FORMER Port Elizabethan Fayette Scherwinski, an internationally acclaimed floral artist now based in Germany, last week shared her colourful vision on a visit to her old home town. Fayette outlined international trends to a small but appreciative audience including many cognoscenti in the field at Etlen Court Guesthouse in Richmond Hill, describing her own organic yet contemporary style as “ordered chaos”.

“If you look around nature it may look like chaos but it is ordered chaos. Floristry in Germany today is very natural,” she said.

As shabby chic is to interior design, so the look on the international floral scene is moving towards a more relaxed, informal look.

Fayette was in Port Elizabeth for five weeks visiting her parents, Mandy and Siegfried, who live in Bluewater Bay. She brought her German-born children, Laura, 12, and three-month-old baby Ferdinand.

You can hear a faint German accent but after spending half her life in her father’s native land – she left at the age of 17 after matriculating at Trinity High School – that is hardly surprising.

A visual magpie, Fayette is always on the lookout for plant material she can artfully incorporate into her work.

After all, she learnt at college in Europe the truth of the phrase: “The one who only sees the flower only sees half the beauty.”

“That has two meanings to me,” she explained. “There is also the stem, leaves and fruit, so enjoy all the beauty. Then you also must appreciate the smell, colour, form and the ‘personality’ of the flower.”

Deft and confident, she knows just which colours, shapes and textures work with each other and she can – and has – arranged bouquets blindfolded. At one seminar, for example, she was asked to create a bouquet. That seemed simple enough but at the last minute she learnt she would be wearing a blindfold while doing this.

The presenter also arrange(d) a bunch, but without a blindfold – and was mortified when Fayette’s arrangement was deemed more attractive!

Certainly, when she was a pupil at Gelvan Park Primary School she never dreamt that one day she would present flowers to the German head of state.

Flower wholesalers in Germany open at 4am, and one morning Fayette was there on the dot at that time to look for flowers for an 8am appointment with the premier, chancellor Angela Merkel.

“She loves delphiniums and roses. She’s a very normal person and just loves these flowers,” said Fayette, who has designed for Merkel on more than one occasion.

Although Fayette is now a master of floral art, after matric at Trinity High School she left for Germany to study hotel management, first working there and later in Switzerland.

“Then I decided I definitely had to do something creative.”

She moved to Dresden, where she studied under “some of the best in the world”, earning a master’s degree in floral art. Fayette opened her own freelance workshop and in 2006 was chosen as Germany’s floral ambassador.

She received this accolade for a rare second time the following year. She also lectures in Germany and Poland and is a member of the national Trend Team which travels to showcase and explain floral art trends.

Fayette designs bouquets for one of the largest online florists, Blume 2000. To give an idea of the scale of operations, she said Blume 2000 sold an average of ß500000 (R4.7-million) worth of flowers a month, with 49000 bouquets prepared for Mother’s Day alone. It has an annual turnover of ß4-billion (R38.1-billion).

When she sees lilies, chrysanthemums and gerberas at high prices in German shops she smiles at how freely available they are in South Africa. In Europe the seasons are more distinct, and this affects the lifestyle as well as the flowers.

“Christmas in Germany is a very big story,” she said. “It is cold, minus 20 degrees, but we sleep with the windows open and go jogging. What I love about the German Christmas is all the decor and the lovely food.”

She also enjoys creating Christmas wreaths to tie in with the Christian advent calendar. “I love doing wreaths. They are my favourite thing to do. A wreath has no beginning and no end, it is a symbol of life.

“In summer we have the need for cooler colours. Some flowers are more expensive here than there.”