It’s spring.  Garden club meetings abound, and judges travel throughout the United States awarding the best floral arrangements.  One of those judges is Allison Holland, and I catch her just before she flies to Houston, where, as a representative of the Garden Club of America and the Founders Garden Club of Dallas, she will use her considerable talents to elate some contestants and disappoint others.  She does this about six times a year – and she will be 89 in August!

Who, I ask, inspired her to love and work with flowers?  “My Mother!  When I was little growing up in Houston, my mother would say, ‘Go into the yard and bring some flowers for our dinner party.’  I would bring some back and arrange them!” said Allison.  “I was always making little arrangements, and my favorite books growing up were The Secret Garden and Thumbelina.”

Her love of flowers has motivated “floral giving” throughout her life. “One year, I made Easter arrangements for all my children, and I often make Mother’s Day arrangements for the mothers in our family,” she says. “I do arrangements also when there are personal losses, as well as for special birthdays for friends and family.” She says she provided the Sunday altar flower arrangements for St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church for years.

Allison lights up when she recalls a volunteer project involving flowers in Honolulu.  “After my husband, Chico (Charles), and I married, he was stationed in Hawaii as a Major in the Air Force,” she says by way of background. “It was paradise! So, we stayed.  We spent 60 years there and raised our family.”

While there, she says that she and other members of the Garden Club of Honolulu (part of the Garden Club of America – GCA) visited the women’s prison, the Women’s Community Correctional Center, to view the large and beautiful trees there.  She heard of GED educational classes offered to the inmates and asked if they might be interested in a flower arranging class.

“Establishing such a thing with the prison officials was considered to be almost impossible, but I took it as a dare!” said Allison.  “Eventually, every month three members of the GCA were given about 12 women to instruct, and they brought enough flowers from which the women could make arrangements.  These were then given to various charity organizations.”  This was in the 1990s, and the program is still going on today!  The program eventually won their chapter a national GCA award – and all because of Allison’s original idea and tenacity to see it through.

We sit in their apartment at The Tradition-Lovers Lane, and I view the beautiful flowers growing on their porch, their “lanai.”  I see the vibrant colors and patterns in their décor, and the art on the wall – much of which she has painted – and I understand there is a lot more to Allison than her love of flowers.

“I ran my own interior design company, Creative Designs, for 54 years and was a long-time member of ASID, the American Society of Interior Designers,” she said. I happen to know that this organization normally requires one to have a design degree, and her degree was in Sociology from SMU!

The work of this self-taught designer has been published in nine hardcover design publications and numerous magazines. She has worked in England and France as well as the U.S.  Allison still runs her own stationery business, “Notable Florals,” displaying flowers she has painted on note cards—with 300 designs from which to choose. 

Her awards, board memberships and additional volunteer work are too numerous to recount here and do justice.  She has also written and published three hardcover books: Through Aspen’s Eyes (about their kitty), Dinner Plates (on entertaining and cooking), and Rainbows and Shadows (her life story).

Suffice it to say that this energetic, vibrant woman has lived a life in which she has utilized her multiple, God-given talents to inspire and give to others – and she continues to do so.

Linda Faulkner Johnston – The Tradition