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Spotlight

Design — Freelance — Teach

Karen Nelson Kent, AIFD is heading into her fourth decade of professional floristry but you wouldn't know it through casual conversation - she's as excited with her current career as someone newly introduced to the industry. To understand her full and varied history you have to steal a quiet moment and ask intentionally about her beginnings which I was able to do at a class she taught for IFDA.

Karen spent 20 years in traditional retail, starting in high school in 1971 as a way to show her dad she was serious about going to college. She kept her flower shop job in Mount Oak, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit through college and began progressing through stages of design and management responsibilities with a variety of florists. In 1995 she founded her independent floral design firm Floral Diversity with a three pronged approach to her business: 1.) Designing, 2.) Freelancing, and 3.) Teaching.

Today her focus has shifted dramatically. Although she still does some independent design work for her long time clients' events and holiday home decorating she no longer markets to that niche. She still freelances for some flower shops and event companies when they need an extra set of skilled hands but she considers that her service and support of the industry (because of the pay scale) - not something she can do full time.

In 2005 Karen was indoctrinated into the American Institute of Floral Designers. What she witnessed, learned, and came to understand during that process was that there is a great need within the floral industry for solid floral design instruction so, most of Karen's focus at this point in her career is actually on teaching.

Do-It-Yourselfers are establishing themselves as floral designers without the awareness, understanding, and mastery of basic mechanical skills of floral design that were once taught and passed down from florist to florist. Those skills come into play over and over again in a designers' career. Karen says, "We've lost the art of wiring and taping" because new designers have been brought into the industry during the "days of the hand-tied bouquet" and have never learned it.

The problem arises when these designers are asked by their clients to do some higher level work and they haven't a clue how it's accomplished. So Karen offers private lessons in her studio for professional designers who need to learn or hone specific skills in order to keep up with their clients needs. Within the floral industry she is a regular teacher with the Independent Floral Designers Association (IFDA) and Middle Atlantic Florists Association (MAFA). And the general public can spend time with her at Brookeside Gardens in Silver Spring, MD where she offers hands-on classes and workshops on arranging and styling flowers for fun.

Karen takes floral design seriously and isn't about to let her own design skills become stagnant. This summer she is one of five people invited to work with the internationally recognized designer Gregor Lersch as he prepares for his AIFD Symposium Presentation and dinner celebration designs. She's excited to be attending, participating, and designing at Symposium not so much because the investment will not only pay off in her own design practice and for her students, but mostly because the event will be a blast as her local, national, and global designer friends come together in Boston for networking, sharing, and camaraderie.

If you are interested in touching base with Karen for her design, freelancing, or instruction services her contact information is listed in the MY Flowerhandlers Directory.

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