Alex Crowder, the florist and founder behind Field Studies Flora, has a gift for finding beauty where others wouldn't think to look. Her practice, beloved here in New York, is one built on curiosity, seasonality, and a deep affection for nature's most overlooked treasures — the seed pod, the weed, the wayward stem. Walking the city this time of year, Alex sees what most of us miss: life insisting on itself from every median, stoop, and crack in the sidewalk.
For our latest installment of Table Notes, we invited her to bring that same unhurried, wide-eyed sensibility to the table.
Arriving with petunias, heuchera, and salpiglossis sinuata: a trio bound by their shared role as prolific pollinator plants, each producing nectar-rich blooms that sustain bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies across a long flowering season. While Alex prepared each stem for placement, we spoke to her about city roses, 19th century nature writing, and Monet's water lilies.
Where do you find yourself noticing flowers most in New York?
This time of year all manner of flora are bursting forth. The medians on the West Side Highway, my neighbors' stoops in Bed-Stuy, city parks, grand entrances to high rise apartments uptown — every corner of the city seems to have a plot of green, often speckled with a saturated bloom or two. There is a symphony of verdant life rising from this city. It's a delightful time of year for a walk. It's my version of going to a museum or gallery. Inspiration everywhere.
Like you, Constance Spry famously loved a weed as much as a rose. Are there scruffier stems or slightly awkward flowers you're especially fond of?
Firstly, thank you for referencing me in the same sentence as Mrs. Spry. She paved the way for the work I, and many other florists, are doing now. I could give you a hundred answers to this question. Right now, I'm quite taken with all the different clovers, many of which have extraordinary long vase lives. I'm looking at a red clover stem on my desk that's been blooming for two weeks. They're so important for pollinators and for soil health, and often completely looked over when it comes to featuring them in floral arrangements. Some, like yellow clover, have an intoxicating scent. I love having them around the studio.
"Think outside the box. Otherwise, we're all sketching with the same 12 crayons when there is an entire art store of supplies to explore."
Which gardeners, florists, or influential design figures have stayed with you over the years?
Well, obviously Constance Spry. Her integration of wild and edible ingredients into her work changed the way floristry at large thought about composition. Georgia O'Keeffe's worship of the floral form had an impression from a young age — I have spent much time in a similar state, pouring over every detail of a petal. There is a long lineage of influences that have helped form my view: Andy Goldsworthy, David Nash, Charles Darwin, Michael Pollan, Dan Barber, Hilma af Klint, Rachel Ruysch, Emily Thompson, Sarah Ryhanen, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and all the people behind the Disney movie Fantasia, to name a few.
What books, references, or bits of ephemera do you return to most often?
We have an ever growing library of dog-eared books at the studio, many filled with my notes in the margins or highlights on nearly every page. Any catalog of Andy Goldsworthy's work will be poured over. We have several out of print gardening books that have been an endless source of inspiration — more so than floristry books. My favorites are the books on wildflowers. I find the writing, particularly from the first half of the 19th century, before the advent of so much of our modern technology, to be equal parts comedic and educational. People taken with plants so intensely that they need to write about it often have excellent observations and entertaining anecdotes. They're the kind of people I'd want to invite to a dinner party.
What flower feels most like New York in the summer to you?
Roses. While they mainly bloom before the summer equinox, there are still a few stragglers left in brownstone gardens or abandoned lots. It's the state flower, chosen by school children. Some state flowers were chosen by the legislature, by public vote, and some — most adorably — by school children. Our New York kids didn't specify exactly which rose, just a rose. I like to imagine it's a field rose.
If you could spend an afternoon in any garden — past or present — where would you go?
My maternal grandmother Othella's overgrown iris garden in Troy, Missouri in 1995, and the patch of bluebells that grew wild in the woods about a mile away. Sissinghurst in any era. Piet Oudolf's personal garden. Monet's home in 1900 to see the water lilies. Or anywhere in the western states during a super bloom of wildflowers.
What do people misunderstand most about floristry as a craft? And what would you like to see more of within it?
We, as humans, have had a long evolutionary partnership with flowers. First they signaled the potential for food — a flower often appears before a plant produces fruit. Now, and for centuries, we have used flowers to mark important moments and rituals in our lives. Our relationship with flowers is as ancient as our time on this planet, which means we are hardwired to like them. A fact I am very pleased with as a florist — though this affection can blind us, we don't look past the beautiful bloom to the source. How did it come to be in front of us? Because of the farm to table movement in food, so many of us are now more selective about where we purchase what we eat. We ponder questions around locality, pesticide use, labor practices, and carbon footprint when it comes to the food on our plates. The same questions should be applied to the flowers on our tables.
"There is a symphony of verdant life rising from this city."
Field Studies has always shared flowers not just visually, but intellectually too. What conversations around flowers and the natural world feel most important to you right now?
Diversity. People — both clients and florists — have an incredibly limited understanding of materials. I'd like to see more diversity of ingredients and thought in this industry. A fallen branch in your garden, a weed you just pulled from between sidewalk cracks, an extended vine from a pea plant, petunias from the local garden center. Think outside the box. Otherwise, we're all sketching with the same 12 crayons when there is an entire art store of supplies to explore.
Field Studies feels as much about learning from plants as arranging them. What has working so closely with flora taught you outside of floristry itself?
Nothing happens as fast as I want or expect it to. My understanding of beauty will continue to expand. Our future relies on our desire to collaborate with, not extract from, the natural world.
From the classic Catalina motif to the Fiddlehead-feel of our Inez tablecloth, Alex chose objects that would compliment each present bloom.
