Slow Flowers Design by Lucy Henderson
THANK YOU FOR AN INCREDIBLE CELEBRATION OF FLOWERS! STAY TUNED FOR INFORMATION ABOUT SLOW FLOWERS 2027!
On the beautiful grounds of Maine Maritime Museum, a team of designers will create floral sculptures that tell a story and bring people together. The arrangements will be built using local, seasonal flowers and sustainable mechanics.
We invite you to search for all the creations, ask questions, and spend time with the flowers. Through guided tours, education opportunities, and immersive events, we hope to encourage a connection to flowers that promotes sourcing stems from Maine farms, incorporating beauty from our natural landscapes, and choosing sustainable mechanics.
Meet the Floral Artists
Maria Salcines
Fogwood Gardens is flower farm and design studio focusing on sustainable floral artistry in Arrowsic, ME. Maria designs with bold color, offerings from the landscapes, and a belief that flowers have a language of their own. Her creations express the essence of the season, and encourage creating a ritual with flowers. She is inspired by noticing beauty in strange places, the relationship between Flora and Form, and unapologetically romancing life.
Katie Dionne
Born and raised in Maine, Katie has always drawn inspiration from the state’s natural beauty and four seasons. She strives for an aesthetic that is saturated and accentuated by textured greens, showcased through dark atmospheric tones, wild-harvested stems, and diverse foliage. Over the course of her career she has become increasingly focused on sustainability, utilizing seasonal and local items to limit her carbon footprint while maintaining balance in her designs.
Electric Flora is a floral designer who believes flowers should never be boring. Her work is all about energy, color, and texture—arrangements that feel alive and a little unexpected. She loves breaking away from tradition and creating pieces that surprise: bold bouquets, moody centerpieces dripping with jewel tones, or sculptural installations that transform a space. For Michelle, floral design is storytelling—capturing a feeling, sparking joy, and leaving a lasting impression through art made of flowers.
Michelle Rechs
Kathryn Hogan
Kathryn Hogan is a teacher, dried flower artist, and a Maine master gardener with an at home cut flower garden. She creates dried floral designs rooted in textures and movement inspired by Maine's wild meadows and rugged coastlines. Kathryn has her Masters in Education, is a high school ESOL teacher, and has a certificate in Horticulture from USM that has led to her passion for dried flowers. Kathryn loves to support others in exploring various flower drying methods and inspiring others to form a love for dried florals.
Rachel Alexandrou
Rachel Alexandrou is an artist and forager who uses her education in plant science, and collaborative practice, to create experiential work about food, flora, and innovating human relationships to the natural landscape. She has a B.S. in Environmental Horticulture and a 400 hour certificate in community herbalism from the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine and has taught at Haystack School of Crafts and shown work during the Venice Biennale.
Rue Brown
Rue is the owner and designer behind Geraniums Red Delphiniums Blue, creating lush, garden-inspired flowers for weddings and events throughout Maine. With more than 16 years of experience, her work is rooted in seasonality, thoughtful sourcing, and a love of natural, abundant design. Sustainability is an integral part of her practice: she sources locally grown flowers whenever possible, designs without floral foam, reuses and recycles materials, and looks for practical ways to reduce waste without sacrificing beauty.
Griff Comtois and Brent McHale
Brent and Griff started Scape Studios together as a way to bring their passion for flowers and plants to others. Event designs are their main focus, but they also have a love for sculpture and gardening. Growing their own flowers allows them to observe how plants interact with one another and how they change with each season. Much of their work draws inspiration from unique colors, forms and textures of their natural landscape.
Journey Temple is an artist, horticulturist and queer ecocenterist based in midcoast Maine. They first began growing sculpture from seed while studying at MassArt, where their green thumb paralleled their love of making in the Studio for Interrelated Media program. A born scavenger and tinkerer, Journey’s work prioritizes creative reuse, and diverted waste, with a scrappy playground twist. Having worked in botanical gardens, commercial horticulture and at the Maine Flower Collective, they collect skills and aesthetic understanding of organic materials in order to offer humans a playful lens to examine their own relationship to plants and the natural world.
Journey Temple
Laura Pierpont
Laura is an artist whose mediums span florals, farming, photography, death work and creating magic cabin retreats for other artists. Her personal floral work focuses on seasonality, wild foraged materials and large sculptural pieces. Floral arranging for her is a somatic act: a way to be present in the moment and in the body. She grows flowers on her homestead in Swanville, Maine with her husband and works as a freelance florist throughout Maine.
All the flowers used in design will be grown in Maine.
Participating floral artists will either grow their own flowers, sustainably forage plants, or acquire stems from the Maine Flower Collective, a local marketplace for Maine grown flowers. Designers will also have access to hundreds of stems kindly donated by the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and Emma Whitney, owner and operator of The Rooted Pig farm in Richmond, ME.
The Maine Flower Collective is a member-owned cooperative that provides Maine flower growers and wholesale buyers with a centralized sales network and product delivery system. They strive to cultivate a collaborative and sustainable floriculture industry of local flower growers and professionals interested in selling and purchasing seasonal blooms as a reliable alternative to wholesale imported flowers.
Their mission is to connect Maine cut flower growers, florists and designers through an online marketplace and build a community of abundance to strengthen all our businesses, and to do it in ways that are mindful of our impact on our environment and our wider world.
Slow Flowers Schedule
Day One // Thursday, September 17th
Live Installations & Self Guided Tours
Floral artists will arrive and begin their installations on the grounds of the Maine Maritime Museum. With general admission to the museum, you can come observe this process and chat with the designers about their use of sustainable mechanics, chosen flower varieties, and inspiration for their piece.
