Saturday, September 5, 1998

Many enjoy arranging flowers for church altars

By CHRISTINE ARPE GANG

Scripps Howard News Service

It's easy to take altar flowers for granted. Every week they quietly grace places of worship without, when done properly, calling too much attention to themselves.

But to those who arrange, gather and sometimes cultivate the flowers, they are an important way of serving God and their churches.

"Arranging flowers is a lot like prayer," said Suzy Askew Lautar, a landscape architect who regularly spends part of her Saturdays at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Memphis seeing to the flowers for the altar. "I get a lot out of the very act of doing it."

On a recent Saturday, Lautar gathered phlox and magnolia leaves from her own small garden, trumpet vine from a vacant lot and sunflowers and wax myrtle from the meditation garden inside a brick wall beside the church.

To supplement the wild and garden flowers, she bought a few roses and some sprigs of goldenrod from a flower shop. Standing before the altar with its rich gilded carvings and statuary, she expertly filled two urns, stepping back from time to time to get a better look as the designs took shape.

"I try to make every stem as perfect as it can be," said Lautar, who alternates arranging duties with Marie Shea, another parishioner. "It should be fresh and pleasing."

To complement the colors in the sanctuary's artwork, the arrangers like to work with gold, yellow and white flowers rather than pinks, blues and lavenders.

So when a church committee was formed to turn an eyesore of a side lot adjacent to the church into a meditation garden about three years ago, they made certain to plant flowering shrubs and perennials that could be used for altar arrangements.

The church relied mostly on permanent silk arrangements before Lautar and Shea took over, unless flowers had been purchased for a wedding or special event. Buying arrangements from a florist -- which can cost $25 to $100 each week -- was not within the church's budget.

Economics were also an issue 20 years ago when Robbieanna Smith made a commitment to provide fresh flowers at Richland Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Rosemark, Tenn..

She stepped up to the task after the death of the woman who had been doing it for many years.

"There were no flowers for a few Sundays, so I started doing them," said Smith, a prize-winning arranger in garden club shows. "I just love it because flowers are a real part of the worship service. It's a gift I can give to the church."

There was some sentiment at her church to go to artificial flowers before Smith took over. She shudders at the thought.

"With flowers growing everywhere, I think it's a travesty to have silk," she said.

Smith is a big believer in cutting flowers and greenery wherever she can. That includes her garden, friends' gardens and along roadsides. "I know just about every flower in northeast Shelby County," she said.

At Christmas, she enlists the help of her entire garden club in decorating the church's 13 exterior doors as well as its sanctuary and fellowship hall.

Before she made the commitment to provide fresh flowers at St. Mary's, Lautar took a week-long church flower arranging seminar offered at Washington National Cathedral every January.

The huge cathedral's flower committee comprises four teams of 22 members each that arrange flowers for at least six chapels each week. They also provide flowers for all the weddings, funerals and special events that take place there.

Although the cathedral has an extensive garden on its premises, maintained by another committee of volunteers, flowers for the arrangements are almost always purchased.

"We like to have the garden filled with flowers, too, so we don't cut from it," said Linda Roeckelin, head of the cathedral's flower guild who orders all of the flowers. "Many of us bring in flowers and greenery from our own gardens, and it makes the arrangements so much prettier."

In 1996, the flower committee at the cathedral entered an exhibit at the Philadelphia Flower Show and won the award for the most popular display. The committee will again participate in the show, one of the oldest and largest in the country, in 1999.

Exactly how or when flowers became an integral part of worship services is unknown. Lautar thinks the custom may have sprung from the fragrant flowers and herbs such as lavender grown in early monastery gardens for use as air fresheners in churches and other buildings.

Sandra Hynson, author of Flowers to the Glory of God, said informal bunches of flowers were probably brought to churches as offerings.

"Certainly during the Victorian period, flower arrangements became a part of the ambiance of the worship setting," said Hynson, who is retired after many years as a volunteer flower arranger at the Washington National Cathedral.

More and more churches are using flowers arranged by members, Hynson said, even though the people who volunteer are busier than ever.

"It's so therapeutic that even the busiest women say they are glad to spend two hours on Saturday working with flowers for their churches."

(Christine Arpe Gang is a reporter for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis.)