From left to right, Holston High School students Dalton Campbell, Brian Cordell, Jackson Williams and Austin Hollick use fresh flowers to create a floral arrangement. Horticultural students are enrolled in a floral design course this semester that teaches the artistic side of horticulture.
Madeline Statzer and Lane Blevins, both horticulture students at Holston High School, create pyramid-shaped flower arrangements, a key assignment for the school’s flower design class. Statzer said she had more respect for florists after taking the course. “It (the floral design) is taking longer than you might think. “
Horticultural instructor Lawrence Cox (right) offers some suggestions to student Brian Cordell about a flower arrangement he created in class. The Holston High School student is enrolled in this semester’s floral design course at the school.
Carolyn R. Wilson | For Washington County News
DAMASCUS, Virginia – It was 8:10 am when the first morning bell rang at Holston High School last Friday.
Instead of opening books and notebooks, students in a horticulture class used scissors and fresh flower stems to try their hand at creating flower arrangements.
Welcome to this semester’s Floral Design course, where 17 students – male and female – learn to create works of art with flowers.
Sprigs of carnations, mums, liatris, larkspur and baby’s breath flowers were scattered on a worktable in the school greenhouse, where the design process began for each student.
Students honed their design skills this semester by creating corsages, buttonholes, coffee mugs, and other small flower arrangements. The final project last week was to create a single-mound triangular-shaped floral pattern, said Lawrence Cox, a horticulture teacher at the school.
“The course emphasizes the artistic aspect of horticulture,” said the instructor. “We are studying largely the same principles a first year art student would study: the rhythm, symmetry, and repetition of the flowers used in an arrangement. We’re even reviewing the color wheel, ”he said.
The teacher’s first advice to his students is to relax at the start of a floral design. “Sometimes they overthink the process and stress where each flower needs to go,” Cox said.