies were advertising the ‘Mammoth Russian’ sunflower seed in catalogues. This particular seed name was still being offered in the US in 1970, nearly 100 years later. “

INSIDE INFO /

– Sunflowers are a great gift for celebrations of life – they’re great in baby shower arrangements.

– Wild Sunflowers don’t look anything like their cultivated cousins. In the wild, sunflowers have many branches with small flower heads and small seeds.

– The sunflower is the state flower of the US state of Kansas, and one of the city flowers of Kitakyūshū, Japan, and the national flower of the Ukraine.

Looking for flowers in New York City? Visit our Event Gallery for inspiration. Or see our daily selection at Starbrightnyc.com.

New July Arrangements!

Fresh for the first of July!

Summer Flowers are on their way! It’s a bit early to see them in their full glory, but we’ll add them to the July Flowers on Starbrightnyc.com all month long.

The elevator can’t bring you down when this fresh arrangement is around.

Bring the summer sun into air conditioned offices.

Dahlia’s make everything more fun

Disclaimer : this pond is not deep enough to dip toes in.

We’re excited to share more fresh summer floral arrangements

on Starbrightnyc.com as the season continues!

Looking for flowers in New York City? Visit our Event Gallery for inspiration. Or see our daily selection at Starbrightnyc.com.

What’s up with the Aalsmeer Flower Auction?

We recently wrote about Starbright Floral Design’s home in New York City’s amazing Flower District. As we mentioned in that post, the Flower District allowed for New York to become the site of the world’s second busiest flower trade, behind Holland. We figured you might like to learn a bit more about Holland’s own major flower market, known as the Aalsmeer Flower Auction (or Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer).

Warehouse in Aalsmeer — Aalsmeer Flower Auction warehouse

Located about eight miles southwest of Amsterdam, Aalsmeer has come to be known as the “Flower Capital of the World” due to the Auction, where over twenty million flowers are sold every day. The Auction, at least in title, was started in 1968, when two smaller markets called Flowerlove and Central Aalsmeer Auction merged to create the Aalsmeer Flower Auction. Four years later, a huge warehouse space was built near the Schiphol Airport. This space, which is still home to the market, is the largest building in the world in terms of footprint, at over 10.75 million square feet. It wasn’t until the 1980s, though, that the Auction became the major flower hub that it is today. Until then, the Netherlands was the only country that did any major exporting of flowers. When other countries, such as Israel, Kenya, Colombia, and many others began to see the value in exporting flowers, the Auction became the central selling and distribution point for the entire world.

The way the Auction works is different from most others. Known as a “Dutch auction,” the system involves a “clock” that begins at 100 (the highest price) and counts down. The buyers, who sit in glass-enclosed rooms that resemble large college lecture halls, then press a button when the clock gets down to a price they’re willing to pay. The first buyer to press his or her button pays that price, and the flowers get sent to the distribution center and shipped to their new owner’s place of business. For a good look into the Auction’s workings, check out this brief video from travel guru Rick Steves:

Visitors are allowed between 7 am and 11 am on weekdays (Thursdays are 7 am to 9 am), and they can watch the action from a catwalk that sits above the ground level and goes around the perimeter of the building. By the time visitors arrive, the flowers, which have been sent to the Auction overnight from their growers around the world, will have been refrigerated and sorted by variety, inspected over thirty times and given a rating. The buyers start the auctioning process at 6:30 am, and the flowers they buy will amazingly often get to the consumer by 4 pm that same day.

The Aalsmeer Flower Auction, aside from being a great tourist destination and a place to see some of the most beautiful flowers in the world, is a major driving force for the area’s economy. The 6,000-plus growers and the 2,000-plus buyers contribute to an auction that generates over two billion euros a year. With 80 percent of the Auction’s flowers being sent to other countries, it is truly one of the great industries of export for Holland.

While the New York Flower District—Starbright’s home and our favorite place for flowers in the world—is still the only major global flower market at which the public can purchase flowers alongside professional buyers, the Aalsmeer Flower Auction is certainly a very special place and one worth a visit if you’re lucky enough to travel to the region. For more information on the Auction, visit the website for FloraHolland, the company that merged with the Auction in 2008.

Kudos to our friends in Holland for their world-class flower business! For an equally impressive display where you can take home flowers yourself, don’t forgot to come by Starbright’s West 28^th Street location!

Looking for flowers in New York City? Visit our Event Gallery for inspiration. Or see our daily selection at Starbrightnyc.com.

Protea

QUICK NOTES /

With a wide variety of styles and typically larger bud sizes, a protea bouquet is a dynamic choice for situations that want a bold floral statement.

According to the language of flowers, proteas symbolize diversity and courage.

VISUAL NOTES /

With over 1,400 cultivated varieties, there’s quite a bit of variance among members of the protea family. There are three dominant petal shapes – feathery spikes, leafy spades, and more stiff colored scallops. Buds come in a wide variety of colors, as well, with individual petals often showing color gradation. Overall, protea tends to be large enough to act as the focal point of an arrangement.

