Check out these peonies! Are they not lucious?

Hello all,

I've spent the last 29 years, since I started Ikebana, developing my garden in our half acre property. I'm now in the enviable position of having more material than I can use in my ikebana, all year round. Except for certain difficult materials, such as peonies. They continue to frustrate me! My student, Mary Sutherland, knowing this, has brought me a gift of the bunch of peonies in the arrangement, above. The photograph does't do them justice, however. When they were fully opened they were the size of small cabbages.

The dried branch that I used with the peonies was lying at the bottom of my garden for years. I discovered it recently when I was doing some much needed weeding. It had been bleached beautifully, however it also became somewhat brittle. I had to join a few pieces together before arranging it. I also used some ornithogalum towards the back as a foil for the red of the peonies.

Well, classes have finished for the year but ikebana has not. I have two creamy white dogwoods that are just flowering now, a little bit later than in other suburbs but very welcome. One is called Cornus Norman Haddon but I don't know the name of the other, as it was given to me as a seedling by my friend Hazel, who has sadly passed away some years ago. Now, that seedling is a small tree, which reminds me of Hazel whenever I see it.

I made the arrangement, below, after removing many of the dense leaves and struggled to find appropriate accompanying material. The best I could do were the green goddess lilies.

I'll let you in on a little secret. The vase I used is narrow and the branch and lilies, both, lean forward, making the arrangement front heavy. To counter that, I used a weight in the form of a kenzan, which I attached to the back of the container, using wire, as a counter balance. It did the trick.

My strelitzia reginae had produced many flowers, bless her! And as they died, needed to be removed. But I was loathe to throw them out, so I removed the dried petals leaving the beak-like sheaths and arranged them in a strong, heavy container. I used some dried acacia aphylla, which I sprayed pink, picking up the colour of the sheaths.

 

My smoke bush has flowered, FINALLY! I made the arrangement, below, as an example of the theme 'Using only one kind of Material.'

The garlic bed in the vegetable patch has, also, been productive. I used two stems and some smoke bush for the arrangement, below.

I leave you with this, the final use of my curly ornithogalum, in a self made ceramic container.

Bye for now,
Emily