Explore every episode of the podcast Modern Floristry — A Design Blog by Studio Herbage Florist
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Frame We Can't See | 02 Oct 2026 | 00:09:35 | |
Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. At Studio Herbage we train on the phones every week of the year, and what I hear most is a price said out loud and then explained. This episode turns the honest accounting of the last one from the flowers onto the people who sell them, and then onto me: the pocketbook frame every salesperson brings to a call, and the frame I carried through my years building arrangement and bouquet programs in the mass market, before I understood that what I was paid and what I had contributed were two different numbers.
Written and read by James Dempsey, AIFD, CFD, owner and creative director of Studio Herbage Florist in Johnstown and Malta, New York.
Research referenced: Singh, Marinova, Singh & Evans (2018), Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, on salesperson behavior in recorded sales conversations. Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts & Wardle (2010), European Journal of Social Psychology, "How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world."
Read the full essay: https://www.studioherbageflorist.com/blog/10-04-2026/The-Frame-We-Cant-See | |||
| What We Cut Short | 27 Sep 2026 | 00:06:12 | |
Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. In this reading, James dempsey reflects on what floristry actually costs the flowers it depends on. Not the shrink the books already absorb, but the loss standing perfect in the cooler, every stem cut alive, on a schedule that serves our day and not its own. An honest accounting of the ending beneath the beauty, and what it asks of the person who orders the flowers and arranges them anyway. Read aloud by James Dempsey AIFD, CFD - owner and creative director of Studio Herbage Florist Read the full essay: https://www.studioherbageflorist.com/blog/09-20-2026/What-We-Cut-Short | |||
| The Third Run | 07 Sep 2026 | 00:07:31 | |
Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. As summer closes, the field begins to change, and I follow what it is making now. This week that meant driving out to the same farm three times, something I have never done in all my years with them, for flowers that were only ready this week. An essay on working with a season that is ending, and on why the flowers we make are honest precisely because they do not last. Written and read by James Dempsey, AIFD. Part of Modern Floristry, the design blog of Studio Herbage Florist. Read the full essay: https://www.studioherbageflorist.com/blog/09-06-2026/The-Third-Run | |||
| The Date That Cannot Move | 24 Aug 2026 | 00:10:39 | |
Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. A funeral hour is fixed almost as soon as the death is, and whatever the flowers turn out to be, they have to be right at ten o'clock on Thursday. What surprises most families is that the short notice usually has nothing to do with the death. It comes from where flowers sit in the order of the week. James Dempsey AIFD on what a compressed date actually costs, what it does not cost, and the one question that changes the whole conversation. Read by the author. The full essay is published at studioherbageflorist.com. | |||
| What Outlasts a Name | 12 Aug 2026 | 00:10:13 | |
Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. Decades ago, when I was deciding what to call this studio, I deliberately did not call it Flowers by James Dempsey. This essay is about why: about names and legacy, about the standard a practitioner builds that for now lives inside a single person, and about what it would take for a craft's knowledge to outlast the one who carries it. It closes on Halemaʻumaʻu, the crater at the summit of Kīlauea, whose collapsed floor is filling back toward its rim — a reminder that what drains away can come back within a working life. Read by James Dempsey, AIFD. Part of Modern Floristry, a design blog by Studio Herbage Florist. | |||
| What the Stem Wants | 27 Jul 2026 | 00:08:13 | |
Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. On flowers that keep moving after they leave the studio. A tulip goes on growing in the vase, and Bells of Ireland and snapdragon turn against gravity overnight, so an arrangement quietly rearranges itself on a table at home. A reflection on the material's own agency, on what Ikebana taught about following a stem rather than forcing it, and on why the studio tells a client what to expect before the flowers ever go out the door rather than after. Read in full at studioherbageflorist.com/blog. | |||
| The Rose That Serves No One | 14 Jul 2026 | 00:09:37 | |
Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. 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. | |||
| What the Client Leaves With | 25 Jun 2026 | 00:13:46 | |
Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. The Q2 closer. A reflection on what a client carries out the door — the design that lives for weeks, and the change in how they see that doesn't fade with the flowers. On the transformation that happens across years of a long relationship, and why the value of the work was never only in the object. Read in full at studioherbageflorist.com/blog. | |||