(Photo by: Miranda Sue Philpot)

Have you ever been interested in flowers and the process of growing or designing them? In the entire state of Kansas, there is only one place where you can learn the art of wedding floral design, wholesale, and growing. In these small, intimate classes, you’ll quickly feel like your classmates are family.

Natalie Goodwin is the advisor for the Floral Design Club and a professor for the Floral Design Program.

“The program is 27-32 credit hours, and it’s a certificate program. It has five design courses and then electives, but there are a couple of classes that are not electives, like accounting and small business management,” Goodwin said. “The good thing about the JCCC program is that the other floral programs are strictly design, but at JCCC, they have to take accounting and small business management. So we’re not turning out people who can only design, we’re turning out people who can run a business, or be a manager, or be a buyer because they have other classes under their belt.”

During the fall semester, students will take traditional and contemporary design classes, and during the spring semester, students will take special event design, wedding design and plants for interior design. The fall semester classes work as prerequisites for the more advanced spring classes.

“If they enroll in the fall classes, they’re going to get the basics, like the basic elements and the basic principles of design. I don’t need them to believe that they’re going to leave the program a top-notch designer,” Goodwin said. “That’s not my focus. My focus is to teach them the basics and the rules–but they can always break the rules once they’re employed somewhere else, so they’re really going to get their flair or style of design.”

During the two-semester program, Goodwin takes her students on field trips. Two to wholesalers, two to large event companies and one to a flower farm. These field trips are to help students find where they want to be in the industry and to help make connections.

“I just want them to know all of their options, and not everybody has the same dream. My students are very diverse. I have 17-year-old high school students and 70-year-old women who just want to learn something new,” Goodwin said.

The floral design program has a 16-seat limit per class, which leads to close bonds between classmates.

“Some years, I think everybody clicks and they’re sad that they won’t see those people every day, and then some years nobody really clicks too much. But more often than not, it’s a pretty close-knit group,” Goodwin said.

Along with the classes Goodwin teaches, she is also the advisor for the Floral Design Club. This club is only available to students enrolled in the program. In the club, they work to design floral arrangements for staff members for May Day, the campus trick-or-treat event. Currently, they’re working on their Thanksgiving arrangements. They make 60 floral arrangements, 30 can be ordered by faculty members for other faculty members, and the other 30 are randomly placed on office doors. These are free of cost for the staff. They also make and have a table for flowers at graduation.

“I love going to work, I absolutely love it. I mean, tonight I went to dinner and then [went] shopping with two of my students,” Goodwin said.

The Floral Design Program is working with the sustainability department to make their program more sustainable by repurposing vases, separating trash and more. If you’re interested in the Floral Design Program, enrollment will be available next fall, and you can learn more about the program on the Floral Design Program page on the JCCC website.