Meet our Staff: Kathy Olimpi Talks Arranging Oak Spring's Flowers
OSGF
With March just around the corner, we are all dreaming of the flowers that will soon burst into bloom at Oak Spring, bringing new color and life to the property.
Kathy Olimpi in OSGF’s production greenhouse.
Bunny Mellon always liked to have fresh flowers in her home, and employed professional floral designers to ensure that her tables were adorned with arrangements for both special occasions and everyday beauty. At the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, our flower arranger Kathy Olimpi helps to carry on that legacy: in addition to the wide range of duties she carries out as assistant to the foundation’s president, Kathy creates the lovely floral arrangements that brighten different parts of the foundation year-round.
Both art and flowers are central to many of our activities here at OSGF, so it seems fitting to observe National Floral Design Day - a day created to celebrate the artists who work with some of nature’s loveliest materials. In honor of the holiday, we sat down with Kathy to chat about crafting with Oak Spring’s bounty of flora. Read on to learn more.
How did you first come to Oak Spring?
KO: I came to work here in 2004, for Aliene Laws, who was then the farm coordinator at Oak Spring Farm. She needed an assistant, and I just sort of filled in and did whatever needed to be done over there. There was a lot of sort of property management, as well as hands-on, day to day stuff that was going on.
How did you get started making floral arrangements?
A lovely arrangement of freshly-picked cosmos in the Main Residence - Kathy’s favorite design she has done. At OSGF, Kathy makes arrangements for the main residence, for on-site conferences and other events, and to place at Paul and Bunny Mellon’s graves every week at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville.
KO: Many, many years ago, I worked in Middleburg for a shop and there was a lady there who arranged flowers, and she was so generous with her time and her knowledge about flower sand floral designs and gardens in general. Her name was Joanne Shea, and she did such beautiful arrangements, and ladies came from far and wide to have her do their flower arranging. I felt very fortunate that I was able to work with her and absorb everything that she was doing. I never really thought I'd use it beyond home flower arrangement.
I came to do this at Oak Spring (when) there was a need for someone to do flowers, and I volunteered - I thought I'd see if I could give this a shot, and I guess it's working!
Flower arranging is just one part of your work at OSGF. Can you tell me about what else you at the foundation?
KO: I'm Peter Crane's assistant. It's very interesting - I have learned so much about what he is lecturing about, and things in the world of botany, and the other day I was typing up something - he was giving a speech at a pineapple symposium - we all wake up, we eat pineapple, but I had no earthly idea the history of pineapples. You learn so much being at Oak Spring. There are a lot of opportunities here. And the resources we have, the people we have, what every single intern, every employee brings to the table, it's really incredible . . . The nature of the job is very challenging, but it's always exciting - there’s never a dull day.
Can you talk a little about Mrs. Mellon's approach to flower arrangement?
Mrs. Mellon liked to keep a floral arrangement by the mirror in the entrance to her home, a tradition we carry on at OSGF. The position requires designers to think about the arrangement from all angles. This simple February display uses ivy and potted daffodils.
KO: I always understood she liked very open, very airy, very loose arrangements, and liked flowers to stand on their own. And I can never remember seeing green filler in one of her arrangements that any of her gardeners did for her. . . mainstream designs now are just a little tighter, a little more composed arrangements that are beautiful, but her style was open and airy and loose - they were never to look contrived, they were supposed to look like they had come out of the garden and into her home.
What kind of containers did she like to use for her arrangements?
A jelly jar arrangement - one of the many unique vessels Mrs. Mellon liked to display flowers in (another was an old fishing basket!)
KO: It depended on where they were going, the overall height of the arrangement, the presence of where it was going to be. The front hall table, for example, you have to use certain containers and vessels because of the size of the table. The other spot where we do a lot of arrangements is in her living room, under a Degas, and it's a smaller table, but you have the height, so the container has to be able to hold the height of what you're doing. The jelly jars that go on the dining room table or in the blue kitchen, they're always that short, clear glass - very rustic, very simple.
She also used to have metal workers on staff who could make a liner for any basket or any vessel that she found and thought was pretty. They'd make a metal liner that had two handles on the side, so you could easily get it in or out, and they'd fill it up with flowers.
Do you have any advice for beginning floral designers?
To ensure that no plant goes to waste, Kathy uses leftover flowers from her designs to make arrangements for a local hospice center and public housing foundation.
KO: Do a lot of research, don't be afraid to talk to people, don't be afraid to find resources locally of people whose designs you love. There are a lot of good books out now about floral design. I think 20 years ago, everything went through the florist . . . but people have gotten so far away from that, they want things that look more natural, that look more loose, that look like they came out of a field. People are also much keener about environmental concerns, about flowers being shipped from all over the world for the end use of a few days and then they get thrown away - it's horrendous, when you think about it. So if you can find local growers, local gardens that sell flowers, and there are plenty in this area too, it's a great way to go. . . To me, (floral design) is a statement of creativity and enthusiasm, and it's just lovely to have these home-grown arrangements.
Do you have any favorite memories of Mrs. Mellon that you could share?
I think my favorite is the fact that she told the gentlemen who were mowing her lawn and her fields, “if you encounter a clump of buttercups, just go around them, let them be.” It was something we all loved to see in the springtime, and these guys took great care to manage that for her. She also called the office one day and said that she’d noticed a common mullein, a Verbascum, growing on the side of the road that went down to the dairy - some consider a common mullein is just a weed, it’s a big tall spike, and she thought it was the most spectacular flower, and she wanted it to be blocked off so no one would mow or weed-eat it, so we let that mullein grow!
If you’re interested in learning more about the flowers we grow and arrange here at OSGF, there are still some tickets available for the Virginia Historic Garden Week Oak Spring Tour in April. Proceeds from the event will go to the Garden Club of Virginia to benefit public landscapes across the state. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets.