Alice Palmer, a founding member of the California Native Plant Society, accompanied us on our first visit to Yosemite National Park. She and her friends came to the park several times each year to see the native flora in bloom and then to lunch in The Ahwahnee Hotel dining room. One of the highlights of each trip to the hotel were interesting seasonal floral displays created by the late Carl Stephens, the Ahwahnee’s talented landscape gardener, floral designer, and native-plant expert for nearly forty years.
Though award-winning floral designer and author Richard Kollath created special seasonal floral arrangements during our frequent site visits to the hotel, we also developed and administered a flowering plant program to be managed by the staff gardener. Instead of relying on expensive and perishable cut stems, our plan was built around flowering seasonal plants, shipped to the hotel in black plastic nursery pots and displayed in tasteful ceramic planters. Once we’d built an inventory of containers and identified locations throughout the hotel for floral displays, we administered the program long-distance, purchasing and shipping live seasonal plants that looked good for weeks – and sometimes months – at a time; an economical model that can be adapted to any property.
