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Sustainability Statement

‘Many green burials in my area take place in open meadows. Here one could imagine an intimate gathering of friends and family, each letting fall from their hands, upon the grave of their loved one, a few stems of flowers each. The results, one could envision, become an elegant, poignant criss-crossing of colorful flowers on a bed of dry grasses. This is the scene and emotion embodied in this casket spray design.

To create a truly sustainable design guided by the 3 R's -Reduce, Recycle, Reuse, the base is made from reused wire once used to hold the root ball of a tree. In landscaping, large root balls of trees are often held together with burlap, and a wire cage. I provide landscaping services to some of my clients, and remove these cages when I plant the trees -after which they are mangled and considered "trash." I cut from, and bent this cage wire to form a tripod.

The feet are neatly wrapped with burlap, and tied in place with waxed hemp. This is perhaps more padding than is necessary to keep the casket from sustaining any scratches, but is selected to harmonize with the natural feel of the spray if any portion of the feet should be visible.

Another piece of landscaping cage wire is used to hold 250 stems of woven, dried schizachyrium grass. The wire for this grass piece easily hooks onto the tripod, if the height of the tripod is so desired. The grass piece is domed, and can easily be laid directly on a casket independent of the tripod if a lower spread desired. For this design, the lower spread works very well. So the lower tripod may not even be necessarily depending on the nature of the event.

The grass piece is made with a hole in the center. So it is possible to place an arrangement in a water source wired into the tripod, or simply to take stem length which was in water shortly before placing in the spray. Placing an eco-wrapped bouquet through this hole is also possible.

The tripod, and grass piece are made to be reused time and again on a variety of designs.

For this specific design, I actually wove a small cap of schizachyrium to cover the hole at the top. Once this was covered, all the floral stems were simply woven into the grass in a free line order.

Some of the tigerlily flowers, such as those cascading down the side, were wired in using wire reused from a prior design. I simply inserted the wire up through the base of the lily, bent the protruding wire at 1/2 inch from the tip to make a hook, and pulled back down to firmly lodge this hook into the lily. With a grass base like this, a simple hook made by the same means on the bottom end of the wire was fully sufficient to firmly attach to the grass. When the piece was dismantled, the wire was easily removed, bent straight, and ready for another design.

All the flowers held up exceedingly well out of water -including the hydrangea -using a hydration chamber technique. To start, all the flowers used in this design were well hydrated and chilled before working with them. Once the piece was complete, I took a large piece of plastic -reused from packaging -sprayed it with clean water, and placed it over the piece. The piece stored so well in just a 70 degree air-conditioned room out of the sun, that after 2 full days of storage, I brought the piece with me to an event where it was enjoyed as a table decoration.’

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List of Botanicals & Supplies Used

2 separate portions custom cut from a 26 inch nursery wire basket. The 2 pieces I made did not use the entire basket. The wire is 1/0 gauge or 3mm in diameter.

Piece 1: Tripod
After cutting, and bending to the desired shape, I used a hand grinder to smooth the sharp ends of the wires.

3 4x4 inch pieces reused burlap (this was cut from a sack in which I had received nursery material)

30 inches 1mm beeswax hemp twine to attach the burlap to the tripod feet (see note for Schizachyrium medallion)

Piece 2: Grass Piece
250 stems dried schizachyrium scoparium woven through the smaller of the 2 pieces taken from the wire basket.

Schizachyrium medallion to cover hole in the cap used 5 stems schizachyrium broken into pieces from the 250 stems total, and 6 inches waxed hemp from the 30 inch total.

1 22 gauge 16 inch floral wire for the tigerlilies

1 stem pink Gladiolus
1 stem pink Hydrangea
10 open flowers and 12 buds double tigerlily (Lilium lancifolium 'Flore Pleno') This came from 5 stems for me.
9 stems Spirea tomentosa
8 racemes Phytolacca americana berries in light pink to green stage of fruiting
5 stems Pycnanthemum tenuifolium
5 stems Echinacea purpurea petals removed
8 stems dried Oryzopsis hymenoides grass