Farm Tour and Dahlia Workshop

Full Day Dahlia Workshop

with Christopher Spitzmiller

Saturday, September 19, 2026 · 10 am – 4 pm

September is the dahlia's month. The fields go loud with them — spiked, curled, cupped, open-faced. Smoky peach. Weathered plum. Electric coral. Whipped cream. No two blooms alike, and none of them polite.

This year, we're spending a full day inside that. And we're not spending it alone.

Christopher Spitzmiller — the ceramicist whose glazes have found their way into the White House, Architectural Digest, and The Wall Street Journal — is joining us as our floral design leader. He grows his own flowers and raises heritage chickens at Clove Brook Farm, wrote A Year at Clove Brook Farm, sits on the boards of the Garden Conservancy and Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, and throws the kind of garden party people talk about for years. For one day, that eye — for color, for abundance, for the small gesture that makes an arrangement sing — comes here.

The Day

A walk through the fields. Debra Kaye leads it herself. Not a tour — a conversation. How a dahlia grows, from first shoot to full bloom. What to look for while it's still in the ground, if you want to spot a great flower before it's cut. Whether to fertilize and when, how to harvest, and how different choices can shape how a bloom opens and how long it lasts. You'll leave knowing dahlias from the ground up.

Lunch, outside, among people who also can't stop talking about flowers. The best conversations at Bear Creek happen over a plate, not a program. Come hungry.

An afternoon with Christopher. He'll walk through his own philosophy of arranging — one built on letting a flower be what it already is, rather than forcing it into someone else's idea of a bouquet. Then you'll build your own, dahlia in hand, with him beside you. Class sizes stay small on purpose. You get real feedback, not a demo you watched from row six.

A finished arrangement, and a place to show it off. We'll have a backdrop set up on the farm, built to hold its own against whatever you've just made. Bring your camera.

Optional: Take Christopher home with you

A limited number of Spitzmiller cachepots — medium, green marble, 7.5" — will be available to arrange in and keep. Add it at registration.

What's Included

• A generous cut of peak-season Bear Creek dahlias and companion blooms
• All arranging materials, including compote and knife (or your cachepot upgrade)
• A take-home floral guide
• A discount toward your 2026 dahlia tuber order
• A class small enough that you're not competing for attention

Who This Is For

• Floral designers ready to push past technique into something more intuitive.
• Flower people — hobbyists, obsessives, the newly dahlia-struck — who want to grow, cut, and arrange with more confidence.
• Flower farmers who want to talk shop about varietal performance and field management with people who actually lose sleep over it too.

Details

$595 per person. Class size is strictly limited — that's not a marketing line, it's how we keep the day worth what you paid for it.