The Rose That Serves No One

There is a rose in the studio's Ephratah garden that never once goes into a client's design. It is grown more than almost anything else and cut for no one, kept only for its scent and for the reason it first drew James into growing at all. This essay follows a single July morning from that rose out into the rows that do get cut, the clematis and gooseneck and garden roses bound for a wedding and a sympathy piece the same week, and asks what it means to design from what a particular piece of ground is actually offering, now, rather than from what we had in mind.

Read aloud by James Dempsey AIFD.