Erin Ostreicher graduated Skidmore College in 2007 with a degree in English and studio art. After spending a year working at a small publishing house in Burlington,Vermont, Erin left publishing to pursue a combination of her greatest passions: flowers and art. She spent a season working on an organic flower farm in Vermont before returning to her hometown of Westport, Connecticut to attend an intensive floral design program at the New York Botanical Gardens. Since receiving her certificate in floral design, she has worked at various florists while making a name for herself in the business as an independent floral designer. Her latest venture is the construction of an intensive organic garden in her yard that will yield several varieties of flowers for her to use in her arrangements and sell as bouquets at the Westport Farmers Market which begins on May 26th. Although she is still waiting for her seeds to flower, I took a trip to Westport to see the birth of her garden and discuss how she has admirably made her passions her life.
What is your floral philosophy?
I’m still figuring it out but I think what excites me the most is to create pieces that look both like they’re natural and sort of growing in the container and sort of free and wild but then also have some element to it that makes it look like it’s also its own form of art. So, combining the two and trying to stay away from conventional, boring designs.
Define what flowers mean to you.
Flowers mean happiness. I feel like they define me in a lot
of ways. When I think of flowers,
I think of myself and I think of the part of me that still exists since
childhood—like the truest part of me since I was a little girl.
Tell me about an arrangement you've done.
I loved the flowers that I did for mothers day because it
was one of my first times being able to go out in my yard and pick things that
were actually in season and combine it with other flowers that I’d gotten
through the wholesaler and it was just a really fun experience. I think I learned a lot from it. One thing I learned is that it
seems if you use flowers that are in season, it’s easier to combine them because
it’s how they would naturally be combined in nature–I thought that was so
cool.
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| One of Erin's Mother's Day arrangements |
What inspires you--people, places, seasons?
Well, definitely seasons.
If there is one flower that is suddenly available that hasn’t been
available yet to me and then all of the sudden it’s in bloom, it’s really
exciting and then I’ll use that as an inspiration. Sometimes, fashion inspires me, like if I walk through
Anthropologie and I just look at the colors. Textiles even—I saw this shirt the
other day online that was a beautiful print and just the colors—I decided that
I wanted to try to make an arrangement that uses the same color palate. So those kinds of things inspire me and
then when I get orders from people, they become the inspiration as
well if I know them personally, of course, but also if I know what the
situation for the flowers is, or if there is an event that I’m going to do flowers for, that
becomes a big part of the inspiration too.
Why have you decided to start your own garden?
I decided to start my own garden because the kind of aesthetic that I
want to achieve is one where my arrangements look really natural and I thought
that in order to do that, I need to learn more about these flowers as they
appear in nature and how they grow in nature and everything like that. Part of the reason why I’m doing it is because I want to become more
familiar and more intimate with my material and then I’m also just doing it for
the love of it—I mean, we’ve had this garden in the backyard since I was a kid
and I can remember even as a little girl picking out seeds from catalogs and
just how much I loved doing stuff like that so I guess that’s the other
reason. It’s just out of pure passion for it and out of the excitement for
it. Also, I think it will be a great
way for me to meet more people and hopefully gain clients and working
relationships with other businesses in town.
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| The entrance to Erin's garden-in-making |
Since you began work on your garden, how much time do you spend tending
to it, the building process of it?
Endless. Basically,
I spend a lot of time researching and then usually my dad, my boyfriend, and I
will work from 5 o’clock until dark, so 5-8 every night getting everything
going and hopefully it will be ready in time for the last frost date. Pretty much, I'm constantly thinking about it and planning and then actual outside
work is coming along more and more as we get momentum going and as I find more
free time to work on it.
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| Erin's grow room |
What are you growing and why?
Some of the things that I’m growing are just the easy stuff—I’m growing
them because it’s my first time doing it so there’s a lot of sunflowers and
zinnias and dahlias. Some of the
other things I’m growing—I’m doing a lot of heirloom seeds and I’m doing that
because I like the sense of history and romance that you can get from certain
heirloom varieties of flowers, like when you look at them you think that it
could be something that you found in a garden from a hundred years ago and it
would be the same flower—you know, just things that look timeless. So I’ve got some heirloom cosmos and
sweet peas and love-in-a-mist and some other perennials that I got locally in town
from these women who are in a garden club who have had gardens for years and
years.
Do you dream in flowers?
Well, yes actually! Yes. There was some agapanthus that showed up in my dream the other
night—this crazy purple flower, I don’t think it really grows here in the
wild, it’s not hearty here but yea, flowers definitely show up in my
dreams. I’ll have dreams where I’m
doing arrangements for people.
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| A dreamy flower |
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| Frank, one of Erin's 3 dogs, runs through the foliage |
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