The 1993 Frances Jones Poetker Award went to Pauline Runkle, a floral designer and owner of Floral Artistry, a floral and landscape design business in Manchester -by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.
The award is bestowed annually by the American Horticultural Society on a person who has significantly increased public appreciation of creative floral design.
Pauline Runkle's floral creations have become a
mainstay of the Boston arts scene. For 10 consecutive years she has contributed displays
to the Boston museum of Fine Arts flower festival, "Art-in-Bloom." In 1989
Runkle played a key role in revamping the stage design of the Boston Pops, exchanging
stark light panels for blankets of blooms. Runkle and Florist Artistry staff have worked
for the orchestra's national telecasts ever since. And last winter Runkle was consulted by
WGBH, the Boston public television station that originates a major portion of PBS
programming, to do floral designs for the set of "Masterpiece Theater".
Settings for her work have ranged from the sumptuously materialistic to the spiritually
sublime. In 1990 her displays graced the windows of Boston's Tiffany and Company. the
following year, when the Dalai Lama of Tibet visited Cornell University and addressed an
audience of 12.000 people, he was surrounded by Runkle's floral creations.
During the past 29 years, Runkle has become a familiar face on the lecture circuit as
well, much in demand for her talks on floral design and on meadow and perennial gardening.
She was a featured speaker in the "Great Gardeners of America" lecture series,
held at AmeriFlora '92 in Columbus, Ohio, and sponsored by AHS.
P.O. Box 1603, Manchester, MA 01944.
Copyright Floral Artistry 1998-2002, All rights reserved.