Lara Welker: Local wreath-maker and gardener

When did your spark for gardening start?

My mom was an incredible gardener, but she mostly gardened to grow food for us, so huge amounts of lettuce and kale and potatoes and corn and tomatoes. I’ve never been much of a vegetable gardener. I had a rental previously, but I wanted to get my own house with my own space. There was space here and I just started planting things and getting interested and loving it more and more.

I do the flower stand occasionally and haphazardly, really just when I have extra flowers. This is a small residential city lot, and flower production isn’t my main thing. I like just having flowers in the landscape, but sometimes I do have extra and that’s when I put them out.

What was the reaction to the flower stand?

It’s hard to know because it’s an honor system. I don’t often interact with people. I just notice that the flowers are gone and usually there’s some money in the jar. I know that people appreciate, if not the flower stand, at least the flowers growing in my yard.

About 10 years ago, one time the money box on the flower stand was stolen, I had a tin can sitting there, and I got all bent out of shape. Like, ‘I’m not going to do the flower stand any more if people can’t honor the system.’ I was telling this to my neighbor, whose son was in second grade. A little while later she told me she had shared with her son that something had been stolen and that I wasn’t going to do the flower stand anymore. Her son said, ‘But mom, that flower stand is one of the things that makes me feel safe in this neighborhood.’ That was the first thing that gave me a clue that it wasn’t just about the flower stand. It added to a sense of neighborhood closeness and character.

How did you get started wreath-making?

I started about four years ago. It was a convergence of circumstances: A friend of mine gave me the wreath crimper and that same year, I had taken a couple months off work so my income was lower than usual. I was feeling like a little extra money might be nice, and I had lots of time in my work. I just started gathering materials and playing around with it. 

It takes 45 minutes to an hour to make a wreath just standing at the crimper, but it takes more time to gather and prepare the materials.

Where do you find the materials?

Sometimes stuff is from people’s yards, my yards, but I do a lot of clomping around the woods and along the river. I pick up greens from the parks after a good windstorm. It just really depends. I always have my clippers with me.

Why do you like wreath-making?

It’s very simple; it’s formulaic in a way. At the same time, it’s fun to create balance and symmetry. I love the variety of materials, like I like to use feathery stuff and bunchy stuff and wispy stuff.

Plants are beautiful, so it’s really hard to create something super ugly just because the materials themselves are gorgeous. Winter feels like such a dead time of year sometimes, so it’s actually a very cool practice to be out foraging, and I get obsessive about it. There are red twigs, white branches, evergreens with a silvery underside, or shiny shallon leaves. I find myself looking at and seeing a lot more in the deadness of winter.