Weeping willow, tall bearded iris, helleborus and Japanese maple

Hello all,
Every spring I like to make this type of 'pond arrangement'. I mainly use this suiban that I made many years ago, on the bottom of which, I laid crushed coloured glass, which melted during firing. The result is a water-like surface, well suited to  this type of arrangement.

I've included a close-up of the stunningly beautiful, tall bearded iris that I used here. The rhizome was given to me by my student, Shaneen Garbutt but she doesn't know its name. I consulted my Irises book and it looks like it might be 'Houdini'. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know.

Close-up of the bottom of the suiban

Another spring arrangement using my much-prized vases, which were a gift from my daughter and son-in-law.
Japanese maple, roses, euphorbia characias, tall bearded iris and ornithogalum

The foliage of Japanese maple is usually so dense that we have to thin it out considerably to lighten it and to reveal the stems and to create space. For the above arrangement I removed as much material as I had left on the branches. See below

We had considerable frost damage in our garden this year and one of the casualties was my monstera deliciosa. Once the danger of further frosts was over, I gave it a very hard pruning. Much of the material went into the compost bin but a number of interesting cuttings simply could not be discarded. Hence the arrangements below.

Both arrangements lasted for more than two weeks despite the fact that their stems were not in water. However, the fruit started to peel away and become messy, so had to go. According to a You Tube video, this fruit (also known as Fruit Salad Fruit) is edible but only where the outer skin has peeled away by itself. If you try to hasten the peeling process and eat the underneath you might regret it. I have many of them growing, so I will put it to the test and let you know.

In my last post I included a photograph of an arrangement using three strelitsia nicolai flowers. These are quite striking but the white petals are fragile and brown easily. In contrast the dark 'casing', if I can call it that, is very strong, making it physically quite difficult to ease out the delicate and fragile new petals from inside these tough exteriors.

Also, the weight of the flowers caused them to droop downwards after a while, so, after removing all dead material and dividing the flowers, I re-arrangement them into two new arrangements.

Original arrangement

Finally, I leave you with this cheeky little arrangement. The ornithogalum had this interesting stem and required nothing more that a container in which to display it. I bought this little ceramic container in Athens in 1988, long before I started learning ikebana in 1991.

Bye for now,
Emily