bbrooks member Cebolla Fine Flowers in Dallas, TX  offered gorgeous plant baskets for Valentine’s Day!

Featured at left are pink cyclamen and pink azalea plants accompanied by mixed green plants in a rustically elegant twig container.

A wonderful idea for Mother’s Day too!

Administrative Professionals’ Day was originally organized in 1952 as “National Secretaries Day” by the National Secretaries Association (also known as the International Association of Administrative Professionals). It was established as an effort to recognize secretaries for their contributions in the workplace.

It is an unofficial secular holiday observed on the last Wednesday of April. It is celebrated as part of a larger Administrative Professionals Week, which takes place during the last full week of April. In 1998, the name of the holiday was changed from Secretaries’ Day to Administrative Professionals’ day to better represent the full range of clerical positions.

Over the years, Administrative Professionals Week has become one of the largest workplace observances. The event is celebrated worldwide, bringing together millions of people for community events, social gatherings, and individual corporate activities recognizing support staff with gifts of appreciation. In the United States, the day is often celebrated by giving one’s assistant such gifts as flowers, candy, trinkets, lunch at a restaurant, or time off.

Arrangement above is Snowball Viburnum with Forsythia branches  by bbrooks member Flowers Claire Marie in San Francisco.

When Caroline Scheufele moved into an 18th-century villa in the rustic village of Prangins in Switzerland, she was immediately seduced by Lake Geneva, the body of water that is literally at the foot of her garden. “Living next to the lake is a magical experience — the sky lights up the garden and we never see the same shades of green in the trees,” says Scheufele, co-president and artistic director of Chopard, the 153-year-old Swiss firm owned by her family and renowned for its diamond-encrusted watches and luxury jewels dripping with precious and semi-precious stones.

While Scheufele doesn’t design her collections al fresco, she has found much inspiration within the 1,200 oak trees she planted to border her land. To celebrate Chopard’s 150th anniversary, she created a glittering menagerie of jewelry.  The collection includes dazzling flowers, of course!

To read more, see Veranda magazine, March-April 2013 issue.

It’s all about glamour at Claridge’s, and, as it’s a landmark hotel, the flowers have to reflect that unique status, says owner of McQueens, Kally Ellis.

Ellis has been the florist for London’s fashion set for more than a decade.  Her clients include LVMH, Roland Mouret, Christian Louboutin and Alexander McQueen.  The last name is particularly apt since the florist derives its name from its first location on Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, east London, an old flower shop once owned by the late designer’s aunt.

Ellis’s signature same-flower displays have become a tradmark of any event that is cool enough to know her, and also of Vanity Fair magazine parties.  What sets her apart is that her eye is driven by art rather than convention.  To this day, she doesn’t employ traditionally trained flower arrangers, peferring artistic people with an “eye”.

As seen in Maybourne magazine, Spring 2013