Foraged Flora

Building a floral arrangement or creating an installation is very much like painting, and Louesa often talks in terms of line, composition, color, and negative space. With that in mind, our good friend, cookbook author and photographer Heidi Swanson’s Quitokeeto studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown proved to be the ideal blank canvas with its clean, minimal look, freshly painted all-white walls and wood floors, and two empty shop display windows, begging for flora.

It was a dank, drizzly November day when we arrived early and started unloading the car, packed to the brim with magnolia, passion fruit, roses, hydrangea, and more. Louesa wasted little time in covering the floor with the magnolias in an effort to separate their forms, each flower a snapshot of nature caught in a different stage of bloom, some with petals flung open to the world, others tightly shut, reluctant to emerge, and then every stage in between. Small-to-medium-sized arrangements were displayed in groupings in one window, creating a wave of color from deep reds to creamy whites and dusty pinks, while in the other, vines suspended from hooks transformed it into a green passion flower jungle of sorts.

As we were preparing to leave Heidi’s at the end of the day, looking back at the rich visual tableau of flora created with its diversity of color, it was hard to imagine that this was November.

Sarah

November is an awkward month. The rains have yet to begin; we are beyond the golden still warm months of late harvest, with overripe fruit and bronzed flora. But happily there are still some scrappy survivors here and there. The wet, lush, and colder period of “winter” lies before us, with its abundance of healthy green.

When arranging these in transitional months, more thought needs to go into flora foraging and selection.

I made a preliminary list, as I always do. I usually stick to about half and deviated on the rest.

Here’s what was on the list.

Roses and rose hips, ferns and fern tendrils (too early, it turns out), late late herbs, passion flower vines with blooms and fruit, clematis gone to seed, Michelia magnolia and pink Japanese Magnolia x soulangeana, Magnolia liliiflora, and Yulan magnolia.

And then under my list I usually jot down some notes that are free-form.

Moody grandmother

Tokyo sci-fi pharmaceutical glass

Heidi Swanson’s Minimal, minimal

White on white

Very feminine with a tiny bit

of androgyny

Vines and tendrils

Louesa

HEIDI SWANSON’S MINIMAL, MINIMAL…WHITE ON WHITE

VERY FEMININE WITH A TINY BIT OF ADROGYNY

VINES AND TENDRILS

Occasionally, or more often if you are listening to your intuition, timing can be uncanny, We went to SCRAP, a wonderful resource for artists of all sorts in San Francisco. SCRAP is a center for reuse, and a source for cheap and unusual props and working materials. Just as we were walking in the door, a donor dropped off an unusually large collection of pharmaceutical glass, a tremendous score! Hours later and it would have been scooped up. This find defined the vessels for this shoot.

The glass was paired with Heidi’s thoughtfully curated vintage culinary objects and neutral ceramics for a bit more texture. These collections also determined the scale of our arrangements. None of the vessels were large, so we were playing with small to medium arrangements, which could be clustered together for volume.

I intuitively began building and arranging, as I would have in any of my past shops. Heidi of course has a perfect assortment of objects, both immensely practical and just beautiful. She also possesses a clean feminine aesthetic that greatly defined my choices.

It seemed natural to work with a creamy tawny palette including burnt salmon roses, romantic passion flowers, and of course magnolias. I knew she would appreciate the clematis gone to seed for its fluffy, fiber-like lacy form.

MINIMALISM VERSUS MAXIMALISM

Minimalism versus maximalism.

There is no “less-is-more” with Louesa, something I quickly learned and slowly came to appreciate. At Heidi’s we decided to document the layering of flora on her white shelves to show how to build a display and also to reveal the depth and richness that each layer adds. The first layer was a simple composition of clematis gone to seed, mixed with blackberry stems, and for me, the minimalist, seemed perfect in its restraint. For Louesa, however, this was just the beginning. Densely petaled butterscotch roses in myriad hues were added to the center of the display, mixed with rosehips and hydrangea, bringing a richness of color to the monochrome palette. Once again I thought we were done, but Louesa pressed on, adding a whole new layer of magnolia to create a rich lushness that transformed the piece into a multidimensional installation. Sometimes more is more.

Sarah Talk me through how you layered this piece

Louesa Like any architecture, begin with good bones before you add the fluff. I usually start vertically because the tall pieces create space and structure. If you start with big branches and vines you can create the height first, then cut them down. This was very much a vertical structure to begin with, then I added the horizontal elements. With the vines, I first placed the long ones to create space and add structure, then added the smaller tendrils at the end.

Sarah Magnolias are one of your trademark flowers; what’s the best way to cut them from a tree?

Louesa Use the general pruning rule and cut branches where they connect to the main branch. You should always cut where there is connectivity. Once cut, make another cut up into the wood end. This helps marginally, as it’s not a flower but a blooming tree, and the water helps keep it hydrated and alive. I like to make a cross with two cuts in the wood.

Sarah How do you like to cut magnolia for small use in vessels?

