>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by... Albertsons Companies... with additional support from the following... CalFlowers... Dollar Tree... Sunshine Bouquet.

♪ >> Today on "Life in Bloom," pour yourself a cup to enjoy as we explore connections between coffee, tea, and flowers, including blooming teas, themed arrangements, and we'll learn about the creator of this popular vintage dinnerware pattern, as seen on many "Life in Bloom" episodes.

♪ ♪ I'm J Schwanke.

Welcome to "Life in Bloom."

"Live on coffee and flowers.

Try not to worry what the weather will be."

What's nicer than enjoying a cup of coffee or tea?

It's one of life's simple pleasures, and not unlike the joy that flowers bring.

♪ While coffee is top of mind with many people, tea is actually the world's most popular beverage.

It occurs to me that a cup of either one has at least one thing in common with flowers -- most people are happy to be greeted by any of them.

So I thought it would be fun to look at other ways that coffee, tea, and flowers intersect on this episode of "Life in Bloom."

♪ ♪ If you drink coffee on a daily basis, you might have leftover coffee grounds, depending upon how it's prepared.

Rather than throwing them out, why not reuse the grounds in the garden?

I save my coffee grounds each and every day.

When I have a good collection, I spread them around the base of my hydrangea plants.

My soil is notoriously alkaline, which would produce pink hydrangea, but I want blue blossoms, so I need to increase the acid in the soil.

I can do this with aluminum sulfate, available at the local nursery, or I can reuse and repurpose my coffee grounds for similar results.

♪ ♪ A new or vintage carafe or even a teapot can be a fun vessel for arranging flowers.

Let me show you how easy it can be.

I started collecting vintage containers, and I love vintage things, and coffee's always been a huge fascination for me.

I love the drink coffee, but I also love the process of making it, and, recently, I've gotten into tea, as well, so I like having those moments where we steep tea or the time that it takes to do a pour-over coffee.

Coffee and tea have been a tradition for a long time, so many teapots or even coffee holders like this were decorative, and they were used to serve the coffee or the tea.

Well, those make great vintage vessels.

I love the shape of this one.

This came from Kelly's grandpa's farm.

And while it was a decorative vessel used to pour coffee, today we can use it as a container for our flower arrangement.

I've added some statice and some stock inside here, with a little bit of grevillea foliage.

It's got a narrow neck, but it's got plenty of room for water at the bottom.

This one belonged to Kelly's other grandfather.

It was a carafe that was used for coffee, and it has a glass insert on the inside.

It's pretty shallow and delicate.

I love the fact that it's got a small hole inside and, again, a deep reservoir so we can add beautiful flowers there.

I like how the little Craspedia yarrow, this globe yarrow, is bouncing above it.

This one also came from Kelly's grandpa's farm.

I love the fact that it's got those great details on the side.

They're little starbursts, and so it matches my dinnerware.

The great thing about it is it's got a tapered neck.

I talk about narrow-necked containers being great for flowers.

It gathers the blooms together and allows the stems to go out at the bottom.

It's better than a container that would be a cylinder shape or one that would splay out this way, so this is gonna make a beautiful arrangement.

So, let's add some flowers.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ See how easy that is?

So much of that has to do with the shape of the vase.

I've used my larger flowers, like my Gerbera and my hydrangea, right down on the edge of the container, and then I've added ones that have more stems, like my spray roses or my Dianthus, to spread out through the arrangement.

The grevillea acts as a great structure inside there.

So it's really simply putting those pieces together in a wonderful vase, and we've got a great decoration for our coffee time.

♪ ♪ ♪ I was excited to learn about blooming teas.

It's a teapot that contains tea and flower blossoms.

The flower inside opens up and blooms while you steep the tea.

Just add boiling water and sit back and enjoy the bloom.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I often plate up the recipes on "Life in Bloom" on a specific dinnerware -- Franciscan Starburst.

I love mine, and I use it every single day.

I was so excited to receive an e-mail from Charlotte Detamore about this pattern.

"Dear Mr. Schwanke, we recently watched an episode of your 'Life in Bloom' on PBS show Create.

It was entitled "Tulips: Year-Round Spring."

And we noticed you served a dish with goat cheese and herbs on tulip petals.

One of the things that caught our eye was the actual dish you placed it on.

It is the Franciscan pattern Starburst, which was designed by our late aunt, Mary Chalmers Brown, who worked for the company in the 1950s.

I'm curious to know if this is a pattern you collect and/or if you know of her many other designs.

Regardless, it was fun to see a piece of her work still being used and enjoyed.

My best to you in 2020.

Sincerely, Charlotte."

And here's the kicker -- it's signed "Grand Rapids, Michigan," the city that I live in.

