Inside the Benz School of Floral Design: A Conversation with Bill McKinley AIFD

Episode 230: Join us for an insightful interview with Bill McKinley AIFD, the endowed director of the prestigious Benz School of Floral Design at Texas A&M University. In this episode, we delve into the origins of the school and its current offerings as well as the connection and history it has with Korean classes and instruction. Learn about the classes available at the Benz School, its history, and the unique relationship with western floral design instruction in Korea. If you're curious about floral design education and want to know more about this renowned institution, be sure to tune in!

Benz School for Floral Design

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

We gave shots to the pigs or whatever. And familiar TV for the first time.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Welcome to the Business and Pleasure Flowers. We're your host, Fonda LeFever, and Lori Wilson.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Wanda.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Hey Lori, you know, our clickers know a lot about the importance and value of continuing education because you continue to read and share information and lean from those books and articles, basically, so I don't have to, right? Yes, exactly. It's very important. You should never stop learning. That's right. And when I had that opportunity to talk to Bill McKinley, and you heard that interview just a couple weeks ago, I questioned him about continuing education classes offered on the campus of Texas AM at the Ben School of Floral Design. Because I had so many questions where you'll be able to see how many questions I really had.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Great. I am so excited. And you know, I was thinking Ken Center, who's here in Houston, you know, we've had him on the podcast. He talks a lot about the Benn School of Floral Design. Yeah. So that's that's where I couldn't quite remember where Ben's School of Florida Design came from, besides Boo McKinley.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Well, let's listen in and be sure to listen to the end. He is such a gifted teacher. Such a gifted teacher. Bill, our listeners had the pleasure of learning a little bit about you in a previous episode, but I wanted to bring you back to explain something to me. This one's about me, okay? Because I need to know this. This time I just need to ask you questions about something. Something that I've known you're very active in in the last few years, but I just truly don't know about. And I should. And that's the Benn School of Floral Design. Bill, you're the current director, the endowed chair, it says, of the Benn School of Floral Design. What I do know is that every year in Illinois, you would leave right after we'd done a class from Kishwaki College and you'd head off to Texas to teach some class. I would hear bits and pieces about Buddy Benz, and we did use the book in the classroom at Kish, so the name was familiar. I hear Ken Center and others praise the Benn School of Floral Design. I'm going to blame my lack of my being familiar with that, is because I'm not from Texas.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Is that fair?

SPEAKER_03 2:39

That's fair.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Okay. I know it's not just a Texas thing because you have people coming from all over. But let's start with the when, where, and why. Tell me a little bit about the Benn School.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Well, the Benz.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Start from the beginning because I know very little. I need help, and so do the clickers here.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

The Benns School was started by Buddy Benns, or his real name was Morris. No wonder he went by Buddy. Yeah, right. Back oh in the 40s. He's a graduate of Texas AM in 1930. There was no horticulture at that point or floral design. So his degree is in landscape architecture. Okay. He did his stint in the military, rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and then came back to Houston and started a landscape business, which morphed into a floral design school because he saw a need for the design aspect. At that point in the early 40s, there were there was a lot of floral ranging going on, and a lot of garden clubs were using that as part of their club organizations and contests, but there really wasn't any kind of configuration of that. So anyway, he started the Bin School of Floral Design in Houston, Texas, and it became very, very popular, very successful, and he traveled all over the world from the Far East, Japan, China, India, everywhere. We have artifacts in our Bins collection from almost every continent that you can possibly imagine.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

So was the Benn's school in Houston a freestanding building that he actually had a classroom, or did he just travel and go teach, or both?

