After nearly 40 years in academe and corporate business, Kat Dechant turned to the NY Botanical Garden to pursue the field of floral design via its certificate program. She learned how to create everything from simple bouquets to grand-scale arrangements. As a result, she started Sophisticated Stems, which targeted the niche market of designing floral pieces for intimate occasions, such as anniversary parties, birthdays, teas, and special theme celebrations. She operated her business until 2017, when she moved from Connecticut to the Upper Valley. The language of flowers is almost as ancient and universal as that of (human) speech, writes J.H. Ingram in his book, Flora Symbolica (1887). Flowers have conveyed meaning to their recipients for thousands of years. Kat’s presentation will focus on floriography—the use of flowers to send coded messages to express feelings that could not be spoken aloud in Victorian England. She will explore the evolution of the then-popular “tussie-mussie” to demonstrate how flowers “talked” to people then and how this fascinating floral design practice evolved to the present time.