Flower House at The Lyndhurst Mansion
For one special weekend each year, you can step into The Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, nEW yORK as it’s never been before. transformed into a breathtaking floral wonderland, the doors of the Gilded Age mansion open for a rare opportunity to explore three floors of the historic house that’s been filled with blooms.
Talented floral designers fill Lyndhurst with dramatic botanical installations that both complement and elevate the mansion’s lavish interiors and scenic grounds. This year, we were so lucky to be included.
The Inspiration
when we got invited to do a room at the lyndhurst mansion flower house, all i knew was that i wanted to do something really immersive. How often is it that we get free rein to design an entire room?!
The design was kind of simple. a room where it feels like a lucid dream. the “is this real?” feeling… but it’s not a dream. and, just like flowers, dreams are ephemeral.
Flowers and floral design are special in large part because They are temporary. What you see in flowers will never exist in the same way again. And, also like a dream, you almost forget it as soon as it’s gone.
so much gratitude to everyone who brought it together: my crazy talented team who followed my lead without any real of creative deck (oops, haha! It was all in the ol’ noggin), sewed moss together for hours, the local farms who have the most insane product, alders wholesale for sourcing so much plush fresh moss for us, Lyndhurst Mansion for hosting a really special show for some super talented artists, katie Naclerio for immortalizing this fleeting dream scape, my family who cut their vacation short to come see it all in person, all of You for cheering us on!
The Product, The Process
Building an installation like this exercises a different muscle than weddings or deliveries. Actually, it exercises several muscles… those crates of moss are like 40lbs each! And there were 20 boxes of moss! And Lyndhurst doesn’t have an elevator! We strong.
For our room, we used 4 different kinds of moss to layer it all together. A base of preserved sheet moss, sewn by hand to create pliable carpets that we could sculpt with. On top of that we layered fresh sheet moss to fill holes and create the lush carpet. Atop that we placed “mood moss” and Clump moss. Both of these have different functions, but work together to create the lumpy, dynamic forest floor look, without it looking stale or artificial. It took about 20 boxes of moss to cover roughly 500 sq ft for the installation. Everything was layered over plastic sheeting to protect the antique floors, Furniture and carpets.
WIthin the moss, we included not only flowers, but texture and plants that bring the ground to life. Touches of Dead nettle, asparagus fern and lily grass gave us the airy but interesting leafy base to create within.
An added challenge with an installation like this is the length of time that it needs to maintain its perkiness. SInce we don’t work with floral foam, hydration is always a unique challenge. We chose live plants & flowers on the bulb to combat the issue of thirsty flowers + warm room + 3 day event. We were so pleased with how the bulbed flowers performed! They also created a unique and whimsical look, even if the bulbs were visible. Win win!
We utilized seasonal flowers like tulips, Mascari, delphinium, bells of ireland, daffodils, ipheion, leucojum, and Allium for a colorful and dreamy look. At the end of the day, we all really just wished we could lay there awhile and take a nap… and some of us did.
The question we were asked most often was “How did you create the lumps”? And, that is one I won’t give away. Some of this is just magic. Or maybe it’s just some things we had kicking around the studio. Who knows?
A florist doesn’t always spoil her tricks.
Okay, I Kinda did a mockup, but the real thing is WAY better.
