I met Pat Preib as she sat behind her table on the first Canyon Walk of the summer – the monthly party of Canyon Road when the galleries stay open late and people walk the street exploring music, food, art demonstrations and it’s just a lively vibe. I immediately fell in love with her creative bouquets that have a wild, yet curated, elegant look which have become my Thursday Instagram post. As summer comes to a close, I thought it would be fun to share a bit more about Petalpushers, Pat’s philosophy, and her thoughts on flower arranging (which she also teaches!). Read on to learn more and see some great photos from a trip to Pat’s garden:

Tell me a little bit about how you started your flower business.

Well, I've been a gardener most of my adult life and my dad was a gardener. My mother had no interest. When I retired from teaching and school administration, I was looking for something to do and I realized I was doing a lot of gardening. That kind of coincided with seeing a book called Cut Flower Garden by Erin Benzakein, which I bought and just thought: I want to do this!

Was it an immediate success?

No! The first year I planted all these seeds and I got four flowers. Oh god. Four. Not four kinds of flowers. Just four flowers. Four stems. So, I thought, oh, maybe I needed to test my soil – and found out I didn't have any nitrogen in it. I went about fixing the soil here, which I add to and mend every year, because you know, it's a lot to ask of the soil to keep producing flowers year after year. You have to give it some food back!

Do you have a favorite flower?

I've really come to love dahlias because they're just gorgeous. And there are 20 accepted shapes of dahlias and about 50,000 varieties now, so there’s a huge range of shapes and colors to work with.  Plus, they are a great flower for bridging color in floral arrangements.

Your arrangements remind me a lot of my jewelry, in the sense that you mix a lot of different textures, hues, tones and patterns together. Can you expand on this?

A lot of times in a bouquet or an arrangement you want to go from, like, a bright yellow to a dark red. And how do you do that without it looking kind of abrupt? A flower like a Dahlia that has many colors in the petals will help you bridge the main hues.  Or use the solid color Dahlias and layer the colors. For example, start with something that's white, then add a blush and work your way towards these other pinks and reds, and you could go as far as magenta. Then there's shapes – for example a snowball or a semi cactus shape or when they're really ripe, the petals kind of curl around the back. All this plays into the floral arrangement design.

A gemstone will look different in lightness or dark, or different types of light. Do you have to pay attention to that with flowers?

Well, yes, but it’s more about how a flower looks at different times of the day. A lot of flowers will open in the morning and close in the evening. I've got some of those I use a lot, like daylilies, tulips, and daisies, and you need to think about where they sit in the arrangement because the inside colors when they’re open are different than when the flower is closed and you’re seeing the outside of the flower.  

Your whole ethos is about sustainable flowers – what does this mean and can you tell me how you lean into this with your own garden and how it differs from say, grocery store flowers?

When I say sustainable, I mean better for the planet – a “green” situation by regenerating the soil each year, using organic compost and organic pest solutions…. And, if you buy local flowers, the flowers haven’t flown 1500 miles. There's not a ton of packaging that goes along with it. They haven't been dipped in chemicals. And you can get your flowers in peak condition so that they can last a week or more.  

When you grow your own garden like mine, they last longer than grocery store flowers. A grocery store flower typically is imported – Ecuador and Columbia are two common places where they grow flowers. And the farms there, some of them do work really hard for sustainable practices and all that. But most of them don't, they're just growing in bulk. And many of those flowers then are dipped in a chemical solution and then boxed dry and shipped off to the airport where they fly to Miami and have to go through customs. And then they're put on trucks and sent all over the country. So those flowers are good seven to 10 days old by the time they hit the grocery stores. Consequently, they don’t last a very long time.

A local grower will cut the flower when they're at the right stage of harvest – right when you know the flower won’t open up more once you cut it. Or the opposite: which flower to cut precisely because you know it will continue to open and enhance your arrangement. It all leads to a better looking, longer lasting flower arrangement. Typically, I cut the flowers that I sell within 24 hours. So, I cut them, say, in the morning, to sell in the evening or to take to an event, or I cut them in the evening for the next morning. They’re as fresh as they can be!