Hollyflora
Written by Abigail Napp | Photos by Smile Mountain for HollyfloraHolly looks for a quiet area to escape the roar of her husband Josh’s mulch machine. I follow her down a dirt path under the arched branches of her Mulberry orchard and through an unlocked chain-link fence toward the Ventura River Preserve. She gestures to a rock and offers it as a seat. I take it, and we start talking.
“I think people are thinking more conceptually about flowers,” she says, describing her upcoming cover shoot with Elle Magazine and actress-singer Selena Gomez. Holly will wake up at 3 am and produce a white sphere of Casa Blanca lilies, peony, spider mums, and gladiolas for a 1930s-inspired bouquet. Her serene face framed by wispy bangs and large, square glasses shows no sign of nervousness.
Holly has lived in Ojai for two years, but her weekly drives to the Los Angeles Flower District haven't stopped since she began her business, Hollyflora Studio, some decades ago. Among flower enthusiasts, she is a well-known name in this country, and it’s a challenge for her to turn down the many projects and requests she receives from celebrities and locals who want to transform their homes and events with her original designs. She came to Ojai looking for a sanctuary, moving into a home she and her mother purchased in 2008 after seeing an ad on Craigslist. Since she closed her store in LA, business has carried on almost like she still lives in the big city.
In the yard, she parks a lavender-hued Mercedes Sprinter Van in the dirt driveway, painted to blend in with the horizon. Ceramic jars and candles are set out on tables before being carried away to the next job. In her kitchen, sleeves of flowers resting in tubs crowd one side of the floor in a direct line to the air conditioner. She tries to source and cut locally, but with an eclectic and expansive knowledge of the possibilities, that doesn’t always happen.
At 15 years old, Holly began working in floral shops in Palo Alto. Her mother showed her how to be a strictly bio-intensive gardener, and her grandmother shared Japanese Ikebana. She lived in New York City briefly, learning the styles and business of high-end floral design with a crew of characters who fielded calls from celebrities like Tony Bennet. She settled in Los Angeles in the 1990s, opening a tiny florist shop with a partner. At one point, they moved into the Smog Shoppe, a popular event space for hip gallery crowds. Another building had a porn dungeon in the back. The smacking noises came through the cheap, thin walls as she met with brides.
“I’d tell my clients, ‘They’re making art,’” she said.
Florists can be garden thieves, especially in California, where the leather-colored Manzanita branches twist so pleasingly and ivory palm flowers dangle and glow — all unguarded. But Holly says she won’t forage public lands, and she avoids dipping into backyards. She describes with displeasure what happens when florists and their clients become obsessed with a trendy plant, stripping natural spaces of their inherent beauty. Occasionally, she’ll pick wild mustard because it’s not indigenous, but only when she’s desperate.
Before flower takeovers became a meme on Instagram (think New York City trash cans overflowing with white lilies) Holly began making flower sculptures and installations for art spaces. For LACMA, she made a 15-by-10-foot replica of a Sam Francis painting with white mums. (It was mentioned in a write-up for the Los Angeles Times.) For the Natural History Museum, she and her husband Josh built a succulent bear and crane. Using Josh’s expertise in taxidermy — he worked for the taxidermy department of the museum — they created life-like animal models, then covered them, leaf by leaf, selecting different textures for the claws and fur. The animals lived for 6 months in the museum. “Josh can build anything,” she says.
Other projects are hard to imagine, let alone execute, like a twinkling night sky of the Eagle Nebula. For that project, Holly’s friends at Machine Project, a gallery in Los Angeles, built a 20-by-7-foot geodesic dome of steel. She attached black tea leaves to create the endless depth of space and fastened hundreds of ruby-colored James Storie orchids, burgundy carnations, roses, and red protea for the clusters of stars. She said it was both “womb-like” and “phallic.” Her husband Josh helped her to take down the installation. It was their first date.
Most of Holly’s projects — arguably her best works — are secret, protected by confidentiality agreements. She believes people who share a fondness for flowers are romantics. To protect their privacy, she generalizes in discussions or shares an anecdote from decades ago. She has concluded that the richer the household, the more they loathe fragrance, but not all. She has heard that Barbara Streisand liked gardenias placed in toilet bowls. Ephemeral indulgences reveal much about a private life and how one chooses to live, but for Holly, it’s really about seeing how flowers and ideas develop and change.
BLOOM!
In all of her work, she plays with negative space — the empty areas between flowers. She follows the tenets of art and good composition, placing stems like a sideways figure eight so that the untrained eye can trace a path through the flowers. She learned this from her mentor and former employer, Kim Birkcht, who once owned Velvet Garden in LA.
“I call it an infinity sign,” she says, “When you read or watch a movie, your eyes go from the left, then down and to the right. You’ll see this in the Dutch Master paintings, too. I’ll also play with something being dominant and passive, sometimes using the size of the flower and colors.”
