A New Leaf for Red Lily
Patricia Vanders will open new location of Red Lily Floral Design in Minaret Mall
Patricia Vanders’ Red Lily Floral Design is blooming in a new location—the 20-year-old Mammoth business is reopening this weekend in the Minaret Mall, with a celebration planned for Saturday, September 16.
Vanders’ floral creations are almost immediately recognizable, as she draws inspiration from the Japanese art of Ikebana (a minimalist style of floral arrangement which flourished under Buddhist masters), and from 19th century botanical artists like Ernst Haeckel and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
“I love the juxtaposition of art and science together,” says Vanders, whose family background rests firmly in the study of horticulture. “Plants are in my bones,” she said on Tuesday, September 12 as she moved around the new space, located next to Command Performance ski rentals, trailed by her two French bulldog puppies, Roger and Tony. Her favorite projects, she says, are “anything creative, anything outside of the norm,” a passion she regularly gets to satisfy serving her unique clientele in the mountains.
Red Lily’s old location, in the red barn on Center Street, was gorgeous inside, decorated with Vanders’ unique sense of style. The new location is equally eye-popping. A towering shelf made of at least ten different tables stacked together hosts funky white ceramic vases, filled with succulents and orchids. Victorian-style tin tiles adorn the ceiling and gilded geometric glass terrariums line antique trunks, which have been bolted into the wall by the consummate handyman, Vanders’ boyfriend Eric Young.
“I asked her, ‘Are you sure you want to drill through these trunks?’ as I held the power drill in my hand,” said Young this week.
The place has the feel of the secret garden, cool and whimsical, with ornate velvet-cushioned chairs and rubber snakes hiding out beneath a stack of Vanders’ business cards. It’s clearly a reflection of Vanders, who decorates her person in crystal prisms, ornate antique rings and starry leggings. Her grandfather was a horticulturist, and his father before him was a landscape architect. Vanders herself ran a nursery in Idyllwild when she was just 16 years old.
