FLOWER MAY•JUNE 2026
HOUSE l GARDEN l LIFESTYLE
CON TEN TS May • June 2026
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Sweet Peas
While The Farmhouse Flower Farm grew wings in producing sweet pea blooms, it really began to fly when it bore seeds.
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French Impression
A dream duo, architect James Carter and designer Richard Keith Langham, fashion a new French-inspired home for the ages.
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The Beauty Hunter
With a shift across the pond, floral designer Lucy Hunter takes the adage “bloom where you are planted” to heart.
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Old Florida Calling
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ON THE COVER We’ve always been drawn to poppies for their exuberant palette, crepe-papery petals, and expressive faces. Style Director Amanda Smith Fowler arranged a profusion of the blooms for this abstract composition, creating our ideal version of “Pop Art.” Photographed by David Hillegas
“Just living isn’t enough,” said the butterfly. “One must also have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” —HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 2 FLOWER May•June 2026
PHOTO BY CARMEL BRANTLEY
Designer Ellen Kavanaugh restores charm to a Palm Beach house with an illustrious pedigree.
curreyandcompany.com Lighting | Furniture | Accessories | Residential | Contract
C ON TE N T S
Departments
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From the Field
Inspired by the poppy, one of nature’s happiest flowers, we’ve picked a bouquet of colorful tableware, everlasting blooms to wear again and again, and the freshest bunch of design books this season.
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Sense of Place
In the 1970s, style icon Bunny Mellon commissioned a young artist named Snowy Campbell to document the rooms, objects, and details in several of her houses. A halfcentury later, these delightful watercolor paintings have come to light in a new book.
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Exterior designer Raleigh Adams finds creative inspiration, as well as the materials he uses to shape the objects he makes, within the landscape that surrounds his home in the North Carolina mountains.
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Artist
Flowers find their moment as they float into Catherine Erb’s Memphis photography studio.
Glamour Ring Mandarin Garnet (price upon request) from TAMARA COMOLLI Fine Jewelry, tamaracomolli.com
I N EVERY IS SUE 6 Watering Can What’s Online? 42 Sources 84 Floral Moment 88 4 FLOWER May•June 2026
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PHOTOS BY (TOP RIGHT) DAVID HILLEGAS, (RING) COURTESY OF TAMARA COMOLLI, (BOTTOM RIGHT) COURTESY OF CATHERINE ERB
Design Q&A
HOMES WITH CHARACTER
serenaandlily.com
WATER I NG CA N A Note from the Editor
“It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” —JOHN MUIR
I’VE BEEN READING A BOOK CALLED LIVING IN WONDER.
Other creatives include Raleigh Adams who weaves classical motifs into decorative pieces with poplar bark, along with photographer Catherine Erb who develops new methods and mediums to represent flowers, making fanciful “fresco flower studies.” On the interior design front, Ellen Kavanaugh breathes fresh air into a historic Palm beach cottage while designer Keith Langham renders a color-and-flower-filled scheme in a French-style jewel box of a house that elicits an outbreak of “aahs” at first sight. As you enjoy the enchantment of these features, I wish you days filled with wonder to see with fresh eyes the beauty of this “round earth.” Love and SDG,
Margot Shaw EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Please send your comments, triumphs, challenges & questions to: wateringcan@flowermag.com OR Letters to the Editor I FLOWER Magazine I P.O. Box 530645 I Birmingham, AL 35253 Get the FLOWER email newsletter! Sign up at flowermag.com/news
6 FLOWER May•June 2026
PHOTO BY DAVID HILLEGAS
It addresses and explores the disenchantment of our modern world, especially in the west, since the Enlightenment and even before. It’s a fascinating read, speaking generally in spiritual terms, but not exclusively. It paints beautiful word pictures of a world beyond the surface, screens, and scurrying, and has, for me, gently cloaked everything in more shimmer, and yes, wonder. This is a most welcome dimension because, being busy with the making of a magazine about the natural world in its myriad incarnations, I find myself having personally neglected, in real life, the very heroes of the story I want to tell. Not anymore! I’ve just returned from a few days in the country filled with walks, foraging, arranging, grooming dogs, riding horses, and venturing to the crest of the property to view the magnificent sunset, all with fresh eyes, thankfully. While poring over the stories in this issue, I came to realize that several of the subjects had experienced awakenings, or reawakenings, of their own. These are remarkable transitions from one way of life to another, and each talent has in some way made a choice to share the wonder of natural beauty. Lucy Hunter swapped the pin-stripe suit of banking for Blundstone gardening boots. She was lured by living in the magic and beauty of flowers, gardens, and arrangements, capturing them in pictures and stories. Similarly, Marryn Mathis spent 21 years at a computer entering code before moving to a farm for the love of sweet peas—every facet of them from sowing to harvesting to selling. She also penned a book on the subject, actively connecting those with the same passion.