Back in August, we got a call from a guy named Chadwick Brooks, who happens to be the editor of Kansas City Home Design. Chadwick was planning a feature article on a great home in Mission Hills and he needed a florist to spruce it up a bit. How could we turn him down?

As is often the case with magazine photoshoots, we had very little time to plan. Drue and I showed up on the site with buckets of flowers and open minds. The photographer was Alistair Tutton. As a British fellow, he might seem like an unlikely candidate to shoot photos of houses in the midwest, but honestly there is none better.

We must have shot ten rooms all together. Alistair works fast and Chadwick is so intuitive and open in his art direction that the process was very refreshing. Our biggest challenge was just keeping up with them. We set up a temporary flower shop in the garage. Keep in mind this was August – not the best time to be working flowers in a hot garage. It was so much fun, though. It was sweat, stems and blooms in a big crushed up pile on the floor while we blazed through ten large arrangements in fantastic vintage containers.

Thankfully, the house itself was great inspiration, with a quirky floorplan, a bit of rustic charm, and a few fantastic Thomas Hart Benton sketches for decor. At the end of the day we got some very nice shots and had a wonderful time.

The results