I thought maybe it would be a letter from California or New York.

And so Charlotte and I were able to get together, and I was able to learn so much more about the artist behind this dinnerware.

The Franciscan Starburst dinnerware pattern is highly desired and sought after by collectors of mid-century design.

This unique pattern is iconic.

With the prosperity that came after World War II, consumers were ready for something new.

The futuristic atomic starry design on Franciscan Starburst fit in well with the new chrome kitchens and advanced appliances.

Mary Chalmers Larmore Brown was born July 12, 1913.

Mary was a professional artist and art instructor at the Moore Institute of Art & Design in Philadelphia.

She created contract surface-design work in wallpaper, fabrics, and ceramics.

She is most known for her designs used in Franciscan dinnerware, including the popular mid-century-inspired Starburst design.

Mary became involved in designing patterns for wallpapers and fabrics on a freelance basis prior to 1951, and by 1953, she was creating dinnerware designs for Gladding, McBean & Co., the owners of the Franciscan brand.

The process of creating a dinnerware pattern is quite complex.

Mary would submit a minimum of four drawings or paintings per month.

She would work at home with pencil, crayon, and watercolors and took her inspiration from nature.

Unfortunately, too often you will see the Starburst pattern attributed to the shape designer of the dishes rather than Mary Chalmers Brown, who created the pattern design we see on the dinnerware today.

Mary continued to teach and create surface-design work for the rest of her life.

Mary tragically died at age 51 in a hospital of medical malpractice in April of 1965.

One can only imagine what other amazing artful concepts she would have shared if she had not died at such a young age.

♪ When I was able to meet with Charlotte and we were talking about this, she had some great pictures of Mary, and I have one of the pictures inside my china cupboard so that every day, when I reach in to grab my cup for tea or my plate for dinner or my breakfast plate, I see Mary.

So fast-forward to our lunch with Charlotte, and she brought a suitcase.

Inside the suitcase, she had artifacts from Mary's life, and one of them is the original concept art.

And you can see how she was experimenting with the colors that ended up being on these plates.

It's an incredible artifact that tells so much of the story and talks about this wonderful lady, who was an artist, so let's learn a little bit more about the other things she created besides Starburst Franciscan.

So, here are some samples of the original wallpaper that she did.

I love this 'cause it -- it almost has a Pincushion Protea look.

And paint colors are down here, size, and, of course, her signature.

But these are amazing.

Let's take a look at a couple of the other patterns we have here.

♪ ♪ So, one of the things that Charlotte shared with us was about the different patterns that Mary also created.

This is just a sampling of many that she did.

One of the things that I love about each one of the patterns is that there's something in there that could be a vessel for flowers.

So with this Autumn one, we've created an arrangement inside here, or we've used a coffee pot from Winsome.

This is actually a creamer, and it's a perfect little vase.

And, speaking of creamers, this one over here -- we've got a great little arrangement with the Lace pattern down inside the creamer.

The great part about this is that the beauty Mary created is being appreciated by generation after generation and that so much of it is flower- or botanical-based.

I think that's why I'm so fascinated.

These are just glorious examples of how we can take the art of treasured people and make it part of our life in bloom.

♪ ♪ I love coffee, and as a kid, I used to watch my grandfather drink coffee all the time.

And he had a special way that he would do it.

He would always ask them to bring the mug and put cream in the bottom and then pour the coffee gently thereon.

And I can remember him telling waitresses this all the time -- "Make sure the cream's here first.

It goes in the bottom of the cup and then the coffee poured gently thereon."

So I would watch the cream and the coffee swirl together, and it's affected me my whole life because I love coffee and I love to have the cream in the bottom and the coffee poured gently thereon.

So today we're gonna make an arrangement that features coffee.

And we're gonna do a vase inside a vase.

So with this, we're gonna put this cylinder inside the other cylinder and then put coffee around it.

This is a real easy technique.

Now, one of the things that's hard about this is making sure that you don't put the coffee in both of them.

So, I cut a circle that'll fit on top of this vase, and I'm just gonna use a couple little pieces of anchor tape to hold it in place.

That way it's not gonna go anywhere and it's just gonna stay on top and I'm not gonna knock it off halfway through.

♪ We also want our vase... to sit up a little ways.

♪ So...we put it in there.

Ah.

See?

That's gonna be perfect.

Then we can fill in around the outside with our coffee.

♪ See?

And It's gonna make that vase on the inside disappear.

Another easy way to do this is to take a bottle like this and drop it down inside a container.

You could add things around the outside -- maybe candy hearts or jelly beans or just about anything that you want.

You could even put artwork on the inside, and then you've got your bottle in the middle.