SPEAKER_03 4:31

Both. He had a a home, a very large home actually. That first floor was the school. Okay. But then he did travel all over the world giving workshops and seminars, being invited to go most of those places. In his later years, he just decided he was going to be a world traveler and go enjoy, right? Yeah, did the traveling so he had no errors. So when he was later in years, he decided that he was going to give his estate to Texas AF. So that's how it came to be here. He told everybody that he was not going to check out until all of this got taken care of. So he wanted it a certain way. He wanted the endowment set up a certain way. So he wanted everything to be the way he wanted it. And not long after all that paperwork got done in the early, I think it was 1980, he did pass away.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

So he had all his, as they say, all your papers in order, everything, your estate is where it needs to be. And he was comfortable with that. Then he's like, okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

I can go now.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

And so one of those criteria was that an endowment would be set up in the Department of Horticulture from the sale of his estate, which was multi-million dollar estate, and that funds the endowed chair. It is the only endowed chair in floral design in the world. There's lots of endowed chairs, but none in floral design that we are at least aware of. And so then in 1981, the first director after Buddy was Jim Johnson. And uh he was a student of Buddy's in the Houston School years earlier, and then he had a shop in Indiana for many years, and then he came to be the first director of the Benn School.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:40

And I was Jim's first graduate student.

SPEAKER_04 6:43

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

And so then that's why I kept coming back, was he wanted assistance with some of the large classes in the summer, so I would travel back and help with the Binn's schools in the summer.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Okay. So that's why you were going. You were leaving Illinois coming to help Jim Johnson with the classes that we're having in the summer.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

Again, going south in the summer and wrong way.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

You just had that all wrong, Bill, with that temperature. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

And then Jim decided he needed and wanted to retire, so applied for that position. And here I am.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

And here you are. But the question is truly, how does the Ben School work with Texas AM and your floral school here? I mean, it's a simple- It's a little confusing to me.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

Well, it's confusing to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Okay, good.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

No, no. If you'll rest assured, many people here at Texas AM equate anything floral with the Benn School, even though it's an academic class that's doing or helping it's the BIN school, because I wear those two hats. I'm the director of the BIN school, but I'm also the instructional professor for the course. So which one do they choose when they want to make that uh uh address? The BIN School is actually housed technically in the Texas AM Foundation. So it's a separate entity within the Department of Horticulture.

SPEAKER_04 8:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

And it's only a continuing education program. It's non-academic, so we do not give transcripted credits or anything like that. It's for people who want to improve their skills in a certain area with our specialty courses or someone who wants to get into the industry. We have a two-week basic course, so you get a lot of information in two weeks and a lot of hands-on as well, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:34

You're getting the information, plus you're getting to play with flowers, as everybody says.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

Yes, definitely. It's probably more than 50% hands-on.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Okay. Tell me a little bit about the classes. So you have how many classes in the summer?

SPEAKER_03 8:50

Typically we have four classes during the summer.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:53

And the class topics rotate. Um a couple of them at least rotate. So this summer, starting in May, we are having our brand new class, which is the natural mechanics class. So we're doing all kinds of different techniques for stabilizing your mechanics in a in a design, whether it's a centerpiece or whether it's an altar piece or whatever. That's a two-day class. And then we have a two-week class, which is the basic class that comes up in June. That's a little bit of everything in that from the geometric round centerpieces, triangles, but we also spice it up a little bit with some parallels and vegetatives and interesting uh uses of roses and dozen roses, along with the business side. So, how do you know what to buy? And when do you buy it? And how often, how far ahead do you buy it? And and and aspects of of the management side that are as critical as the design side.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

And that's all the in the beginning intro class. Yeah, that's right. Well, so you're really getting them that's like, hey, if you've ever thought of having anything to do with floral, like you want to play with flowers, or you've said to someone, I would like to be be a florist someday, that's the one you go to.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

That's that's definitely the one that would be applicable.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

The the the two-day courses uh uh tend to be more uh nearly advanced. People who have been in the industry or have been through the basic and want a little more on that particular topic.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

The end of June, just before uh July, which is typically when AIFD symposium is, is when we have our contemporary design technique and certification prep class. And it's a two-day course as well that is focused on techniques of what can I do to this design to make it a higher score. It could be foliage manipulation, it could be placement of flowers, it could be elements and principles, whatever uh techniques are there. And then that course also has a mock uh test.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

