Parisian FlowerDesign—Bringing French Floral Artistry Home

For my birthday, my oldest daughter surprised me with a gift that felt almost cinematic: a trip to Paris, not just as tourists, but as students of French floral design and cuisine. My younger daughter joined, and suddenly, the three of us were on a plane, bound for a city that’s always seemed to exist a little outside of reality—especially when you’re there to learn something new.

Our floral design class was tucked away in the Place des Pyramides, inside an old Parisian building with cavernous stone arches and a sense of quiet history. Our instructor, Catherine Muller, is a name in the floral world—her reputation stretching from New York to Paris to London. She swept into the room with the energy of someone who’s seen a thousand bouquets and still finds each one a little bit magical. She was sharp, funny, and had that easy confidence that makes you want to listen closely.

We worked with fifteen kinds of flowers—including Lupines, French Hops, Wild Roses, and more, as luck would have it, peonies at their peak. The blooms arrived fresh from the Rungis Flower Market, their colors almost too vivid to be real. Before we could start arranging, Catherine had us wrap our vases with branches and thick string, giving each one a wild, garden-like base. It was a small detail, but it set the tone for everything that followed: natural, a little unruly, and deeply intentional.

Catherine’s method was part lesson, part performance. “Hold the bouquet in your non-dominant hand,” she said, “and let the flowers tell you where they want to go.” She urged us to resist the urge to control every stem, to let things breathe and move. Flowers, she insisted, are at their best when they’re given space to be themselves.

By the end, I understood what Catherine meant about freedom and generosity in design. She told us each flower had its own story, its own journey from grower to market to our hands. And as we admired our work, I realized how much I wanted to bring this sense of movement and life back to Springdale Weddings and Events—arrangements that felt alive, with every bloom given the space to shine. We highly recommend Catherine’s classes, www.catherinemuller.com