Biography
Flowers have always taken an important place in my life, and today one can even say they have become my life.
Who I am
To have ones passion and main interest as a full time job is a privilege. My driving force in life and career is the sheer fun and happiness I find in working with flowers and people.
I am whom I am as a designer today because of my unstoppable curiosity, for flowers, design and people! Welcome to my universe of flowers, colours and floraldesign!
What I do
Today I work out of my own company, “Benjamin’s Botaniska” (Benjamin’s Botanicals), my educational brand “Floristisk Coaching” and “Life2” together with Max van de Sluis.
My work ranges from demonstrations, workshops, seminars, school teaching, judging, shop makeovers, economy and sales knowledge, team and leaderships courses, shop coaching, bigger events and party decorations and the occasional day in a flower shop. I have, over the last 18 years, since my World Cup victory, had the opportunity to work all around the world, in over 80 countries.
How it started
All of this started with my interest in flowers and gardening as a child and at the age of 16 my luck to find a flower shop to work in for holidays and weekends. This lead the way to a growing interest, learning over the years, a full time job and eventually my Craftsmanship diploma with a silver medal in 1994, then over the years work in different flower shops.
Teaching
Teaching of all kinds is my strongest passion. A period as a full time teacher at a floral collage in Stockholm awoke the urge to inspire and educate others, pass on my passion for floristry to others, to provide them with the necessary knowledge and then see how they translate it into their own ideas and growing as designers.
Publications
I has published, co-published with Life3 and been published in over 30 books. Books both pure inspirational as the Emotions series and the sell out popular educational step by step series with Life2. The first book being my own “Elements” book that showed the world what Scandinavian design is all about. I have since then over the years grow a solid reputation of being a master of colour. Last year I finally had the courage to published the book “The world of colour according to Per Benjamin” where I present my own colour system that happilly has turned into a true eye opener for many designers.