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"Feed them three ice cubes a week," a woman murmured. "It's an easy way to measure." She'd come to the opening of the Missouri Botanical Garden's annual orchid show and taken pity on a couple who had just fallen in love (with the species; they'd fallen in love with each other about 50 years earlier). She already knew her orchids; she'd come to the exhibit for design inspiration.
Seeing the flowers' waxy, gentle curves and ruffles through her eyes, I realized they were a primer for interior design. Light and shadow completely transformed them, and I thought about the rooms of my house in first light, in golden afternoon sun, in twilight, in moonlight, in candlelight. Had I the presence of mind, I might have planned my colors accordingly, putting pure white on a porch that caught the moon's bluish glow, pale yellow in a breakfast room, earthy brick red and terra cotta in a kitchen that caught afternoon sun, golds and dark reds in a dining room where we eat by candlelight.
Shape, too, is something I should heed more carefully. The yellow orchid's petals took such refined curves, they softened, without erasing, the classical purity of straight lines. Circles, rectangles, and triangles are like the primary colors, bold and blunt, but sophistication comes when you let them influence each other and combine into something more nuanced and complex.
I stopped short at this orchid, almost laughed aloud at the pop of surprise, the cat's-toy absurdity. I don't have enough sense of humor when I place objects in my home. A giggle opens your eyes a little wider, keeps everything fresh.
All the design principles were in that exhibit room, from balance to asymmetry, wild colors to monochrome, and hot, saturated color to cool pure white. There were variations in size, number, and scale, from a single giant orchid to a cluster of tiny wild ones. There were calm areas of solid color and patterned, striped, spotted sections; grids made by the stripes of a fern in the background. Above all, the orchids reminded me, with their Spanish moss and reflections in water and half-concealed blooms hiding shyly among the foliage, of the importance of mystery and intrigue.
And just when I was thinking about half-obscuring and boxing and leaving doors slightly ajar, I came upon an orchid so revealing, I blushed for it, and then my thoughts turned in the opposite direction, to the diary left open on top of a desk, the treasures visible through glass.
Nature's worth a whole library of design books.
The orchid show runs through March 25.
