Floral Designer | Home: Venice

Los Angeles magazine, July 2009

Photograph by David Tsay

Not your garden variety: “Sculptural but not too forced” is how Jennifer McGarigle describes her approach at Floral Art, her Venice shop. Unlike most arrangements, McGarigle’s works are as carefully considered from the back as from the front. She layers pink and brown flax leaves to create stripes (“like the textile of pants from the ’70s”) and uses steel grass as a stiff counterpoint to a bouquet’s soft petals. “Even something with garden roses and peonies will have corners and edges—a defined, architectural shape.”  The Pollinator: After a single day at Loyola Marymount, McGarigle quit to pursue the profession that had earned her pocket money as an undergrad at downtown’s Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. Her ethereal inventions often contain pedestrian components, such as chrysanthemums and bamboo. “People have bad associations with carnations and Gerbera daisies. But it’s all in the way you do it. Put them in a cool Lucite trough, or submerge the arrangement.” In bloom: McGarigle has designed a collection of floral-themed furniture that sells in the shop alongside the flowers. » 1338 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, 310-392-1633.