Well, the seed has been sown! Hermione made this arrangement all on her own,
after asking permission from daddy to cut some of his flowers.

Hello all,

This time of year the arum lilies are in abundance in my garden. I allow many of them to grow naturally but others I curve as they grow. I like using the curved ones in this container but, without any access to the inside, it takes some serious mechanics to make the stems stay where I want them.

I was asked, recently, to make an arrangement for the table in the room where a book was to be launched. The book, below, called 'Meet Japan' was written by John Urquhart.

This is a small quote from the back cover - 'Meet Japan gives an insight into the country's deeply spiritual relationship with nature, its beauty, the evolution of its "food life" and culture, and explores the soul of this fascinating country.'

John's friend, Margaret Clarke approached me with this request and gave me some information regarding the launch. She sent me a photograph of a screen, painted by John's wife, Lois, which was to be placed on the table with the arrangement.

I decided on a naturalistic arrangement to fit in with the screen. This is an example of the lesson from Book 5 - 'Arrangement complementing an Art piece'

The arrangement photographed at home
Pine, strelitzias and nandina berries

The arrangement in situ - I wanted it to continue the scene on the screen

Our recent Sogetsu workshop was run by Elizabeth Angell, the theme for which was 'Create your own surface from plant materials'.

I came across some cuttings of 'book leaf pine' and thought it would be ideal for this exercise, as it has a very flat form. I made the arrangement, below, at the workshop, which addressed the exercise well enough. That is, the stems created surfaces as did the leaves at the end of the stems. However, as an arrangement, it did not please me.

Back home, I reworked the material in a different container and was much happier with it.

Second version

And here's another example of reworking the material-
The first one was a demonstration piece for the Box Hill Floral Art Group and the second is a bit of fun for me. I call it 'Scorpion'.

My student, Dianne, left me some juvenile eucalyptus branches after class, which I used to make this table arrangement, into which I added 2 arum lilies.

Bye for now,
Emily