The Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show is the biggest flower show in the Southern Hemisphere. In March 2024 Botany teamed up with fellow advocates for locally grown flowers, Grown Not Flown, to create a display in celebration of Victorian grown and seasonal flowers.
The theme for our display was “Not all flowers are grown equal”.
THE VISION
The vision was to transport the viewer to a rural Victorian farm during autumn; where the grasses have dried from the summer heat, the sky is clear and blue, and the flowers are beginning their natural transition from bloom to seed.
We selected a blend of fresh autumn flowers and naturally dried flowers & grasses to recreate the landscape of a local flower farm.
Choosing seasonal flowers that would look beautiful for the 5 days duration of the show was a challenge, but working with our local small scale farms was a dream.
For the fresh flowers we chose a seasonal selection of dusty pink sedum, rust coloured amaranthus, black scabiosa, green leucadendron, jewels of Opar, and textural phylica.
The dried varieties included montbretia, leek flowers, drumstick alliums, verbascum spires, winged everlastings, miscanthus, and papyrus.
Living plants completed the garden look, including rudbeckia, heuchera, and correa alba, which is native to Victoria.
THE GOALS
Grown Not Flown and I had several goals for our display :
- All of the materials would be from Victoria and fresh flowers would be in season naturally (not greenhouse grown).
- All of the farmers would be paid for their flowers (donations are sometimes received for show displays).
- We would use the display to educate the public about locally grown vs imported flowers.
- The display would be free from floral foam, and every element used would have a plan in place for its use or disposal after the show.
Whilst some of these goals may seem quite logical, it is surprisingly uncommon for such a large event. Floral foam (a fragmentable microplastic) has been commonplace at the MIFGS in the past, as have imported flowers. Most display materials would be thrown out after the event rather than reused.
CONSTRUCTING A FOAM FREE INSTALLATION
The first part of the display we decided on was the beautiful background image, which inspired the rest of the design. Grown Not Flown have their own working farm, Duck Duck Pig, which is located just near Glenmore in Victoria.
It is an incredibly beautiful property with a truffle plantation, flower farm, grazing cattle, and rocky outcrops that backs onto the Brisbane Ranges National Park.
The background image is a photograph taken at Duck Duck Pig, so we decided to include some of the natural elements from the property in our design. This meant digging up grasses, collecting rocks, and shovelling gravel to bring into Melbourne & add to the display.
Recreating the hills from this photograph was key to bringing the image and the installation together. To do this, we used upturned buckets of varying heights which we then covered with chicken wire.
We laid fresh turf over the chicken wire and added in the rocks, which created our mini hills!
The next step was to add buckets for all of the fresh flowers to go in later. We placed these behind the hills, then tucked the plants in around them in colour groupings.
We concealed the buckets and plant pots with the dried grasses & flowers, using the papyrus cut down low to give the appearance of clumps of grass.
Then we added more turf to fill in between each section, and cut holes in it to place some of the plants into, concealing their pots.
The final step was to add in all of the fresh flowers. Again, we grouped these to look as though they were growing naturally across our mini landscape. To create lower sections we also used short glass cylinder vases.
Finally, we added the gravel and some carefully placed wood, both from Duck Duck Pig, to complete the look!
All of the fresh flowers were in buckets of water – that’s it! No floral foam, Agrawool, “bio”foam, or any other water source. Just fresh, clean water.
To highlight how important it is to support locally grown flowers, we added text to our background image to help the public gain awareness about the flowers that they buy.
It read “Around 50% of the flowers sold in Australia were grown overseas. Locally grown flowers are fresher, carry a lower carbon footprint, support local flower farmers, help increase biodiversity and feed our pollinators. All our beautiful flowers used in this display were grown within 100km of this building. Next time you’re buying flowers, why not choose ones that were grown, not flown!”.
The farms we sourced the flowers from were Duck Duck Pig, Florelie Seasonal Flowers in Bungaree, 302 Flowers in Gisborne, Romsey Ranges farm in Romsey, and the papyrus was from a cut back at the grounds of Ripponlea Estate. The plants were from Plantmark in Thomastown.
THE PACKDOWN
At the end of the 5 day show it was time to dismantle the display. The MIFGS provided green waste bins for our fresh floral waste, which we used for the amaranthus, leucadendrons, sedum and scabiosa. The phylica and jewels of Opar we kept to dry and use later.
Most of the bucket water was tipped on the trees outside, then the buckets were stacked to return to the growers. The turf was rolled up to be given a good drink and reused.
The chicken wire was rolled back up and delivered to an events florist to use, along with some plastic flower buckets that were kindly given by fellow florists and exhibitors at the Show, Canberra Sustainable Floristry Group.
The dried flowers and some of the grasses were returned to our studio to be reused, the others were also added to green waste. Sam & Nikki from Grown Not Flown proudly kept the background image of their farm!
I am keeping the rocks to use in my garden, and the living plants will be donated to a local garden designer, Plantae Landscape Architecture, who also kindly provided the miscanthus grasses.
In the end, the only waste from our stand was the plastic wrap from around the chicken wire, 16 plastic plant tags (which I have since learned can be recycled at participating nurseries), and the black protective sheeting provided by MIFGS to protect the floor of the heritage building.
We are so thrilled to have collaborated with Grown Not Flown on the design and installation. They were a dream to work with and super enthusiastic about the display.
Grown Not Flown is an App that connects florists and growers. Micro and small scale farms exist, and florists want to buy from them, but they find it hard to discover each other.
The app makes that connection in the click of a button, and would have been a godsend to have had when I first started Botany! Check them out – Grown Not Flown.
If you made it to the show, we hope you enjoyed the display and its message! And if you have any questions about how we put it together, how to work foam free, how to design and construct a sustainable installation, or just want to say hi, we’d love to hear from you!
Tell us what you thought!