So this would be one. If I had signed up for PFDE, you're at to the point where I'm just I'm ready. Two weeks from now, I'm gonna go to PFDE, do that. I need to take this course.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

Well, it would be advisable because what I do, it's not gonna be full five designs. No for the PFDE, it's three, and it's a simulation. So I give you a bucket of flowers and I give you containers and I say, okay, here's what you need to make, just like it would be in the PFDE, and you get a lot of charm, yeah. And then at end of time, boom, you're done. When you're done, however, then I give you written and verbal critique. So good job, but you could do this better to get a better score, or you can add this or should have done this to make it um a 4.5 instead of a four, or my scale is not the same. I use a 10-point scale. But it's it's a good practice, and it and the people who have done that before going to PFDE feel better, a little more confident about what's coming, and they feel more at ease about the process because you know it's a scary thing.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

It is a scary thing. It is a scary thing, and to have that one-on-one with you beforehand and to know, oh, instead of going to PFD and saying, oh shoot, I should have tried this. Now you're giving that test the mock-up, where they're like looking at even with their nerves and having these little mistakes, then they're not going to do it again. They're not gonna do those same mistakes. They might do something else, right? But at least it all can, yeah. But at that time, they would, yeah, totally so much more confident.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

So then the fourth class is another new one this year, and it's a direct result of high school and floral design instructors needing information on how to teach floral design. So it's geared specifically for high school instructors who want more information about teaching floral design.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

And that's mostly in Texas, right? Because Texas has floral design classes in the high schools. Most states don't have that.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

True, true. Texas uh forget the exact year, maybe 2011-ish, passed at the state level that floral design, it's called Elements and Principles of Design, is the official title of that. Can be used in the high school level as a creative art.

SPEAKER_04 13:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

And so that opened the floodgate of needing to have floral design instructors at the high school level. And unfortunately, there's many instances where someone is in the agriculture area that maybe has been doing cows or sheep or pigs or something. But it's it's always put into that area of the school. Okay, now you're gonna teach floral design this fall.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

You have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

You have no idea.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

You just burnt the cow. Yeah. And now here you're gonna.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

You gave the shots to the pigs or whatever last and so now you're teaching floral design. And so that's what that course is is for, is for the the person or persons who are needing, tell me how it works, tell me what I need to know. You're not gonna get everything. You can't get everything in one week, but you can certainly get a lot of information.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

That's a great idea for a class. So needed, so needed. I think I've been to Texas State once or twice, and those instructors are sitting there trying to suck things up. I mean, they really are. You have to admire them because they want to know, they want to teach the right thing, but they really don't have the means to do it. So great idea for a class. Love that. Okay, so now then I'm gonna move on to when and where did the classes in Korea start? Because then after a while, I'm like, you're going to Korea, Bill. What's going on with that? Korean? And Ben's, what does that have to do with Ben? So explain that to me, please.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

In about 2008, Jim Johnson was approached by a contingent of uh Koreans about coming to Korea to teach Western floral design. So the concepts of geometric design uh that's purely Western. He was a little hesitant about that, and invited actually some of them to come here, and they came to a couple of the BIN's schools and saw what the processes were and how he was teaching, and got a better idea for what the whole curriculum might be. And from that developed a series of courses that the BIN school goes to Korea, and it's a train the trainer program. So we go there and put on workshops for teachers who are either in higher education or have their own private schools, which is much more common there than it is here, in the theories and methods of the BIN school. Each cohort or each group of teachers, we call them groups, can have anywhere from about 10 to 12, maybe 15 kind of comes and goes.

