BOOK OF BEAUTIFUL BLOOMS
MARTHA STEWART & KEVIN SHARKEY
Flowers, not food, were Martha Stewart’s first loves. She has been a gardener since she was a child, planting alongside her father in their family garden. Her new book, “Martha's Flowers: A Practical Guide to Growing, Gathering, and Enjoying,” written together with Kevin Sharkey, is a celebration of this love.
Published by Clarkson Potter, this book is filled with with lush photos, expert advice and lessons on gardening.
As Martha built up her empire, food was the driver, but flowers were always there. As she built her businesses and brand, she had more resources to devote to her floral passions. She had access to master gardeners and the means to plants and cultivate to her heart’s content.
In this new book, for the first time, Martha compiles the wisdom of a gardening lifetime.
“I was brought up with a garden,” Martha Stewart says. “And I always found having a garden important to my state of mind.”
The book also take the beauty from the garden to the arrangement. Martha offers guides to help the decisions involved with when to plant, how to nurture, how and when to cut, and how to construct the most beautiful bouquets and vases.
Photos of floral displays in Martha's home, might spark envy, but will inspire.
Martha Stewart is the author of more than 80 books on cooking, entertaining, crafts, homekeeping, gardening, weddings, and decorating. Her co-author, Kevin Sharkey, Executive Director of Design at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, has worked alongside Martha for 22 years.
Martha reminisces in the book, back to childhood, through the advance of her stellar career, and through the time when she was a young mother, teaching her own child about the art and beauty of flowers.
“My most vivid memories of that garden were the hours spent tending the beds, singing to my young child, Alexis, making up fairy-tale-like stories about the flowers, reiterating the common as well as Latin names so that they are still ingrained not only in my head but also in hers. I was so proud when she could recite the flower names to my friends, pointing out her favorite campanula, digitalis, or Papaver orientalis.”
Martha maintains gardens at her 150-acre farm in Bedford, New York and her summer estate in Maine. She tends to favor old-fashioned blooms, including hydrangeas, peonies, old garden roses, and magnolias.
The book is divided into three seasons—Signs of Spring, Summer’s Bounty, and Early Autumn. It focuses on different arrangements of just sixteen plants. One she is partial to is tree peonies.
“I love tree peonies, any tree peonies,” she says. “Japanese and Chinese peonies are important in my garden. One I especially love is a pink hybrid called the Anna Marie.”
Martha likes a lot of flowers in her arrangements. She tends to highlight one kind of flower in each of them and that is how the book is organized -- each chapter devoted to one flower.
“I love all the varieties of lilacs for their scent and color,” she says. “When you plant those, they will be in your garden for life. Gather them up in one massive group and you can see all the different cultivars in varying shades.”
“And I love hydrangeas,” she adds. “I start lots of hydrangeas from cuttings and experiment with many different kinds—bigleaf, oakleaf, climbing.”
While blooms are the stars, greenery is important too “I’ve learned from Martha—never underestimate the power of foliage,” Sharkey relays.
Martha is as thoughtful about the vessels as she is about what they hold. “Now, I collect many different kinds of containers,” she says. “I have shelves full of pottery from Morocco, antique finger vases from the Netherlands, glass, cast-iron, and copper containers.” She collects many of them when she travels. Some are family heirlooms.
Stewart and Sharkey are a perfect team, in their opinion and ours. They combine their respective decades of experience with growing, arranging, and decorating with flowers. Their floral passions both complement and inspire each other. They are sure to inspire you too.
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