2025 Black Cat Makerie : The Pressed Garden with Flower Press Studio

THE PRESSED GARDEN WITH FLOWER PRESS STUDIO
*no experience necessary, just a love for flowers 

Come spend three delightful days in September with the dynamo duo Keith and Rachel of Flower Press Studio learning the expressive art of pressing flowers, vegetables, and other garden treasures to create stunning natural collages, and beyond. We’ll share the freshest farm-to-table seasonal meals; cozy up in a historic, boutique barn; and experience it all in the pastoral setting of Black Cat Farm. Sitting side-by-side, we’ll make time for play, inspire each other, and find community rooted in creative nourishment. It’s a beautiful way to spend our time.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How to press a wide variety of flowers from cosmos to dahlias
• Best technique for removing moisture from a flower
• Different materials that can be used with in a flower press
• Different techniques for pressing different types of flowers
• How to deconstruct flowers if you do not press them whole 
• What flowers press best deconstructed and what flowers can be pressed whole
• Tricks to pressing thick flowers
• How to reconstruct a flower when not pressed whole
• How to watch over your flowers during the pressing process
• How to design with and glue pressed flowers
• How to press vegetables and deal with their sometimes excessive moisture content
• How to create a pressed flower cyanotype
• How to troubleshoot mistakes made while pressing flowers

VENUE

The workshop will be held on Black Cat Organic Farm, the most ambitious farm-to-table operation in the United States. James Beard Award finalist Chef Eric Skokan and his wife Jill have created a 425-acre organic and regenerative farm that supplies the bounty of their farm dinners, the downtown Boulder restaurant Bramble & Hare, the recipient of a coveted and rare Michelin Green Star, which honors restaurants that demonstrate true commitment to sustainability, CSA’s, and a Boulder Farmers’ Market Booth. Depending on the weather, classes will either be held in a renovated 19th-century cozy boutique barn that used to hold a community blacksmith shop, or on a brick verandah surrounded by gardens and acres of fields of vegetables, herbs, legumes, and grains. Mountains capped with snow for much of the year decorate the farm’s western horizon. The setting itself, however, is extremely pastoral, with sloping fields full of vegetables, fruit trees, a broad strawberry patch, and flowers everywhere when in season. Black Cat Organic Farm’s Toulouse geese, Akbash guard dogs, and strutting groups of chickens wander the property all day, evidence of the constant symbiotic relationship of life on a working farm.

CUISINE

Using Black Cat’s Certified Organic farm as a source of creativity, Chef Eric Skokan creates an award-winning cuisine vibrant with seasonality. The culinary team behind Bramble crafts our Black Cat Makerie meals, all of which closely reflect the seasons. The kitchen draws heavily from the farm’s more than 250 varieties of organic vegetables, legumes, grains, herbs and flowers, as well as its large flock of heritage sheep and its robust population of heritage pigs, paving the way for a limitless palette of flavors, colors, and textures from which to build each food experience. From artichokes to chickpeas, tomatoes to arugula, basil to wheat to winter squash and much more, Black Cat Organic Farm nurtures it all, transforming these stellar ingredients into gorgeous dishes. Each day of the retreat begins with a delicious homemade morning snack, followed by a hearty, fresh-from-the-fields lunch, and a delectable afternoon nibble. New this year! One very special farm dinner will be shared with our retreat community as part of the Black Cat Makerie experience. Surrounded by pastoral beauty and pampered with warm hospitality, guests who attend Black Cat Farm Dinners enjoy culinary experiences unlike any other in Colorado. The farm team devotes hours every day to harvesting these ingredients, then crafting them into outstanding dishes that mirror what is thriving in the fields. Many guests dine in private, glass-walled cabanas spread out across the farm, with views of rolling hills, organic agricultural fields and snow-capped mountains. We can’t wait for you to experience it all for yourself.