The magnet program is a key part of the Hawks’ Nest, and it would not be complete without the plant strand and Floral Design, a class where students learn to arrange and for floral arrangements. However, all good things must come to an end, including this school year’s Floral Design class. “We’re at the end of our flower time for this school year,” said Floral Design teacher Erika Edwards.

     “A lot of [the work for the class] is behind the scenes,” according to Edwards. “We do order forms ahead of time, and that lets us know how many flowers to order.” 

     “[For Prom] we spend usually two or three days before the actual flowering day to prepare the corsages, making bows, putting the leaves on. It’s a couple-day process for Prom. For Mother’s Day, I let one of my advanced students plan out the arrangements. She decided what flowers we were going to use in the arrangements and came up with the order to send to the wholesaler, and then she taught the class how to make the arrangements.” Edwards said. Senior Laura Erisman was in charge of the Mother’s Day arrangements this year.

     “Mother’s Day is the last big community sale that we do.” Edwards said, the main thing on the horizon for her students now that the event is over is their final exam, where they “design their own arrangement.” They use the skills they gained in the course and “add up how much it is going to cost, and they come up with how much they want to sell their arrangement for.” Then they get to take it home with them.

     “There’s definitely times throughout the year where it’s a little bit busier, if you ask my students they’ll say arrangement days are chaos days, but we get it done and during peak seasons- Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and then Easter, Prom, and Mother’s Day, [which were] all right in a row [this year]. We have a lot of hands-on days versus in those downtimes [between seasons] where we have more of the classroom side of things,” said Edwards.

     “Floral design is my favorite class to teach, I think because it’s more laid back and allows students to use their creativity to do their work, rather than it being [similar to a] core class, where the work is a little bit more rigorous.” Edwards believed that “floral design allows students to use their creativity to complete their assignments. I think the hands-on aspect of the class allows me to be more flexible with the type of work that I assign, so rather than worksheets and homework, we’re doing hands-on arranging.”

          Edwards’ favorite part of the class is “being able to make other people happy. “When students deliver the arrangements, some of the email replies we get or when the customers see their arrangements when they pick them up is a refreshing part of the day, I get a lot of positive feedback.”