Season of Plenty

Summer's fresh, vibrant colors give artists of all sorts plenty of inspiration. Karin Jeffcoat is no exception. The Aiken, South Carolina, floral designer approaches her arrangements with a painter's appreciation for color and a sculptor's sense of form.

The graphic simplicity and intense hues of a dahlia, for instance, make her nearly rhapsodic. "I love this flower," she says. "It reminds me of a honeycomb."

Born to a Polish mother and a Swedish father, Jeffcoat credits her European upbringing with forming her attitudes about flowers. "My mother arranged flowers, and I grew up going to the floral markets with her all the time," she says. "Americans have this idea that flowers have to be in coolers. But I keep all my flowers in buckets, like they do in Europe, so the flowers are easily at hand."

In fact, Jeffcoat has plans to open a 'bucket shop' in Aiken that will allow customers to browse through the fresh flowers and assemble their own bouquets.

Because Jeffcoat works primarily on weddings, special events, and special orders, she is sharply attuned to the vagaries of floral fashion. "Everybody seems to want color these days," the designer says, "and people are more adventurous. They are asking for unusual flowers, so we try to bring in different things. My supplier in Augusta, Georgia, can get anything."

Another trend that Jeffcoat has noticed is using old-fashioned flowers with fresh appeal: "I love to work with lilacs, hydrangeas, and even gladiolus," she says. "Everybody thinks of gladiolus as funeral flowers, but I love to use them in different ways, wiring them and bending them back into the arrangement so that they look like a flowering vine. It's all about looking at something familiar and seeing it in a new way."