If you watched the Olympics you saw a lot of identical green bouquets at the podium. A friend asked me yesterday if I knew what the flowers were and while I replied, Yes, I didn’t realize just how interesting the Olympic journey for these flowers actually was. There are several articles about the bouquets and the creators, June Strandberg and Margitta Schultz , but the best article I found on the blooms (on The Christian Science Monitor by the way) explains the complex floral hoops that need to be jumped through to get a bouquet approved by the committee. The bouquets were not only locally made (at a pace of 80-150 bouquets per day), but they were organic and put together by women who participate in a non-profit program for women emerging from troubled pasts. Flowers used in the bouquets included green spider mums, hypericum berries, leather leaf, monkey grass loops and aspidistra leaves (the broad leaves that were folded along the edges). Read more about the Olympic flowers and all that went into making them here.
Image from Just Beginning Flowers in Surrey, BC.
