BECOME A FLORIST

Located on Grand Ave at Arsenal, this used to be "Botanicals on the Park". It was much larger, occupying 3 or 4 store fronts and had a full upper level. The original incarnation was a truely unique business for this area.

While I suppose they sold actual flowers at the time, that aspect would have been lost on me as they had everything you could think of that was of a holiday theme. They also had a very wide variety of objects d'art that covered the entire palette of styles. One could find treasures in Botanicals on the Park that seemed to exist nowhere else.

When ever family was visiting from out of state, going to Botanicals on the Park was on the list of "must do's". They all spent money there, as did I.

For what ever reason, the owner decided to end that business and refocus his/her efforts on flower shop type inventory and/or services. Neither I nor any of my family have stepped foot in this "new?" establishment. It holds no interest for us beyond simply looking at the window display from time to time. And, for as many times as I have passed this window, since the inseption of "Botanicals Design Studio", I have never seen a single soul within to give evidence that this is a functioning, let alone thriving, business.

Still, I do like the displays.

Call it a 'straw-nado' if you like(!). Late July and August is when London becomes a ghost town and the shop is quiet, giving me an afternoon to play with a bit of window design, using whatever's on hand.

For this display, I taped some old branches to buckets into a cone shape, then after covering the frame in chicken wire, I wired on the straw from bales belonging to a previous window display.

The buckets were filled with sunflower plants and then the straw cones were hung in the window. The pale straw and bright sunflowers made this an easy-to-see design in our very reflective windows.