Staff Spotlight: David Brown

Throughout the tour of the Callaway family home, visitors are enthralled with the creatively designed fresh floral arrangements that feature seasonal blooms from around the garden. Some members even stop by just to see the new and interesting arrangements for the week. These, as well as the beautifully maintained greenhouse, highlight the work of Hills & Dales Greenhouse Manager and Floral Designer David Brown. We recently sat down with David to learn a little more about him. ~HM

How did you get started in horticulture?
My first exposure to horticulture was through my grandparents. As a small child, both sets of grandparents gardened. We would help them with pulling weeds, and I learned the basics of how to grow plants. I tended to gravitate toward flowers more than I did vegetables. All our neighbors that gardened also took me under their wings and would teach me what they did with their plants, both flowers and vegetables. We’d do plant swaps, and they’d show me little tricks they knew.

Tell us about your educational background in horticulture.
Even though my parents expected all their sons to go into engineering, I shocked them by going into horticulture at Purdue University. It was just so interesting to me to make things grow! I took all the different classes I could take and majored in greenhouse management. My junior and senior years, I taught adult classes in floral design and undergraduate horticulture classes. I gained even more knowledge through just watching mistakes that other people made. My senior year, I also added agriculture education as a double major so that I could teach high school horticulture. When I was in high school, I was always so disappointed that my school didn’t offer horticulture, so I knew I wanted to teach it to other kids that might want to learn.

Where was your first teaching job?
I ended up moving to Georgia when I got hired on at Jonesboro High School in Clayton County. I taught there for 30 years. We had a full horticulture program of landscape design, floral design, greenhouse management, and general horticulture. I think when you teach horticulture, you’re not only teaching it, but learning a bunch of things also. Especially since I was in charge of two very large greenhouses, all the ordering and figuring out schedules for plants, deciding what needed to be grown for plant sales, and supervising at least 100 students every year. After that, I got a part-time job teaching horticulture at Southern Crescent Technical College for 8 years.

When did you get into floral design?
Floral design came kind of naturally to me. When making a flower arrangement, I can see what I want to do in my head. During college, I got a job at a florist to help with spending money. My senior year, I went to Chicago for a six-week crash course on floral design at the American Floral Art School. There, I learned commercial floral design and different florist tricks. I even got offered a job while I was there, but I didn’t take it. At that time, I didn’t think I wanted to be a florist, and I also had school to finish. While I was teaching high school, however, my wife and I also had a florist business for 15 years. It closed in the early 2000s.

Tell me about working at Hills & Dales.
I came to Hills & Dales in 2014. They wanted someone to manage the greenhouse who was also proficient in floral design and had teaching experience. The greenhouses were in good shape and were well established. I’ve been trying to somewhat put it back the way Alice Callaway had it, positioning the plants where she had them while also making it attractive for guests. For the floral design part, I had to figure out what would be appropriate for the house. Since Alice was in kind of the same generation as my grandparents, it made it a little easier to know what was popular for her time. One of Alice’s grandchildren told me that Alice liked all styles of floral design, but the rooms and container also set the mood and determine what you can do. My other responsibilities include maintenance of certain sections of the garden and helping others with garden projects.

What’s your go-to style of floral design?
Natural, not too structured. I look at how the plant is growing and try to put it in the arrangement like it grows.

What are your favorite flowers or plants to work with in an arrangement?
Because I glean from the garden for every season, I have my go-to flowers for each one. For spring, I like French hydrangeas, tulips, and irises. I’ll also use daffodils every now and then, but they’re harder to work with. Summer is zinnias and, towards late summer, I like PeeGee hydrangeas and roses. In the fall, I’ll use dried flowers and fall leaves. For winter, I’ll buy red roses and other flowers to go with all our natural greenery because there just isn’t anything available in the garden that will hold up during that time. I also like branches, especially branches with berries.

What advice do you have for people that want to get into floral design?
You need to learn the basics of floral design first. How to put together a simple arrangement instead of trying to do a big thing right away. Once you have the basics down, you can start breaking the rules and start doing more inventive things. You can also look at books and online to see what others are doing and get ideas from that.

 

Fun Facts about David
Born: Indiana
Alma Mater: Purdue
Favorite Color Flower to Use: Purple
Favorite Room in the House: Music Room
Favorite Greenhouse Zone: Middle Fern Area (Where the pool is)
Favorite Season at Hills & Dales: Spring
Favorite Area of the Garden: Ray Garden
Favorite Greenhouse Plant: Cattleya orchids and Maidenhair ferns
Weirdest Thing Included in an Arrangement: Okra and all sorts of sticks

 

This photo from a 1995 Jonesboro High School yearbook features David teaching horticulture.	David’s creative ideas involve so much more than floral arrangements. Here he is featured with a gingerbread house he made from scratch.