Foraged Flora
Photo by Laurie Frankel
The interior of SHED, the cafe, restaurant and marketplace in Healdsburg, plays a starring role in Foraged Flora, a stunning new celebration of wild plants and flowers by Bay Area floral designer Louesa Roebuck and Sarah Londsdale, a St. Helena resident and former editor at Remodelista. The coffee table photography book, out now on Ten Speed Press, celebrates Roebuck’s design philosophy: You don’t need to buy expensive, out-of-season blooms from across the ocean when beautiful (and, quite often, free) flora surround us daily. In Northern California, this means foraging for magnolia, rose hips, hydrangeas, and violets in November. In December, perhaps lichen and bay leaves. SHED is the star of the show in the August chapter. Roebuck waxes poetic about foraging from SHED owners Cindy Daniel and Doug Lipton’s farm in Dry Creek Valley—a late summer bounty of old-world medlars and Sekel pears, grape leaves, “tall, wonky, sculptural” verbascum, and branches dripping with unripe persimmons. Roebuck’s ensuing installations and arrangements, photographed in SHED’s chic and bright interior, are stunning in ambition, scale, beauty, and ingenuity. healdsburgshed.com | louesaroebuck.com
Wine to the People
Photo by Sarah Deragon
When professional photographer Sarah Deragon relocated from San Francisco to Sonoma last year, she was happy to be closer to the source of her beloved wine. At the same time, she observed that mainstream wine culture had a tendency to overlook women entrepreneurs, members of the LGBTQ community, and people of color in the wine industry. ”I started my photo project, Wine to the People, because I really wanted to create a platform where I could highlight folks in wine who aren’t normally seen in mainstream wine culture/advertising,” Deragon says. Photographs like the one featured here of Dana Hunter, wine educator at the Adastra Wine tasting room in Sonoma, are vibrant snapshots of people who are truly in love with their work. In addition to the photography, Deragon does all of the interviews, coordination, and scheduling with her photo subjects. “I’m honored that so many amazing people in the Sonoma Valley are as excited about the project as I am,” she says. Deragon’s on the hunt for willing participants: winemakers, wine buyers, harvest workers, vineyard managers, tasting room associates, bottling mechanics, and more.
Contact her for information: sarahderagonphotography.com/winetothepeople Instagram:@winetothepeople
Local Food Hero
In September, CNN named Cathryn Couch, the founder of Ceres Community Project, a 2016 Hero. Each year, 25 awardees are selected from thousands of national nominations. Couch founded Ceres Community Project in 2007 to provide free, organic, healthy meals prepared by teen chefs to people with cancer and other illnesses in Sonoma and Marin counties. In a statement, journalist and Cooked author Michael Pollan credited Couch as a visionary deserving of national recognition. “With Ceres’ help, the whole community benefits; it creates far-reaching impacts while recognizing and promoting the critical link between our food, health, and environment,” Pollan said in a statement. With 500 teens volunteering in the Ceres garden and commercial kitchens, the organization provides 100,000 organic meals a year. ceresproject.org