Competing in a floral design competition offers numerous benefits, both personally and professionally. It’s a way I have developed my own design skills through the years, and a path I highly recommend, even if you are not competitively inclined. While awards, prizes and places are good, often the best result from entering a competition is the learning.

Here are six good reasons to participate:

1. Skill Enhancement and Creativity: Floral design competitions challenge participants to think creatively and push their boundaries. The experience helps sharpen technical skills, introduces new techniques, and encourages experimentation with different styles and materials.
2. Networking Opportunities: Competitions provide a platform to meet and connect with fellow floral designers, industry experts and, if you’re a florist, potential clients. Networking can lead to collaborations, mentorship opportunities, and exposure to new markets.
3. Recognition and Career Advancement: Winning or even placing in a competition can significantly boost a designer's reputation. Awards and accolades serve as a mark of excellence, helping to attract clients, secure higher-profile projects, and open doors to further opportunities in the floral industry.
4. Personal Growth and Confidence: The experience of competing, regardless of the outcome, fosters personal growth. It builds confidence, resilience, and a sense of accomplishment, which can positively impact a designer's career and personal life.
5. Inspiration and Trendsetting: Competitions often set the stage for new trends in floral design. By participating, designers can both draw inspiration from other and contribute their own innovative ideas, helping to shape the future of the flower world.
6. Practice: A fundamental factor in skill and knowledge development is practice. Competitions provide accessible opportunities to practise and increase your competencies, often on very engaging tasks. This opportunity to practise also extends the imagination - allowing you to exercise one of your greatest assets as a designer - your creative mind.

Coordinating a team of Designers to create outdoor, feature floral displays is not so hard when all the right ingredients come together - perfect spring weather, enthusiastic creative brains, an abundance of quality blooms and inspiring infrastructure to create around. Earlier this month I had the pleasure of collaborating with four Designers to present three impressive flower displays at a Food & Wine Festival - part of the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers.

At the core of each display was a structure of honeycomb shapes, configured in various ways, and each painted a different colour. The honeycomb element inspired each design team in a different way, producing interpretations that included bees (made from Pine cones), honey, sweets and harmony in life.

We have just launched our next Designing to Win program. Once again, you can register to participate as a Designer, creating and submitting works for discussion and evaluation, or as an Audience member, sharing in the learning through observation.

The program inclusions offer an abundance of ideas, learning and enjoyment - 3 x eBooks to download, 2 x companion videos and 2 x online Design Forums to join or watch later.

Participating Designers create a design to a schedule for the first Design Forum, then revise, remake or transform their design for the second Design Forum, based on the initial feedback and greater understanding of the schedule requirements.

Design Forum 1 scheduled for 15 October, with the first designs due by the end of 12 October.

You can register or find more information here:

Our theme for the program is ‘Classically Inclined’, with a schedule that requires a design for display in a Prima Ballerina’s dressing room.

What would you create for this space?