Christin Geall
Cultivated by Christin
image provided by Christin Geall
Christin Geall is a Canadian floral designer, writer, gardener, photographer, and author of the book Cultivated: Elements of Floral Style (Princeton Architectural Press, 2020). Through her company, Cultivated, she teaches floral design in the UK, US, and Canada. Trained in horticultural at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, she completed a BA in Environmental Studies & Anthropology and a MFA in writing before becoming a gardening columnist for Gardenista and the Black Press group, an adjunct professor, and designer. Her writing and floral work focuses on the intersections of nature, culture, and horticulture.
About the Book:
Picking up where floral recipe books leave off, Christin Geall’s Cultivated: Elements of Floral Style (Princeton Architectural Press, 2020) draws on the fine arts, garden design, and ecology to explore both the history and future of floral style. In lively and engaging prose, Geall guides the reader from sourcing and caring for flowers to the principles of design, including form, rhythm, and colour theory. Geall’s photographs and stories—about everything from foraging to creativity to starting a business—provide lessons, while also proposing a new philosophy of floral design.
Show Notes
It’s important to understand where your flowers come from and when are they in season and their limitations.
When photographing try and make every effort to use natural light.
Look to fine art for inspiration for color and lighting. Try and look at it through the eyes of a floral designer.
When photographing, remember you’re not arranging the flowers but arranging the light.
To help you understand color better, sometimes it’s good to do a study in one color family and explore all the different tones or shades.
Experiment with new flowers and your confidence in them will grow.
When working with customers, be confident that they are hiring you for your artistic vision.
