Agents of Change: The Floral Artists of "Art in Bloom"

Do you know the term “biophilia”? It’s the idea that people want to have an engagement with the natural world, and if Art in Bloom—the PMA's annual pairing of art and floral designs—is any indication, it’s having a moment. As Art in Bloom returns for a third year, we went to visit a few of the folks who help make it happen—Plant Office and Broadturn Farm—and get a biophilia fix ourselves.

Broadturn Farm

John Sundling, Plant Office

Plant Office

You’d be forgiven for assuming that Plant Office—John Sundling’s design studio—sounds a bit bland, but you’d be wrong. Tucked away on a side street off Washington Avenue in Portland, Plant Office is anything but ordinary. The garage-turned-studio-space practically bursts with life, stacked to the ceiling with rows and rows of flowers, fronds, and plants of every kind. The name, taken from an abandoned power plant sign that hangs outside, is a play on words that is also intended to be taken quite literally. “My friend salvaged the sign,” shares Sundling. “When I saw it, I was like, ‘I need that sign!’ That has to be my business name—this is the Plant Office!”

In recent years, Sundling has garnered considerable respect within Portland’s cultural community. He’s both a new-age advocate for where floral design is going and a proponent of time-tested methods and practices—serving as a sort of ambassador between eras in the industry. “There’s a big shift in the flower industry towards more studio practices and not having a traditional flower shop,” he says on a sunlit morning in Plant Office. “A lot of people are more self-taught, and because of stylistic differences, a lot of younger people aren’t really interested in working in old-school flower shops— which I can understand because you want to make the cool, pretty things you see on the Internet. But if I didn’t work in a flower shop all those years, I wouldn’t be able to do the things I can do with flowers, because I learned every technical skill imaginable. Knowing the rules means I can find the right ways to break the rules that allow an arrangement to be technically correct but also still weird—that’s the balance.”

It’s a balance that Sundling clearly has mastered. Throughout our conversation, he’s deliberately yet frenetically working, grabbing this thing or that, snipping and trimming branches to size, putting things together and moving things around. To watch him work feels like listening to Thelonious Monk or Sonny Rollins. “I’m always trying to be in the quick-thinking, improvisational, problem-solving end of things,” Sundling adds. “As far as the creation and the visioning of the work itself, I’m an overthinker about a lot of things, but when I’m designing it’s one of the few times when my mind relaxes. My main goal is to make sure, when I’m in the moment of creation, I can improvise quickly and trust that everything belongs together.”

Stacy Brenner, Broadturn Farm

Broadturn Farm

Stacy Brenner embraces change—as an organic farmer in Maine, it comes with the territory. For almost two decades in the business, and 13 years as the owner of Broadturn Farm in Scarborough, Brenner has been an outspoken advocate for farming practices that offer alternatives to traditional farming techniques that render the land unusable after mere decades. “Our goal is to build soils that are going to last a lifetime,” she shares. “We really want to have regenerative practices that are sound enough and thoughtful enough to pass high-quality soils to the next generation.”

Broadturn Farm is an example of what can happen when you trust in impermanence. When Brenner and partner John Bliss first arrived at the property—more than 434 acres of farmland leased from the Scarborough Land Trust—they did so envisioning a revitalized community-centered farm that enriched the land as much as it profited from it. “I always wanted to be a farmer,” she says, walking through a teeming greenhouse on one of the last days of the harvest season. “I watched a lot of Little House on the Prairie as a kid and earned a degree in agriculture—plant sciences, specifically. But what I really think I am is a social entrepreneur. I think organic farmers are the original social entrepreneurs. We have an opportunity to increase appreciation for local agriculture, and that can have far-reaching effects.”

Before becoming a full-time farmer, Brenner worked as a nurse-midwife for many years. Though seemingly disparate, the two fields had some crucial similarities that spoke to her interest in change. “When I’m working with our clients, it often correlates with big moments in their lives: weddings, funerals,” she explains. “And it’s similar to what I did as a midwife—this big moment of family-centric energy. I see my role as just tenderly walking people through these changes. They’re natural.”

Indeed, natural cycles have informed Brenner’s approach no matter what she’s doing, and she works to remain as open to them as possible. “It’s an inevitability,” she says. “If you resist it, then you’re going to miss out on what exciting things it can bring. If you’re not willing to be a part of it, to engage with it, then you’re going to get left behind and you’re going to miss all the fun. But me? I want to be at that change party.”