In the back of Coll’s Garden Center & Florist in Jaffrey, Bonnie Coll Cutter is making an arrangement, and amid the aster and liatris flowers, is an unusual bouquet addition — plastic bottles.
The bottles are hung around the silver container, painted to intentionally resemble a trash can.
It’s thematically appropriate for the occasion — to stand in front of Jaffrey’s weekly Amos Fortune Forum lecture series speaker Duncan Watson, who gave a lecture based around his experience working at the Keene transfer station and recycling center, and his book, “Everyone’s Trash.”
It’s a long-running tradition, now, for Cutter to create a flower arrangement themed around each Amos Fortune talk.
How does one make an appealing flower arrangement out of the theme of “trash”?
“You would be surprised,” joked Cutter.
Indeed, the arrangement is already well underway.
“For me, it’s the highlight of the week,” said Cutter, as she was putting together the arrangement for Watson’s talk. “What are we going to make this week?”
Cutter prints out the biography of each speaker, hanging it above her workstation and reading it several times to come up with a theme. If, as in Watson’s case, the speaker has written a book, she looks at the cover for ideas — Watson’s book cover includes the character of “Recycling Sam”, an Uncle Sam-inspired figure holding a globe and a trashcan in a triumphant pose. So, among the floral arrangements, Cutter has added a globe and an Uncle Sam top hat.
Her flower choices include greenery such as eucalyptus and wildflowers over showy exotics, and plastic water bottles act as vases for carnations, in her own nod to recycling.
Cutter has been creating floral arrangements for 38 years. She said it was something that grew out of customer demand. Her father, Philip Coll, told her, “Prove to me there’s a call for it,” and gave her a small room in the family garden center. It had a cooler and no running water, and Cutter got to work.
“Within six months, I had proved to him it was a blooming thing,” Cutter said.
Her father renovated the back of the store, and the florist has been there ever since.
Cutter said she tries to bring personal touches to all her arrangements, saying that she views what she does as “painting with flowers.” She’s known for taking what, in the flower world, are bold choices, saying she makes it a goal to make the church ladies look at arrangements that mix pink and orange flowers — typically clashing colors — and say, “Oh, that looks nice.”
“I always say, ‘Flowers don’t fight. People do,'” Cutter said.
And, she said, that kind of feedback is one of her favorite parts of the Amos Fortune Forum. Every week, she receives comments on her creations.
“It gives people something to talk about,” Cutter said.