![](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/170915_Emily_Thomson_0960.jpg)
![](https://www.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/headshot-jpeg-pro-crop-800x800.jpg)
If Wednesday Addams were a floral designer, her arrangements would look like Emily Thompson’s: dripping, clambering, creeping, amorphous, and alive despite being very much dead. We’ve covered Emily’s inimitable installations and arrangements for more than a decade, and not once have we used the word “bouquet” (too neat, too colorful) to describe her work. Instead, we used words like “wild and witchy,” “breathtaking,” and, in a moment of extreme understatement “mundane it is not.” Her knack for turning foliage and flowers into arresting forms likely stems from her background as a sculptor and artist before “falling into the medium of flowers,” she says.
Today, the New York City-based designer shares the garden books she returns to time and again (both are fiction!), the plant on her wish list that bears flowers resembling field mice, and the trick to long-lasting cut flowers.
Photography courtesy of Emily Thompson.
I remember lying on the lichen-encrusted rocks of my first childhood home. Giant glacial boulders were covered in “British soldiers.” Tiny worlds for warring battalions.
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino. Elspeth Barker’s O Caledonia.
Graphic, jurassic, idiosyncratic.
Farfugium.
Rose of Sharon.
Podophylum, arisaema, trillium, erythronium, saxifrage, skunk cabbage, epimedium.
I thought I had a shade garden. My shade plants proceeded to fry.
Colorful flowers are overrated.
While tastes in gardens seem to have moved away from impatience borders, in cut flowers I find most people are painfully stuck in highly commercial design where the flowers look aggressively store-bought. The majestic prairies that have entered our garden lexicon should find their way to the vase.
I’ll offer a cut flower tip: boil your stems. After a fresh cut, a minute in boiling water will revive and prolong the life of many (nay, most) stems.
This is my job, so I like to do something understated. A sprig or a weed.
Stone wall. I’m mad for rocks.
Rocks from my family’s mountainside home in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
My giant pole lopper, though sometimes I get over-zealous.
I wear whatever I had on that day and ruin it.
My friends at Landcraft and Issima bring me unmatched treasures. [See our Quick Takes with Issima founder Taylor Johnston here.] I recently discovered Mount Venus Nursery in Dublin. And the soon-to-be The Field Nursery in the Cotswolds that I cannot wait to experience.
Oliver’s Arisarum proboscideum From Mount Venus Nursery.
Sakonnet Garden in Little Compton, Rhode Island.
A collaboration with the living world needs no explanation.
Thank you so much, Emily! (You can follow her on Instagram @emilythompsonflowers.)
For our full archive of Quick Takes, go here.
v5.0
When you register as a free Member of the Remodelista family of websites (Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home), you gain access to all current posts plus 10 archived posts per month, our internal bookmarking tool, and the community bulletin board.
Member benefits include:
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Subscriber benefits include:
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Subscriber benefits include:
Benefits include:
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Subscriber benefits include:
When you register as a free Member of the Remodelista family of websites (Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home), you gain access to all current posts plus 10 archived posts per month, our internal bookmarking tool, and the community bulletin board.
Member benefits include:
If at any time you want to become a Subscriber and enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to all our content, just go to the My Account link and choose Subscribe.
Advertising funds our work at Gardenista and helps us provide you with a daily dose of garden inspiration & design. We hope you’ll consider disabling your adblocker for Gardenista so we can continue our mission: a well-designed garden for all.
Thank you for your support.
Have a Question or Comment About This Post?
(0) Join the conversation