Saying it with flowers -- especially the money plant (Lunaria) -- is a blooming business in Washington.
A rose and a few leaves stuck in a wine bottle are no longer enough. Some effects are more flourish than floral. Now you tell an important gala by the size of the florist's bill -- for instance, $ 40,000 for making just one desert of a hired hall into a garden for a night, a sum that in some places could buy a whole garden.
These extravaganzas are paid for by Washington's emergence as a showplace for corporate sponsorship and/or entertaining. Such money makes it worthwhile not only for flowers by wire but also for florists by truck. Don K. Vanderbrook trucks in flowers and props on an eight-hour trek from Cleveland, Ohio.
That competition has reportedly turned some green -- and not from chlorophyll. Vanderbrook is doing so much business here that a local florist -- Vanderbrook won't say who -- came up to him at a party and said, "Get out of my territory." And, added Vanderbrook, "He wasn't kidding.
"I wish he'd stay in Ohio," said a staffer for Angelo Bonita.
Bonita, generally agreed to be the top local talent, just moved his shop a week ago to become "Washington Harbor Flowers by Angelo Bonita."
"In Washington," he said philosophically, "there are so many events every night -- plenty for everyone. Even the flower vendors on the street, who sell a paper-wrapped bouquet for a man to bring home to his wife, have their place. But when they want a real arrangement, they call me."
By Bonita's count, Washington has hundreds of florists but only a dozen "stylists-designers." To call them "florists" is to insult them. Vanderbrook styles himself as an "esthetic engineer." Bonita says, "We're environmentalists." Vanderbrook doesn't come to town for less than $ 5,000. Bonita begins at single arrangements.
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The big money comes from charity balls, International Monetary Fund spend-o-ramas, or the wedding that's more a corporate merger than a family affair. The stages are the museums and halls that are Washington's substitute for the palaces we would have had if we hadn't thrown the royals out.
Sometimes florists are set designers. For a Corcoran ball, Vanderbrook's Ohio staff made masses of white, pink and purple crepe paper wisteria to cascade from grapevines swung from the 20-foot high atrium columns. For a Fashion Group Tribute, he made gold-wrapped palms. For the National Gallery's Treasure Houses, he had urns cast, and at the suggestion of events manager Genevra Higginson had them "scumbled" (an English technique of sponging paint onto an object to "antique" it). For the 1986 Corcoran Ball, chairman Maggie Miller brought in California architect Gregory Higgins for post-modern props to go with Vanderbrook's flowers.
Bonita digs up real flowers from all over the world. For Friday's National Symphony Ball, he flew in flowers from Australia. He brings them back alive from Ivory Coast, Holland, Canada and Hawaii as well. The largest mass of flowers he brought in was last Veterans Day, when he put together a Flag of Remembrance at the Vietnam Memorial, a 25-by-15-foot American flag of 30,000 red roses, white carnations and blue bachelor buttons.
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Sometimes simpler effects are more appropriate. Higginson said for the Matisse show Ted Huffcut of Nosegay did the centerpieces "with flowers which actually grow in the south of France." For the National Portrait Gallery, Ultra Violet designers hung a baretree with moss and African violets.
Not all the best designers are paid for their efforts. For years, Corcoran committee women did all the work themselves. The National Gallery has always been noted for the arrangements by Rachel Mellon, wife of thepatron Paul Mellon, herself a great student of horticulture and floral art. In recent years, Pamela Brown, wife of director Carter Brown, has taken on many an event, most recently the Whitney exhibition, where she personally arranged every centerpiece with the help of Betsy Whitney and flowers from Nosegay. And for the Kaufman American furniture exhibit, Linda Kaufman specified the 18th century American flowers arranged by Bonita.
FORMER SOCIETY DESIGNER OF 1986: One floral designer, who flew in from San Diego, Calif., and stayed, is now, as he says, "resting." David Ellsworth came in with the Reagans and stayed to do Wolf Trap's gala and others. Every year, he decorates USIA Director Charles Wick's house for the Wicks' Christmas dinner for the Reagans. Ellsworth is "planning a book, with photographs of arrangements with my friends who are ambassadors," and gardening at the house of Warren and Sonia Adler, now on the West Coast. "The White House, and the IRS, know where I am," Ellsworth said.