But even for Holly — someone who has given her life to blooms — there are limits. After a wedding with a $200,000+ flower budget in Ohio, she decided to set a cap on future projects, not wanting to contribute to the waste and opulence that flowers produce.
As we walk through her garden, she introduces every plant, giving it a thoughtful look. “Not enough water,” she says, again and again. The late-spring beds are weeded. The uneven patches of dirt appear like incomplete thoughts, barely started. For Holly, whose mind moves with the changes of flowers from bud to burst, they all belong to an ongoing love story.
We asked Holly for thoughts on what’s trending in the floral design business and why she’s not always into the California foraged look. Here are her thoughts and insights on flowers this season. [This interview has been condensed and edited.]
DAHLIA
Abigail: Are you super busy right now?
Holly: It’s crazy. I’m turning down stuff. There’s a backlog of weddings. I’m heavily booked ‘til next Spring.
Abigail: What’s growing in your garden this year?
Holly: Tiger lilies. They have formed their buds and are not supposed to until August, so I’m excited. My Matilija poppy never bloomed. I’ve got all sorts of cafe au lait Ranunculus, dahlias, cosmos, foxglove, hollyhock, and Asclepias. We spread seeds throughout our whole orchard, but they didn’t come up. I also have heirloom roses, like Sally Holmes. The Irises are pretty fun, but done, and I have amaranth.
EPIPHYLLUM
Abigail: Where are you buying flowers?
Holly: Always at the LA flower market. But I also have growers in Carpinteria, Santa Ynez, and other places.
Abigail: How has your field changed?
Holly: Before, when you went to a place, florists were just florists. There were some big-deal names, then younger girls that were floral stars, and now florist as Super Star is waning. But now, we’re not thinking about the medium as much as pushing it forward. As I mentioned, people are blending the trends. It’s less structured. We can’t just say that’s an “Ikebana” or “tropical” look.
Abigail: Let's talk about what you like to work with. You’re very open and will even use fruit — like a rack of bananas. But you’ll never use dyed blue orchids. So, do you like to use… silk flowers?
PINK OYSTER MUSHROOM
Holly: I don’t like to use silk flowers. These days, I’m getting picky about what I want to do. But all the worlds are bending. People are using dyed flowers mixed with dried. It’s very mixed-media, and that can be exciting.
…Mushrooms?
Holly: I love mushrooms. The cool oyster ones will dry well.
… Trees?
WITCHHAZEL
Holly: Yes! Witchhazel and the blooming branches like quince, cherry, almond, peach. I also love fruiting branches like Osage oranges and crab apples. This week, I’ll do hazelnut branches for a 6-8 foot Ikebana structure, and they still want it to be minimalist.
…Foraged plants?
Holly: I try not to. But I’ll totally cut mustard and some grasses. Mustard is invasive, and it causes fires. Buckwheat is pretty, but I’ll usually let that go.
…Palms?
Holly: I love their efflorescence, but it’s embarrassing to be standing on top of your van, cutting a branch. I have friends who hack in people's yards, which I don’t think is nice. I had my first garden in Santa Cruz and a guy came and stole stuff. I can’t say I’ve never done it –– I’ve been desperate when flowers die, but I try not to do it. I’ll see weddings that are all foraged, and I’m like, 'Dang!'
… Succulents?
Holly: Succulents are pretty sad. I like the blooms. If I have a wedding planner who asks me to do it, I’ll do it, but maybe not if it’s a cold call. Succulents are kinda cool because you can make them three weeks in advance.
MUSTARD
Abigail: Tell me what’s hot and what’s not, starting with Hot.
Holly: Foraged products.
Genre-bending — like mixing tropical with garden flowers and not following traditional floral philosophies.
English garden homegrown and the Dutch Masters.
Anything tropics, like hot colors, palm leaves, weird orchids, and date seeds.
Bows.
Carnations. Now they’re grown in so many different colors and dyed.
Abigail: Okay, now Not Hot.
Holly: Dense balls of flowers.
Flower arrangements angled to one side, like the W Hotel.
Holly explains that those arrangements, while no longer trendy, are a good workaround for cost-conscious hotels.
Holly: Roses.
But she’s not necessarily happy about this. Garden roses are ‘amazing.’ She’s referring to the “smashed up,” tighter bouquets.
Holly: Submerged flowers. Really, I’m flexible, that’s why I’m successful and make people happy.
Holly underscores again that you can’t really spot what’s trendy by an individual plant. Now, the entire composition should be looked at.
Hollyflora provided the flowers for our Taft Picnic shoot
Inspired by the Proteas you find on the property
Special thanks:
Holly and Josh (this shoot was conceived for Hollyflora’s new website — coming soon! — and also produced “Vortex,” the piece used for our Spring Cover)
Production and Photography: Joel Fox and Jennifer Jordan Day of Smile Mountain
Nicholas Weissman: Someday we’ll see those videos
Nicholas Pelton: Moral support
