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The Temecula Valley is Southern California’s Wine Country. Over 30 wineries populate the region’s rolling hills and sprawling valleys producing a variety of wines. It’s no surprise that this region has become a popular event destination. This month, American AgCredit held its annual Customer Appreciation Dinner at Avensole Winery and Resendiz Brothers was asked to provide the flowers. We were excited to be able to use an assortment of beautiful protea that we don't often have available all at once, and we loved the idea of adding yellow callas to the mix. The colorful combination of ivory, yellow, orange, pink, green and silver was a treat to work with and a feast for the eyes. On ivory linens with burgundy napkins the centerpieces blended perfectly. Displayed in rustic whitewashed wooden containers we mixed an assortment of protea, pincushions, banksia, leucadendron, berzelia, brunia, eucalyptus and callas. Each centerpiece was unique and creatively designed adding a specia...

Our fields are looking a little more colorful these days thanks to ‘Grandicolor’, a new hybrid protea from Australia. This beautiful cultivar is a combination of P. grandiceps and P. aurea, a very unusual and unique cross to say the least. Its greenish-cream bracts, which deepen to peach at the base, have a delicate pinkish rim and conspicuous hairs like the grandiceps and surround rusty-red centers. Grandicolor produces dainty, petite blooms off and on from autumn through spring. The egg-shape foliage is small and leathery with a silvery-green hue and the stems straight and upright like the aurea. From our field to the vase Grandicolor lives up to its name!

Amidst a scenic Wine Country backdrop in charming barns full of beautiful “garden-inspired” floral arrangements, Mel and I joined Sunset Magazine’s Garden Editor and dinner host, Johanna Silver, along with 120 guests for a chic Field to Vase Dinner on the grounds of Cornerstone Sonoma , home of Sunset’s new test garden. Johanna started the evening off with a tour of the beautiful 11,000-square-foot garden that includes a “flower room” designed by San Francisco florist Alethea Harampolis of Homestead Design Collective . Sunset Magazine’s Garden Editor, Johanna Silver During the reception and dinner, we enjoyed an array of savory cheeses and charcuterie while sipping on wine provide by Dry Creek Winery . Chef Kyle Kuklewski of Ramekins Culinary School, Special Events, and Inn captivated our taste buds with a four-course family style dinner dishes showcasing Sonoma’s amazing bounty. However, the flowers were truly the 'main attraction' of this event! There were beautiful gard...