There is no advance purchase necessary for museum admission. Children 17 and under can visit for free, and passes are often available at many local, public libraries!
Photo: Lisa Gallo
Maine Maritime Museum - General Admission 9:30-5:00
Build a Bouquet Workshop with Fogwood Gardens, Guided Tour, and Lecture in Long Reach Hall
Day Two // Friday, September 18th
Come view the floral exhibition through self guided tours with general admission to the museum, join Maria Salcines of Fogwood Gardens for a Bouquet Building Workshop with local flowers, or attend a guided tour of all the floral installations with each designer followed by a lecture on Maine’s history of Flower Growing.
Maine Maritime Museum - General Admission 9:30-5:00
Build a Bouquet Workshop with Maria Salcines of Fogwood Gardens 2:00-4:00
Create your own bouquet using locally grown flowers! Each participant will receive a bucket of blooms containing a balanced recipe of foliage, filler, and focal flowers. Maria will show you how to use the spiral technique to build bouquets with structure, drama, and intentional color.
Guided Tour of Floral Installations & Lecture on Maine’s History of Flower Farming 5:30-7:30
The evening begins with a guided tour of floral installations with the designers. Attendees will then convene in Long Reach Hall for a lecture from various speakers including the Maine Street Mercantile, The Maine Flower Collective, and Dr. Ankit Singh will be giving a presentation on the history of flower farming in Maine. The space will be collaboratively decorated by floral designers and Maine Street Mercantile to emphasize the importance of gathering at the table and displaying flowers in your home.
Drawing on conversations with flower growers throughout Maine, this presentation from Dr. Ankit Singh offers a behind-the-scenes look at the state’s vibrant flower farming industry. Attendees will learn about the seasonal rhythms, market opportunities, labor demands, climate challenges, and community connections that influence local flower production. Featuring stories and photographs from farms across Maine, the session highlights the people, practices, and passion behind Maine-grown flowers.
Photos: Lisa Gallo
Plantwalk with Giant Daughter & Nightbloom Masquerade with DJ Dr. Fuzz
Day Three // Saturday, September 19th
Ground into the shifting seasons by visiting the floral installations, taking a Plantwalk class with Rachel Alexandrou of Giant Daughter, and letting loose at Nightbloom dance party with DJ Dr. Fuzz
Photo: Lisa Gallo
Maine Maritime Museum - General Admission 9:30-5:00
Wild Edibles Plantwalk with Rachel Alexandrou of Giant Daughter 4:00-6:00
Join forager and wild food cook, Rachel Alexandrou on Saturday, September 19, for an educational walk on how to safely identify, sustainably forage and use wild edible plants as ingredients. The walk will last 2 hours and will end in a sampling of foraged refreshments and recommendations of Rachel’s favorite foraging books. Bring a notebook, something to write with, and a water bottle. This walk is great for beginners to foraging, or plant lovers interested in learning about how to incorporate wild plants in your kitchen.
Nightbloom: Masquerade with DJ Dr. Fuzz 7:00-10:00
Experience Nightbloom Masquerade, a dance party intended for grounding into the earth and celebrating the shift of the season under the open sky. Join Ariel Burns, DJ Dr. Fuzz, for a summer send-off party on the waterfront at the Maine Maritime Museum. Dr. Fuzz spins a musical soundscape that will move and groove you. Craft a floral mask, enjoy local food & drink from onsite vendors (Oysthers & Vessel and Vine), and let loose in a sublime maritime surrounding. The indoor rain location is Long Reach Hall.
Dr. Fuzz (Ariel Burns) has been organizing & hosting perennial dance parties throughout Midcoast Maine and beyond. She transforms dance floors into lively gatherings, fueled by music, joy, and human connection.
Nightbloom Design by Lucy Henderson
Floating Flowers Wall Hanging Class with Sunroom Florals and Deconstruction of Installations
Day Four// Sunday, September 20th
Start your slow Sunday morning by getting crafty with Kathryn Hogan of Sunroom Florals, or observe how florists deconstruct materials, recycle mechanics, and preserve flowers.
Photo: Lisa Gallo
Maine Maritime Museum - General Admission 9:30-5:00
Floating Flowers Workshop with Kathryn Hogan of Sunroom Florals 10:00-12:00
Create a one-of-a-kind botanical wall hanging using naturally dried flowers, delicate seed pods, and a beautiful driftwood branch. In this relaxing, hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to design an arrangement that celebrates the beauty of preserved flowers and natural materials. You’ll explore techniques for drying flowers and then select and arrange dried blooms, attaching them securely with gold or silver wire that you will be able to enjoy for years to come. You will leave with a unique wall hanging that’s ready to display in your home or give as a thoughtful handmade gift. No experience is necessary—just bring your creativity and enjoy a peaceful workshop surrounded by beautiful botanicals.
A big thank you to our sponsors!
This event is supported by Sustainabloom, who works to lead the floriculture industry towards more sustainable practices at every level while making this journey understandable and accessible for everyone.
Established in 2022 by the American Floral Endowment (AFE), Sustainabloom is a collaborative initiative dedicated to leading the floriculture industry toward a future enriched with sustainable practices at every level.
Sustainabloom supports the need for continued floriculture research and communication around increased sustainable practices throughout the industry by creating user-friendly guides and resources. These resources are broken down by topic, allowing businesses to assess where they are and where they can do more.
As a resourceful guide and advocate, their goal is to inspire and support businesses in achieving operational excellence and responsibility, fostering a culture that strives toward embracing the utmost sustainable practices throughout the industry.