FLOWER HISTORY /

Named by the famed botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1735 for Proteus, a Greek water god who could change it’s form at will, to allude to the dizzying array of shapes the plant comes in. Native to southern and eastern Africa, protea are among the only flowers who’s nectar was used as a sweetener. The Boers of South Africa called sweeteners made from protea nectar bossiestroop, which was more-or-less rainwater and plant nectar drained from the flower into a bucket, cooked down into a syrup, and used to sweeten tea.

INSIDE INFO /

Pincushion protea are an especially interesting plant – the long spiky petals have enough structure that they are able to serve as creative placecard holders or picture frames.

At Starbright Floral Design, we’ve recently seen a huge increase in the popularity of succulent plants and gardens.

Succulent Garden from Starbright Floral Design

Succulents are notable for their appearance; their leaves or other parts tend to be broad and fleshy so that they can absorb and store water in dry environments. Some well-known succulents include cactus and aloe, but this unique type of plant goes well beyond those household names. From colorful echeveria to hardy sedum, there is a wide range of beautiful and versatile succulent plants that are getting lots of attention from gardeners, landscape architects, and wedding planners. As Pacific Horticulture states:

Succulents are hot! Landscape professionals and home gardeners…are expanding their plant palettes to include these uniquely functional plants. Over the last couple of years, landscape architects and designers have reported…that many clients are asking specifically for a custom-designed succulent garden. This is a big moment for succulents.

Of course, Starbright has some great options to get you started with your very own urban succulent garden. This Succulent Zen Garden comes in a handsome wooden container and would look absolutely wonderful on any mantle. Meanwhile, our Succulent Glass Menagerie would make the perfect centerpiece for a living room table. Whether you choose one of these or another beautiful succulent arrangements from our site, you’ll to know how to care for your new indoor garden. Here are some tips for keeping your succulents healthy and happy.

Tip #1: Water only when the soil has fully dried

Because succulents are made for retaining water, you can water them less than you would other indoor plants. Wait until the soil in which they’re planted is completely dry before you add any more water. In a humid climate like New York City’s in the summer, watering once every few days should suffice. Keep an eye out for overwatering by watching out for the stems constricting and turning black.

Tip #2: Give them light—but not direct midday sun

While it can be difficult in an indoor setting, it’s important to give your succulent garden natural light. But be careful: succulents prefer indirect light to direct, so a spot in a nice, bright room away from direct rays should be perfect. Tabletops and bookshelves can often be great spots for this. Some succulents will do well on brighter windowsills, but always be sure to check them for any signs of scorching.

Tip #3: Re-pot your succulents every year

Like many plants, succulents will do better if they are re-potted occasionally—once a year should be perfect. This allows them to continue growing without sacrificing the root structure. As for how to re-pot, Uncommon Goods has some advice:

Before introducing your plants to their new home give the bottom of the existing dirts/roots a bit of a scrunch. Flare the root structure out a bit. This will help it transition better into its new/bigger/better environment. This is something good to remember when planting anything anywhere. If you don’t break up the bundle they are used to having in their temporary store shells, they might be a little too shy to branch out (pun intended) into their new world.

Tip #4: Don’t worry too much about temperature!

Many people think that it’s important to keep succulents in constantly hot temperatures, but in fact, they can withstand cool temperatures above freezing. Since their native desert environments often grow cold at night, your indoor succulent garden should be more than able to survive both during hot summers and during the winter and at evening, when your indoor temperature may drop a bit.

Succulents are a great choice for adding a fresh look to your apartment, deck, or backyard. Nothing brightes up a space like a bit of living color. Over at Starbright Floral Design will be more than happy to work with you on creating a great succulent arrangement that you can care for easily.

Looking for flowers in New York City? Visit our Event Gallery for inspiration. Or see our daily selection at Starbrightnyc.com.

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	Franz Pfusterer on New July Arrangements!

A Hand-Picked Romance

Working With Wildflowers

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Quick Notes /

Visual Notes /

History /

Inside Info /

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Ever wonder where flowers got their “meanings”?

Green

What makes green so special?

For the Home

For the Teacher

For the office

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Quick Notes /

Visual Notes /

Flower History/

Inside Info /

Share this:

Ever wonder where flowers got their “meanings”?

Yellow

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QUICK NOTES /

VISUAL NOTES /

FLOWER HISTORY /

INSIDE INFO /

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Fresh for the first of July!

Summer Flowers are on their way! It’s a bit early to see them in their full glory, but we’ll add them to the July Flowers on Starbrightnyc.com all month long.

We’re excited to share more fresh summer floral arrangements

on Starbrightnyc.com as the season continues!

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

At Starbright Floral Design, we’ve recently seen a huge increase in the popularity of succulent plants and gardens.

Tip #1: Water only when the soil has fully dried

Tip #2: Give them light—but not direct midday sun

Tip #3: Re-pot your succulents every year

Tip #4: Don’t worry too much about temperature!

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