North Carolina State Florists Association

The NCCPF Design School was held September 18-21 at Cleveland Plant and Flower Company in Raleigh, NC. At the beginning of 2019, the NCSFA Board of Directors approved scholarship money for both the Design School and online class program. Three lucky students won scholarships: Antoinette Graves, JJ Sweat-Pritchard and Jose Delgado Garcia. We had an additional 11 students register for the class.

Each day, the students learn techniques and procedures in floral design and then are required to recreate a design made by instructor Nelson Simpson, AIFD, CFD, PFCI, NCCPF. On the first day of class on Wednesday, all students decorated plants by creating an armature and enhancing with other items. In the afternoon, they learned how to create a formalinear design, and this was their first graded project. On the second day of class, the students learned about sympathy designs and were required to recreate an interpretative funeral spray in a crescent style. The last two days of the class were spent learning and creating body flowers, wedding bouquets and floral jewelry. The graded design was a cascading bridal bouquet made in a holder. The final day of class was more relaxed and students were allowed to utilize their creativity and design floral jewelry. Great creativity!! We had rings, earrings, bracelets, flower crowns, necklaces! Awesome job by all in attendance.