STRELITZIAS

 

Hello all,

The strelitzias reginae are looking quite lovely in the garden but even lovelier in my ikebana. In the above arrangement I used two gymea leaves to create the zig-zag design, then added the flowers.

We recently brought an arborist to do some pruning around the garden including removing two of the strelitzia nicolai plants. Once on the ground, I was able to remove the flowers with a longer stem than usual because to do so would damage a number of the leaves. In this case, it didn't matter. 

As always with these flowers, a very heavy container is needed to support the weight of them. The vase, below is very heavy indeed. I certainly can't lift it, so I use it infrequently. It worked well in this arrangement under the stairs.

More strelitzias reginae. I can't resist the unusual shapes these flowers sometimes have. They often exhibit real character in their bird-like appearance.

The material I used in  the arrangement, below is philadelphus coronarius. This plant belonged to my auntie Angela, who passed away many years ago. Her son offered to let me dig it up from her garden before selling the house. It's a poignant reminder of a much loved auntie.

I have another philadelphus in my garden. Below are close-ups of the two. They, also, have a delicate fragrance. Their common name is Mock Orange.

Philadelphus verginalis

Philadelphus coronarias

Sam dropped in to see his brother George, whose wife, Betty, is very successful in growing hippeastrums. George snapped two gorgeous stems and handed them to Sam to give to me. I didn't need to do much to arrange them, except to pick accompanying materials and to place them in my wall container. I did do some judicial pruning of the ferns, although, in the photo, it looks like it needed more.

The previous Sunday Lucy, Vicky and I, together with our respective men, went for lunch at a lovely restaurant down in the Peninsula. On the return trip Vicky collected these interesting, tall stems of flowers. I looked them up and found they are called Carex acutiformis, a type of sedge. She made an arrangement with them and dropped off five of them to me.

Vicky's modern arrangement

My naturalistic arrangement.
Variegated Iris Japonica and hosta leaves

Mary's curriculum lesson was 'Focusing on Water'. She used scrunched up cellophane floating high  in a glass container and added one variegated New Zealand flax leaf and three cumquats.

Bye for now,

Emily