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45 H aile Wossen flies under the radar, and that's how he prefers it. "I like being a little inaccessible," he says. Anthos, his 20-year-old floral design company, doesn't have a storefront or website, and business comes solely from word of mouth. Wossen's creative lair is a 1949 bungalow shrouded by foliage in the backyard of his Old East Dallas house. On a recent visit, the studio doors are open as a light morning rain falls. There are buckets of brightly colored anemones and orange parrot tulips, and boxes filled with silvery club moss. Classical piano music lingers in the air. Wossen's small but prestigious stable of clients includes art collector Deedie Rose, who keeps him busy year-round with assignments to design flowers for her edgy Antoine Predock-designed home and for fund-raising events held at The Pump House, a renovated 1920s water station on her property. One might consider him court floral designer for the House of Rose — the two have worked together almost weekly for 20 years, and Rose's patronage and referrals have helped Anthos blossom into a thriving business. "Deedie started it all for me," Wossen says. "I have carte blanche to be creative. She allows me to do the most interesting things for the most interesting of interiors." One of the first jobs he did for her was decorate The Pump House for Christmas. In lieu of a tree or other holiday elements, Wossen used a huge West Texas tumbleweed, which he flocked white. "It was a monster, the size of a small car," he remembers. "It was essentially the Christmas Object — so simple and beautiful." Wossen showcases special blooms in sparse, statement-making ways. For interior designer Jean Liu, he dropped a handful of ombré lavender sweet peas into a minimal white vase, then tied it with braided twine. He has used bundles of native grasses or piles of freshly picked cotton bolls (stems and all) for Rose's events. For a recent Pump House dinner, Wossen created sculptural centerpieces out of rattan and freeform mounds of purple dianthus, placed directly onto the table to appear "like they've escaped their vessels," he says. Art collector Marguerite Hoffman almost always wants peonies — any color. "Often, it comes down to one beautiful element packed into a vase," he says. But looks are deceiving. "It's the tiny, imperceptible decisions you make — like the length of the flower — that make all the difference. The other tricks you can do are never as impressive." Wossen cut his floral chops at Avant Garden, creating lavish European- inspired arrangements, and at Zen, one of the first local florists to specialize in tropicals. His style developed from there, based on his own curiosities. S o m e t i m e s h e ' l l i n c o r p o r a t e sculptural found objects; he's still mulling over how to use his collection of antique iron chimney-brush heads from England. The weighty pieces, which evoke oversized, angular black dandelions, aren't at all out of place in his world of flowers. "IT'S THE TINY, IMPERCEPTIBLE DECISIONS YOU MAKE — LIKE THE LENGTH OF THE FLOWER — THAT MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE." — Haile Wossen HAILE WOSSEN Haile Wossen, Anthos Peonies, roses, and grape hyacinth fill a vase.