WONDERFUL, WINSOME WISTERIA

 

Hello all,

It's wisteria time and my large plant, once again, only produced a small number of racemes. I've been frustrated with this plant for decades and have threatened to remove it more than once. You may recall the large, twisted wisteria stem that I used in my exhibit for our Sogetsu annual exhibition. That was almost half of my plant. So it was put to good use, albeit, in a different way than I had envisaged when I planted it. I had visions of masses of pendulous, fragrant flowers but it was never to be.

I had cut all of the flowers that were produced and arranged them. In the arrangement, above, I teamed the long stemmed wisteria racemes with a long stemmed rhododendron, in two ceramic vases.

The photographs, below, are two views of the same arrangement of wisteria and white lilac in a self made, ceramic, double vase.

Front view

Side view

I've used the piece of red dogwood previously in the wall arrangement, below. It was easy to remove the materials that had died and replace them with wisteria and the first of my altissimo roses.

Last year I had divided a pot of bromeliads (queen's tears) and planted them in the ground. This year they rewarded me with a dozen or more flowers. They are quite lovely but have rather weak stems, requiring some support when placing them in a kenzan.

And now for some students' work.

Shaneen's theme was 'An Arrangement Expressing a Movement'. She wired together umbrella grass stems and trimmed them to look like stairs, then added  yellow iris and a bud to represent climbing stairs.

Lei's theme was 'In a Suiban Without a Kenzan'. She used pussy willow, queen Anne's lace and hellebores in a ceramic suiban

Mary's theme was 'Various Locations'. She made an arrangement for my coffee table in the lounge room. As it was to be viewed from above and all around, she paid particular attention to use of jushi to conceal the kenzan, without overcrowding it.

Lei's 'Floor Arrangement', below, was placed next to long, silk, panels in my family room. She used silver birch branches, New Zealand flax and alstroemeria in a large, ceramic container.

Bye for now,

Emily