Senior VCAL student Rosalie De Francesco (Year 12 Purple) was a gold medal winner in the Intermediate Student Floristry competition at last weekend's Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.
Rosalie has her sights set on a career in floristry one day, but for now is studying a Certificate III in Floristry at Marjorie Milner College as part of her VCAL course with MLMC. She also works at Mooroolbark florist Blooms on Brice, where she has been completing her VCAL placement.
Here she writes about what it took to create the piece and what it means to win the award:
It took a few weeks to come up with a design, tossing up what would be suitable for the flower show. I firstly had to take into account the amount of time I had (I had only six hours to create what I wanted to do). When I decided on the design being the nest, I then practised this at TAFE a couple of times from start to finish and they helped with ideas and suggestions.
In the brief provided, we only have to use 60% horticultural products (being sticks, foliage, bark, flowers, etc). They also supplied a boat-shaped container which all the competitors had to use in some way. Our design must not exceed 1.5m x 1m and all fresh flowers had to be well conditioned and last five days.
Winning this award means a lot. I have learned many skills, like working under pressure, designing ideas, etc. and I’m honoured to represent my employer (Blooms on Brice), my TAFE (Marjorie Milner College) and also MLMC, as I have learnt so many skills from all three.
I will be continuing floristry next year, as I will have about half a year of my course left, and I’ll still be working at Blooms on Brice, but hopefully I’ll start focusing on my own business, Rosie Posie Floral Designs, as well — and, of course, enter the Garden Show competition again, but in the Advanced section.
