Great hotels know the power of gorgeous flowers. For instance, when you step into the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel (9641 Sunset Blvd., thebeverlyhillshotel.com), the huge, stunning arrangements immediately catch your eye and boost your mood. And whether you live locally and are stopping by for Sunday brunch or you’re staying in a bungalow for a two-week vacation, every time you pass the flowers, you enjoy their radiance and lovely fragrance.
Silver Birches in Pasadena, silverbirches.net, part of the Teleflora network, supplies, designs and maintains flowers for all common areas, room service and functions at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I checked in with Silver Birches’ floral division director Michael Daniels, who has been designing for 25 years and is marking his third year with the hotel, to see what the work entails.
Daniels says the lobby flowers change once a week (typical for upscale hotels). How many flowers does he use each week for the common areas? It can vary from a massive branch accentuated with a few flowers to a stem count of 300 or more.
Being fresh is important literally and figuratively. He uses blooms that offer longevity (amaryllis, cymbidium orchids, lilies) and always looks for ways to reinvent and stay off the beaten path – for example, using kalanchoe as a cut flower. Also, right now, he’s “mad about gladioli.”
He says he likes to play on the Beverly Hills Hotel’s tropical vibe by mixing tropical flowers with seasonal blooms, such as when he recently combined pink bromeliads with pink cherry blossom. For room service flowers, he’s created a signature Art Deco look.
Key to his success is holding true to his own design aesthetic. That can be a challenge at times since flower arranging is highly subjective and each person who looks at the arrangements will have a different opinion. “If you try to please everyone, you get vanilla,” he says.
Flower Fact of the Day: Two students in Queens were chosen to welcome Pope Benedict XVI with flowers when he arrives in New York this week. Read the full story at: ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=80299
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