Creating floral arrangements for the April 16 Memorial

Today in the Floral Design class, we are building all 32 sprays for the April 16th memorial. Yeah, I chose this one because she was a colleague of mine. The students who take the class, there's a hundred of them. They're volunteering to make these arrangements today. The TAs are volunteering to do this. And this is Ut Prosim at it's definition. So a spray is a traditional design used in time of remembrance. We're also making three wreaths. Two will be placed in front of Burruss Hall on Saturday morning, and the third wreath will be placed in front of the chapel. Some of the common flowers that we're working with today are larkspur, roses, carnations, tulips, irises. There are three different types of flowers. The first one is a line flower, which is more like a linear-based flower. Great for creating the outline of the shape. The second one is a mass flower, which is like bigger, sort of bigger flowers that we work with. And those are great to fill in those empty spaces to make like sort of that mound shape that we want. And then the filler flowers are more just like really tiny pieces of like flower blooms. And those are great to sort of fill in this empty small like holes that we've made between the line flowers and the mass flowers. And that fills up the entire design very well. You know, each of the sprays is done with different flowers that were requested by the families. And so it's a good way, show a sense of individualism while also showing like they belonged as part of this community. And this community still loves and cherishes them and welcomes them home every year. And that's why it's important to me to be a part of this process. I hope when the families see these arrangements that they know that the students made these with care and love and thought, and remembrance, and Hokie Spirit.