I'd build it up, maybe, a little bit and then cut off the top, but then you've got your water bottle inside your vase.

So I'll finish adding the coffee around the outside, and then we'll fill it with water and arrange our flowers.

♪ Remember, don't fill it too full, 'cause as you add your flowers, the water level will go up.

Best to start with it lower, and you can always add more water later.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ That's perfect.

You'll notice that my lilies are gonna open up.

So are my carnations.

So, this arrangement's gonna be beautiful for a week or more.

It's a fun way for us to include coffee with our flowers -- my flowers inside and the coffee gently thereon.

♪ ♪ ♪ Echinacea is a flowering plant in the daisy family, which are commonly called coneflowers.

The common name, coneflower, comes from the characteristic center cone at the center of the flower head.

Echinacea are members of the sunflower family.

The flower structure is a composite in fluorescents, with usually rose-colored florets arranged in a prominent, somewhat cone-shaped head.

The generic name, Echinacea, is rooted from the Greek word "ekhinos," meaning "hedgehog," in reference to the spiky appearance and feel of the flower heads.

Both the plant's upper parts and roots are used in tablets, tinctures, extracts, and teas.

Echinacea is a native to North America, and it was discovered and used as traditional herbal remedy for more than 400 years by the Great Plains Indian tribes.

Echinacea is one of the most popular herbs worldwide.

♪ What else do flowers and coffee have in common?

Well, one country grows substantial amounts of both -- Colombia.

Let's learn more about why Colombia is geographically well-suited to grow flowers on a visit to Ayura Eclipse Pride Flower Farm.

♪ What do you grow here at Ayura?

>> Okay.

We grow two products -- carnations and roses.

>> How many varieties of those?

>> For carnations, we have over 50 different varieties, and for roses, we have over 35.

>> Okay.

So, how many stems do you think you cut a year?

>> Well, for carnations, we cut over 20 million stems, and then for roses, we're about at 10 million stems.

>> When I was a little kid, we had a greenhouse, and it was 70 feet long, 30 feet wide, and we grew carnations.

>> Okay.

>> Not very many carnations, but we grew carnations.

♪ ♪ >> We start cutting really early in the morning... >> Okay.

>> ...like 6:00 in the morning, and we put 90 stems per net.

Then we have like a trolley or a cable car, and that's where we hang those nets.

Then those nets go into the post-harvest... >> Okay.

>> ...where we have the racks, so we start putting the flowers in those racks, depending on the color, and then there is a guy that starts feeding the tables with those nets.

>> So, the carnations are grown in rice husks.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

Basically, we are not able to grow the flowers directly in the soil, so we need to use the rice husks that comes from a place about four hours from Bogotá, is where the rice is grown.

>> Uh-huh.

>> And we fill the beds with the rice husks, and then we start building the cuttings.

♪ ♪ >> Let's make an arrangement using some of the beautiful roses and carnations.

For this project, we're using a special mechanic.

We'll be taking selections of the flowers and a little bit of foliage and creating bundles.

This bundling method will allow us to make an arrangement in this big cube and hold the flowers together better.

Some people get intimidated when we have a big opening like this, but, using this mechanic, we simplify it, and you'll get beautiful results.

♪ ♪ I'm using five different materials in each one of the bundles.

Each bundle contains about eight or nine stems.

I have foliage, a couple carnations of each color, a couple of roses of each color, putting them together in a nice little arrangement themselves and then binding it off with a craft wire.

I cut the stems short, and my bundle's complete.

♪ ♪ I've chosen seven bundles.

I'll do one in each corner, and then I'll do two more on either side and one down in the center.

This way it fills it in to make a beautiful, lush bouquet.

♪ ♪ I hope you've enjoyed my inspiration for this episode.

I love observing how flowers intersect all facets of our daily lives, and I also love to learn new things in the process.

For "Life in Bloom," I'm J Schwanke.

>> The total size of the farm is 85 hectares, so 35 hectares are for the flower business and 50 hectares are for the horses and for the dairy farm.

So we milk 160 cows.

We produce over 4,000 liters per day.

And the horses is a hobby.

You know, I'm the president of the Colombian Draft Horse Association, so we work very close with American breeders.

>> One of the horses is the strongest horse in Colombia.

>> That's right.

That's right.

We do what we call the pulling competition.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> And that horse has won the competition last year, and that horse pulled 1,600 kilos.

>> [ Chuckles ] That's amazing!

"J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by... Albertsons Companies... with additional support from the following... CalFlowers... Dollar Tree... Sunshine Bouquet.

♪ Closed-caption funding provided by Holland America Flowers.

♪ For everything flowers, recipes, projects, and more information, visit ubloom.com.

♪