by Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, March 13, 2026
The Garden Club of Harvard’s Bloom N Art exhibit at Fivesparks is always a welcome reminder that March will end and warmer weather and colorful flowers will follow. This year marks the 10th anniversary of this collaboration between Bromfield art students and members of the Garden Club. A private reception from 5 to 7 p.m. for arrangers, student artists and families, and art teachers will be Friday, March 27; the show is open free to the public Saturday, March 28, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
There is a well-documented process that makes preparations run smoothly each year. Bromfield art teachers send pictures of the chosen student artwork to Garden Club’s 10-year veteran “matchmaker” Deb Dowson. Then a kind of online speed dating begins in which arrangers hurry to choose the top five pieces they would like to interpret. For Dowson, it’s “like a puzzle,” but most people get one of their top choices. This year the invitation for artwork was extended to students at Hildreth Elementary School, and of the 34 pieces of art in the show, six are from HES, one created by a team of two students.
Each arranger gets an idea for a flower arrangement that would complement the art in some way—colors, shape, or mood. The first couple of years, a workshop with lots of examples was helpful. Now experienced arrangers help those trying it for the first time. There’s a day when the arrangers see the actual artwork, which often turns out to be somewhat different from their pictures and can send the arranger back to the drawing board. Interested arrangers meet to do a mock-up of their plan and get helpful suggestions and encouragement. Blue is a color frequent in art but scarce in nature, and there are always people wanting a source for blue flowers. Often the recourse is the flower market in Boston.
The club remains grateful to the initiator of the event, former Garden Club president Shirley Boudreau, who died in April 2020 after a long illness. She first posed the idea to board members in 2014. She said she had been inspired by a visit to Needham’s Art in Bloom show, a collaboration between the Beth Shalom Garden Club and the Needham High School art department.
The next year Boudreau took a few other Garden Cub members with her to the exhibit. They all agreed it would be fun to try a similar show in Harvard and that it would be a nice opportunity for the club to collaborate with the high school and have an intergenerational project. The rest of the members agreed, and several signed up immediately for this opportunity to express their creativity. Bromfield art teachers Elizabeth Hoorneman, Cynthia Fontaine, and Cindy Harris were enthusiastic about the collaboration.
That fall a committee began planning the event. The first decision was the name of the show. Many museums sponsor a late winter Art in Bloom show; the Garden Club thought it was appropriate for them to put flowers ahead of art and came up with Bloom N Art. The first year’s publicity committee couldn’t decide if there should be one apostrophe or two around the “N”—so they dropped it altogether.
The first Bloom N Art was held in 2017 in Volunteers Hall, with the support of Library Director Mary Wilson. There were 23 pieces of art interpreted by 23 Garden Club members, displayed on folding tables with white tablecloths. The next year the show had Sunday hours, and there was a reception on Sunday afternoon for students and arrangers to meet one another. Bromfield teachers were invited, and one of them remarked,“It’s nice for the kids to see how their work is being interpreted.” The Cultural Council supported Bloom N Art for the first four years, helping the club to get the program established.
In its fourth year, the March 14 event was abruptly cut short because of the pandemic. Marijke Vallaeys recalled the day: “Everything was proceeding as usual at Volunteers Hall on March 13. People brought their finished arrangements. Many of us were organizing things; the Harvard Press photographer came by; Kathy Jackson was concentrating on assembling her flowers in a dog dish. On Saturday morning, we had welcomed several visitors when, around noon, Mary Wilson delivered the news: All public buildings were to close immediately. The evacuation was swift. AnaMaria [Nanra] and I carefully moved the floral arrangements into the hallway one by one to photograph them. From there, we loaded them onto library carts and shuttled them down the elevator. We contacted the arrangers to collect their work.”
The next year was a virtual show, where viewers could see a video of the paired art and arrangements on a link from the Garden Club website, created by Patrick Vallaeys. A workshop had been held on Zoom, and a practice session took place on the General Store patio, despite a chilly wind blowing. It was no surprise that some sort of mask appeared in many art works that year.
In 2022 Bloom N Art returned live—this time at Fivesparks. Patrick Vallaeys had built a large structure covered in wrinkle-proof black cloth that became an elegant backdrop for the art and arrangements. There were other changes that year as well. Middle school art was no longer represented. Participation had grown to 38 high school artists. There were 30 arrangers, so some artwork was combined and some arrangers created more than one interpretation. Garden Club members observed that there were fewer traditional landscapes and self-portraits and lots of digital photography and photoshopped pieces. Some arrangers complained about this shift while others were excited by the challenge. There were a number of two-sided masks, showing the “inside” and “outside” of the artist. This year there are entries from Fontaine’s infographics course.
Every Bloom N Art show has been documented in some way. Since 2021, Patrick Vallaeys has created a video, with each arrangement and its artwork photographed against a black background. Last year’s show is available at bloomnart.org. This year, Harvard Media Cooperative is producing an anniversary video, “10 Years of Bloom N Art.” The video will be projected during the show and will also be available online afterward.
Boudreau’s caveat that “the only judge is the viewer” has been honored every year, letting visitors enjoy being art critic and flower show judge, both at the same time.