Moving sale

Motorists on First Avenue East might notice something missing. The striking flowers that have graced the yard of Lori Priest's home for more than a decade are disappearing. Lori is moving. She's taking many of her plants with her and selling others. She, and the seasonal display, will be missed.

Here is a story I wrote about Lori that ran in The Gazette in 2003:

C.R. woman's yard known for floral display

By Cindy Hadish

The Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS - Listen to the gurgling pond in Lori Priest's back yard, and it's easy to forget one of the busiest streets in Cedar Rapids is on the other side of her home.

"It's really nice and secluded," Priest, 31, says of the pond with its patio and surrounding flower gardens. "People don't really know it's back here." What people do recognize - at least those who regularly drive First Avenue East - is Priest's front yard. For the past five years, she has worked to transform the ordinary lot in the 2300 block of First Avenue SE into a spectacular floral display. Asiatic lilies, giant allium, daylilies and nicotiana catch the front yard's sunlight, bobbing in a colorful array of hues as motorists zoom past.

Living on First Avenue is mostly a plus for Priest, who grew up on the East Coast and had no reservations about buying a house on a busy street. Her hometown of Allentown, Pa., was a bustling place, she notes, and the older house that she and husband Brian found in Cedar Rapids attracted her with its fireplace, hardwood floors and kitchen with an island. It was the first house the couple purchased after spending years moving while Brian Priest served in the Navy. As a new homeowner, he bought a lawn mower. "He asked if I could wait a few years to dig up the grass, so the mower could pay for itself," Lori Priest recalls with a grin. Even before they moved into the house, she began moving in the plants. Starting with two narrow strips in the front yard, the transformation began. Some of the plants came from her mother, who managed a floral shop where Priest's interest in floral design was piqued in her preteen years. David phlox, red and pink monarda, blue globe thistle and several varieties of daylilies were among the plants that made the move from the East Coast and survived, and thrived, after being transplanted that hot summer.

Priest, who had worked at several flower shops before her husband's job brought them to Cedar Rapids, did floral design for Pierson's Flower Shop and the Cutting Gardens at Brucemore before she and friend, Darcy Honick, opened their own business last year.

Grounds outside Occasions Floral Art Studio have become another outlet for Priest's eye-catching gardens. Flowers she grows there and at her home are used in the fresh and dried arrangements she creates for weddings, funerals and other events.

The sunny south side of her house has become a cutting garden and nursery, where some of the flowers used for arrangements are grown, such as long-plumed amaranthus in shades of chestnut gold and deep red. The south side is also where she planted 600 tulips this spring, all of which became part of her floral designs. She wasn't so fortunate at the business, where Priest planted 150 lilies. "A rabbit ate every single one," she says. "As soon as they'd come out of the ground, he'd strip them."

Many of her plants she grows from seed. Others self-seed. Priest refers to her gardening style as "controlled chaos": an eclectic mix of perennials, annuals, shrubs, bulbs, herbs and even vegetables. "I fall in love with so many different qualities of plants and flowers, colors, texture, foliage color and shape, scent and especially anything with some practical purpose besides an ornamental," she says. Though a favorite plant is hard to choose, the purple on her home's trim and shutters, which matches her purple Ford Escort wagon, is obviously a favorite color. Jackmanii and Comtesse de Bouchard clematis climb in the back yard, complementing the color on the house and car.

Toads and other wildlife make their home in the back yard, where the couple dug out a grassy slope to create the pond with its surrounding water iris, papyrus, horsetail grass and elephant ears. All told, Priest estimates she has more than 1,000 varieties of plants. "They're like children to me," says Priest, who has a 14-year-old son, John. "The more time you spend with them, the more you love them."