Louesa Again, err on the side of cutting too tall; you can never add back the branch you cut. Then, place in a vessel with other flora and feel into it. The magnolia should steal the show always.

Sarah How long will magnolia last once cut?

Louesa They can last as long as two to even three weeks and force beautifully inside especially with heat, but there are so many variables from where they are placed in the house to the bloom itself. When you cut them as a bud they will open up beautifully inside, but if you bring in branches with existing blooms they will only last a couple of days, but then, in the case of the grandiflora, they turn a leathery burnished color that I love.

Sarah What’s the best way to transport them?

Louesa Lay the magnolia flat in a vehicle with the bloom up. I like to make a pillow—in this case I used the passion flower underneath. Make sure you don’t put anything on the blooms, as the perfect petals will break and bruise and brown.

Sarah I like the way you mix magnolia in their different stages of bloom. Is there anything you look for in shape?

Louesa Unlike a flower market, where everything is cultivated and a uniform size, when you forage you can get flowers budding and decaying on branches in all different stages of nature, which means you can mix tight with open and mangled blooms. Sometimes I take off three petals and just keep two. It’s all about the mix and variety, but I do prefer odd numbers.

Sarah Vines can get really knotty and intertwined. What’s the best way to forage them?

Louesa Passion flower is like any vine such as jasmine or clematis. You have to lift the vines off the ground or any they are growing on, pull gently, and then cut them. I like to try and get as much length as possible. This is really a two-person job, with one person holding the end with the blossoms so they don’t get damaged and the other person wrangling and cutting. The best is when you can cut it like a curtain so it comes off in one big piece, but then you still need to separate the vines, which is very labor-intensive and delicate work.

Sarah What about the fruit on the passion vines?

Louesa The riper the fruit, the more likely it will fall off. The green ones stay on more easily; this is true of almost all fruiting branches and vines.

Sarah Once cut, do you put the vines straight in water?

Louesa Put as much of the stem as possible in a bucket of water. It can be hard to get the right part of the stem in the water—you often need to work out which end is which. There can be five vines intertwined with heads at different ends. Luckily it can live long out of water and doesn’t die easily at all. When you keep it in water it can keep on blooming for as long as two weeks. They are also really easy to propagate.

IN THE CEMETERY BEHIND MISSION DOLORES

Matthew has worked for me and more recently alongside me in every incarnation of my creative work life for the past decade—since he was a puppy at twenty. He has become family and the most true protégé I could hope for, often surpassing me in his work with his fairie ways.

Behind the Mission Dolores in San Francisco there is an alleyway with a fence completely draped with the most beautiful and fragrant white passion flower vines. The vines grow out of the Mission’s old cemetery, which for a long time has been one of my favorite places to take shelter from the city. There are only three cemeteries left in San Francisco, the others having been transported to Colma at the beginning of the 20th century. The Mission Dolores Cemetery is the oldest, dating back to when the Mission was founded in 1776. Among the slightly decrepit white marble graves are old rose bushes and scented geraniums. Citrus, fig, and apple trees planted in the mid-1800s provide a canopy that lends the whole scene a remarkable filtered green light. It’s the most perfect scenery. The passion flower vines grow up along the southern adobe wall and have taken over the chain link fences that enclose the paved schoolyard behind the Mission. Once this schoolyard was another part of the cemetery where about 5,000 Coastal Miwok and Ohlone Native Americans were buried.

I first discovered the passion flower vines a few years ago, on a date when I scaled the 30-foot fence and stole into the cemetery on the night of an eclipse. All the passion flowers were blooming and filled the air with their curious scent. It was a lovely surprise, as the Mission usually smells anything but nice. Like their fellow cemetery dwellers, these vines are of an older variety not so commonly seen. Passiflora caerulea or Constance Elliot was bred in the early 19th century and is noted for its hardiness, white blooms, and surprisingly strong fragrance. Finding that they hold up better than a lot of other passion flower vines, I began using them in my work with Louesa. I’ve discovered that they will continue to bloom weeks after they’ve been cut and, even more wondrous, will begin to root, not unlike nasturtiums. I’ve now propagated these cemetery passion flower vines a few times over.

Matthew

Passion Fruit Breakfast Bowl

from Heidi Swanson

I love this with the sweet coconut nectar swirl, but maple syrup or honey are both fine substitutes.

Makes one bowl. Double or triple the recipe based on the number of people you are serving.

1 cup plain, unsweetened Greek yogurt

Pulp and juice from ½ passion fruit

¾ tablespoon coconut nectar, maple syrup, or honey, or to taste

Pinch of fine grain sea salt

4 or 5 lightly smashed blackberries, or other seasonal berry

2 tablespoons toasted coconut flakes

2 tablespoons toasted almond slices

Dusting of bee pollen (optional)

Arrange the yogurt in a shallow bowl. Dollop the passion fruit on top of the yogurt, then drizzle with syrup. Use a spoon to gently swirl the syrup and passion fruit into the yogurt just a bit. Season with a hint of salt, before adding the berries. Sprinkle with coconut flakes, almond slices, and bee pollen.