SPEAKER_04 16:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

Could be smaller than that, but so we're uh at T7, so we have seven groups of teachers that have gone through this program.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

Wow. Um that's impressive.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

It's a two-year program. So we go twice a year and do workshops to get through four levels of I don't want to call them difficulties. It's just different content in four different areas. So then while we're there, actually before we do the workshops, we're evaluating their students. So we evaluate anywhere from 70 to 150 students. Whoa. They put forth or forward to make sure that they're meeting their uh standards.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

So how are they doing a little test that you have to evaluate?

unknown 17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Well, not a written, it's all designed.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

All design. So they are giving them the flowers, or you are, and then you have to evaluate each one of those students for that instructor.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Yeah, it's a sort of a double evaluation in that we're evaluating not only have they met the criteria for the category, so it might be asymmetrical triangle or it might be a broad aboucare. You know, we have a whole list of designs that they're could uh be asked to do. But I'm also evaluating whether the teacher is teaching them. So, you know, if they're putting 10 students into the evaluation and all 10 of them did very poorly on something, then I know that I need to go talk to that teacher and say, you know, I think you missed the concept of line, for instance.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

So they're all have a weak line, so you can see that in that group of students, and so you can go back to the instructor and really implement a stronger program for her to teach her students, so to say refresh her memory on okay, line, visual path, yeah, follows.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

And of course, there's always the language barrier, and so that's why I think that double evaluation is important because it could have been just I said it differently and it was translated differently the first time, and it wasn't quite as clear, or you know, you never really know. Uh I never know what the translator is saying because I don't speak that language.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Uh you have to trust. Come on.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Yeah. So that's kind of the process. So we go twice a year and okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Wow. So if you go twice a year and it takes them two years to go through the program, so they have to do four classes for them to get through. Okay. And do many of them come over and test to become certified or accredited members of AIFD?

SPEAKER_03 19:18

Yeah, we actually have a pretty large contingent of AIFD members in Korea. They have an annual, maybe it's more than that now, meeting over there, similar to what we have. They get together and have programs and put on workshops and seminars. I was a guest of one of those last fall. So I did two things at once over there.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Not surprising. Not surprising. So what would you say to encourage people to come to the Benn School this summer? Or I guess it's like within a month, right? Or the class is full and they can't come.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

No, they're not, they're not full yet, not quite. You're gonna get a quality education, period. All of our courses, because they're a continuing education curriculum, have to be evaluated by participants. And our evaluative numbers are sky high. I mean, it's never anything less than a four, eight out of five on on I mean, that's that would be a composite. It's generally fives, but so you get what you you you are asking for.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

And and I'm very flexible in presentation, because the very first day on whatever course it is, I will ask everybody specifically what it is that you expect from this course. And I write that down. And if it's not already in the curriculum, I put it in there.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Because you want everybody to make sure that their takeaway is what they want. Because a lot of times you read the description of what a class is, and you're like, okay, what I interpret that to be is this. Although it might not exactly say that, that's my interpretation and think that's gonna be my walk away. Yeah. That's great. No, I'm very much more informed about the whole process that there is a separation between Benz and your courses that you're giving. The other thing you kind of alluded to in that was there's like a almost a museum of artifacts that are down in that room. And you you have them all categorized, you're all tell me a little bit about it. I mean, we don't have a whole lot of time, but I think it was fascinating. There there are so many floral vessels that are so unique.

SPEAKER_03 21:50

Well, yes. This building, the horticultural forest science building, when it was in its planning phase way back in the mid 1950s. 70s. The Binn School of Floral Design Gallery was always a part of it. And so the building was built so that there was a gallery for us to be able to exhibit the artifacts.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

There's I I've lost count. I have actually the last number that I can actually remember of artifacts is about 1300 different artifacts that run the range. I mean, Buddy was such an eclectic collector. Eclectic collector. Yes, we have some of the coolest, neatest containers and vessels. We also have sculptures. We have flat paintings, we have art, we have textiles, we have wood, we have ceramics, we have glass, we have Italian art, we have Renaissance art, we have Japanese, we have Chinese, we have it's just all over the place.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

And so everything that he's brought back from his travels that he has felt had a lot of artistic merit. There you go. Artistic merit, then it's there. It's there.

SPEAKER_03 23:17

You know, there's some unusual things in there that that you would not find anywhere else. There's just a ton of history there. And he kind of had an eye for um collecting things that might be more valuable in the future. So we have a couple of collections down there that when he purchased them, I'm sure were not that big a deal. But now they're worth hundreds of dollars a piece. And you know, that's that takes an artistic eye to be able to see that.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Oh, it sure does. Yeah. And so how often do you change out those displays that I see in the hallway and uh the gallery area?

