At a design show, you should fully expect to see amazing floral designs and floral art. The show where my brother, the budding florist, recently took these photos was no exception.

Photos by Daniel Barrientos

For example, the artsy arrangement above looks more like art than a flower arrangement. I’m not sure the name of the greens, but I do see pink gerber daisies (although they look like a special kind) and green cymbidium orchids. And I like the use of a succulent in there. Bonus — the white overlay on the pink tablecloth. That’s a super cool overlay, although trying to fold it must be a pickle.

The large, alien-looking flowers are called protea and seemed to be one of my mom’s favorite flowers to use in tropical arrangements. I have to admit, I have a fondness for them too — they don’t smell and seem unnatural, but they sure are exotic and cool. The coolness factor of this arrangement goes up with the use of those greens that look like suckers — hey, Daniel, what’s the name of those? Plus, there’s pink roses and willow branches used here.

The designer of this arrangement cleverly used fresh green leaves to sort of extend the height of what looks like an iron wrought flower holder or candelabra. The arrangement seems to be entwined and topped with green cymbidium orchids.

This last one is sort of a wild piece of art, and it reminds me a lot of the wildly creative arrangements that the late Silverio Casabar used to create. The bottom of the arrangement is anchored with pieces of monstera — and I spy a lei on one leaf! I also spy greenish-white anthurium, green orchids, yellow roses, variegated greens and some braided greens, more of those sucker-like leafs and amaranthus up top. Next time, I’m going to talk to my brother about photo composition, so that we don’t get that black thing in the background visually mixed up with the arrangement. 🙂

*According to my brother, who recently passed his flower identification test, the sucker-looking leafs are named the Bells of Ireland.