Flower arranging came naturally to Vancouver-based digital media professional Nastaran Soofi Siavash. For as long as she can remember she’s been putting together arrangements for her own home, finding passion and solace in this decorative practice. In 2012 she fully realized her desire, migrating away from her full-time position in an art gallery and towards this new creative pursuit. “The first three years were just me exploring flowers, foliage, vessels, and different kinds of design,” Siavash explains. “Trying to balance the floral arts and the floral arranging business; making it a creative enterprise by having clients, weeklies, and events.” Her company, The Wild Bunch, sources its native and medicinal plants from local vendors including Hives for Humanity, filling in seasonal gaps with what’s available wholesale from growers in the Pacific Northwest.
Siavash’s approach to building an arrangement is situational: she places her focus on the lines of each ingredient, positioning them asymmetrically. She puts great value on the imperfect and wild nature of plants. An example of her stylistic voice can be found in the 24 red roses she once brought to a very important event. “It was a dinner for Vogue and Versace at L’Abattoir,” she recalls. “Their branding requirements were sent from headquarters, and they were 24 red roses. I thought, ‘Oh man, that’s not typically my style!’ But I was able to do it in a way they liked that was also very rough and not at all a perfectly symmetrical: the flowers were varying shades of red. I can follow a look, but I always like to mess it up a bit.”
The Wild Bunch puts an emphasis on fun—Siavash doesn’t want flowers to be something you only bring out when someone dies, and instead fights against stuffy and precious arrangements that look awkward alongside the landscape of a messy kitchen. She’s the champion of a well curated mess.
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