Quick Takes With: Emily Thompson

If Wednesday Addams were a floral designer, her arrangements would look like Emily Thompson’s: dripping, clambering, creeping, amorphous, and alive despite being very much dead. We’ve covered Emily’s inimitable installations and arrangements for more than a decade, and not once have we used the word “bouquet” (too neat, too colorful) to describe her work. Instead, we used words like “wild and witchy,” “breathtaking,” and, in a moment of extreme understatement “mundane it is not.” Her knack for turning foliage and flowers into arresting forms likely stems from her background as a sculptor and artist before “falling into the medium of flowers,” she says. 

The New York City-based designer recently shared with Gardenista the garden books she returns to time and again (both are fiction!), he trick to long-lasting cut flowers, and more. Have a look:

Photography courtesy of Emily Thompson; featured photograph by Gemma Hart Ingalls.

Your first garden memory:

I remember lying on the lichen-encrusted rocks of my first childhood home. Giant glacial boulders were covered in “British soldiers.” Tiny worlds for warring battalions.

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino. Elspeth Barker’s O Caledonia.

Instagram account that inspires you:

@indefenseofplants.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

Graphic, jurassic, idiosyncratic.

Favorite go-to plant:

Farfugium.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

Rose of Sharon.

Plant that makes you swoon:

Podophylum, arisaema, trillium, erythronium, saxifrage, skunk cabbage, epimedium.

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

I thought I had a shade garden. My shade plants proceeded to fry.

Unpopular gardening opinion:

Colorful flowers are overrated.

Gardening or design trend that needs to go:

While tastes in gardens seem to have moved away from impatience borders, in cut flowers I find most people are painfully stuck in highly commercial design where the flowers look aggressively store-bought. The majestic prairies that have entered our garden lexicon should find their way to the vase.

Favorite gardening hack:

I’ll offer a cut flower tip: boil your stems. After a fresh cut, a minute in boiling water will revive and prolong the life of many (nay, most) stems.

Favorite way to bring the outdoors in.

This is my job, so I like to do something understated. A sprig or a weed.

Every garden needs a…

Stone wall. I’m mad for rocks.

Favorite hardscaping material:

Rocks from my family’s mountainside home in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Tool you can’t live without:

My giant pole lopper, though sometimes I get over-zealous.

Go-to gardening outfit:

I wear whatever I had on that day and ruin it.

Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:

My friends at Landcraft and Issima bring me unmatched treasures. [See our Quick Takes with Issima founder Taylor Johnston here.] I recently discovered Mount Venus Nursery in Dublin. And the soon-to-be The Field Nursery in the Cotswolds that I cannot wait to experience.

On your wishlist:

Oliver’s Arisarum proboscideum From Mount Venus Nursery.

Not-to-be-missed public garden/park/botanical garden:

Sakonnet Garden in Little Compton, Rhode Island.

The REAL reason you garden:

A collaboration with the living world needs no explanation.