SPEAKER_03 23:59

Well, we try to do that twice a year. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Um it's a lot of work, I can tell. It's like well, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

Uh there's a lot of research that goes into it. What's our theme going to be? Um currently the one is here is on balance, asymmetrical versus symmetrical balance. But you know, the it's such an eclectic mix of artifacts that sometimes you have a hard time deciding what it is you're gonna put out.

SPEAKER_04 24:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

We are continually upgrading and reorganizing and adding to the collection. Jim added several things to the collection, I've added several things, but our space is limited on what it is where we can store it. And because it is art, fine art, I mean much of it, fine art museum collection, we have our own fire suppression system, we have our own locking system that no one else has. I mean, the rest of the building can't get in there because they don't have the right credentials. If you're in there and the fire alarm goes off or the fire suppression system goes, you better get out very fast.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

You're gonna be locked in there, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:11

Well, you're not gonna necessarily be locked in, but it's a halon system, and so it takes all the oxygen out, just like that. So you have nothing to breathe.

SPEAKER_04 25:18

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 25:19

Which you know, fire can't exist without the oxygen. So that's what happens in there. And they come frequently to do that test to make sure everything is still working correctly. The batteries are whatever they do in there. So that's an interesting continual curricatory process.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Are they all cataloged now with pictures and on not online, but in a digital form so that when you're like looking for some color that you could say, oh well, this set has something in the blue, or this is the years that this was from, so that you can not walk through the museum to see what you need, but you can scroll to see what you want to use for display.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

Yeah, we have it on a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet. A big, big big spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Yeah. Um, but does it have pictures as well of everything?

SPEAKER_03 26:12

It has a picture.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

The difficulty in the spreadsheet is it is so incredibly large.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

We can sort it, you know, uh by country if we know the country of origin. So if we wanted to do something on um Japan, well, we've got the column for origins, then we just sort for Japan, and there's all of that. Okay or China or or textile. So we have some major categories like that. Age, we know most of the ages of most of the products or the uh the items.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

So yeah, because I just think that would be insanely difficult to be able to decide what to put in that everyone. Well, and where it is. You know, well, they've got to have numbers, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:54

Well, they're numbered, yes, but the number in the spreadsheet then corresponds to a number in the wall cabinets. So this particular item is supposed to be in cabinet A on the third shelf. Otherwise, you could look for days and not find that. Demo, for sure. Because the cabinets are, you know, four feet deep.

unknown 27:14

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

You know, like five and six things deep in there. So you have to have a flashlight to look in there and see what's actually in there.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

After our discussion about the Benz Gallery, Bill and I circled back around to teaching. And I think what he's going to tell you right now summarizes why Bill McKinley and educators get such satisfaction out of teaching.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

Many years ago, I was requested as part of one of my evaluations, was I needed to create a short teaching philosophy. Many teaching philosophies are paragraphs are and are pages long, which are fine. But I was asked to do a very succinct one. And so I decided I'm going to make this a visual. So if you'll bear with me a second here. The story is that there is a person who is born, raised, and lives in a a world of blue. That's all they live in. The walls, trees, everything is blue. Until one day, through the mail slot in their door, comes an envelope. Blue. Expected to be blue, it's blue. They open it up. Inside is a a letter. It's blue. Inside the letter, there's a small, very small yellow coin. The person says, Oh my word, what is this thing? What is yellow? If there's yellow and there's blue, I wonder what else there is. That's what teaching is all about.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

Giving them that little piece of yellow. Okay, now I wonder what else I can do with that.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

The end.

SPEAKER_02 29:29

That's really that is thought provoking.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Well, you know, it really does in a very small succinct way describe what it is that educators are supposed to be to. You can't teach everybody everything. There's just no way. But you can give them the equipment that they need to be able to take that and go forward.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button for the business pleasure for speaker. Good morning,