There is a kind of artist whose canvas will not sit still. It wilts, it opens, it leans toward light. For Althea Wiles, founder and creative director of Rose of Sharon Floral Design Studio, that impermanence is the point. After nearly three decades of working in flowers across the Ozark Mountains, she has come to treat each installation as a living composition, made to be experienced in a single evening and remembered long after.

This spring marked her fifth consecutive year designing the florals for the Thaden School Gala in Bentonville, Arkansas, an annual fundraising event hosted by Kelly and Steuart Walton in support of the school’s Indexed Tuition Fund. Each year arrives with a new theme. This year’s was “Together We Grow,” guided by event designer and planner Laura Hammarstrom, and the brief called for something natural, green-forward, and rooted in the idea of growth itself.

Wiles answered with a room that felt grown rather than decorated.

Walking Into a Forest

The first thing a guest noticed was that the walls had disappeared. Deep green velvet fell from ceiling to floor in soft folds, turning the hall into something closer to a forest than a ballroom. The entrance set the tone before anyone reached a table, with mossy rugs laid across the floor like a forest path and flanked by tall grasses, ferns, and white blooms that seemed to grow up out of the ground on either side.

Inside, the tables continued the idea. Some wore green satin that caught the candlelight, others a green and white geometric linen that gave the greenery a crisp, modern counterpoint. The forest green velvet napkins folded over white plates and were topped with watercolor “Together We Grow” menu cards. It read as a single coherent world, the product of close collaboration between Wiles and Hammarstrom, where the florals and the environment were designed to belong to one another.

A Tree That Held the Room

The boldest statement piece in the space stood behind the bar. Working over a metal framework, Wiles and her team built a tree that rose more than twenty feet, layered with foraged bamboo and trailing smilax into an airy canopy that arched out over the room and glowed from the lights set within it. It anchored the space and pulled guests back to it through the night, the way a single strong gesture can hold an entire painting together.

The tablescapes worked in the opposite register, low and intimate. At the center of each table sat a small lamp with a white linen shade, a quiet domestic object set down in the middle of all that wildness, casting a pool of warm light over the flowers below. Around the lamp bases she built mossy, textured arrangements in pale wood boxes, dense with Sticherus ferns and layered with lacy white orlaya, campanula, stock, and fine grasses. The palette stayed disciplined throughout, whites and greens in constant conversation, nothing competing.

The detail work rewarded a closer look. In darker corners, variegated grasses and veggie roses caught the light against the velvet, while clusters of green hydrangea, wax flower, and Sticherus ferns softened the edges of the larger installations. Throughout the room, orlaya, campanula, stock, and other white blooms emerged from layers of moss and greenery, creating moments that felt discovered rather than arranged. Each vignette felt found rather than placed.

A Table Set Within the Garden

One of the evening’s more inventive moments came when the food itself joined the florals. Working with the culinary team, Wiles designed central risers where small plates and bowls of hors d’oeuvres were set directly into the mossy greenery, so that the table and the centerpiece became the same thing. It is the kind of idea that deserves its own telling, and one worth returning to in a later piece, once the full menu can be given its due.

The same is true of the sustainability thinking that ran beneath the whole design, from the locally-foraged bamboo to the living plants chosen so they could be replanted and used again. For Wiles, who grew up around her parents’ plant nursery and now mentors other floral designers through her education arm, J Althea Creative, that ethic is second nature, and a story in its own right.

A Five-Year Conversation

Designing the same gala for five years gives an artist something rare: the chance to revise. Past themes have moved from “Together We Fly” to “Together We Soar” and “An Evening at the Fair,” and each one has let Wiles refine the guest experience, build on what worked, and bring fresh ideas into a familiar room.

“I’ve always believed in working with nature rather than forcing it, building with everything the season offers, from moss and ferns to grasses, branches, and blooms,” Wiles said. “Fresh material doesn’t last, and that’s part of what makes it feel alive. For an evening like this, I wanted guests to feel like the forest had grown up around them.”

That sentiment fit the night. A room about growth, designed by someone who has spent thirty years learning how things grow.

Creative Team Credits

Event Design and Planning: Laura Hammarstrom Events, @laurahammarstromevents

Floral and Botanical Design: Althea Wiles with Rose of Sharon Floral Design Studio, @roseofsharonfloral

Photography: Villar Photo Co., @thevillarphotoco 

Rentals: Alchemy Event Rentals, @alchemy_event_rentals 

Venue: Thaden School, @thadenschool 

Catering: Woodstone Craft Pizza, @woodstonecraftpizza

Signage: Accents by Ovation, @accentsbyovation 

Event Production: Forge Productions, @forgeproductionsllc

Rose of Sharon Floral Design Studio is based in the Ozark Mountains region in Arkansas and serving clients statewide and beyond. Learn more at roseofsharon-eventflorist.com.