I’ve
never actually studied flower arranging... I’ve kind of learned it as
I’ve gone along, over the course of about 25 years... For me it’s what
painting is for many other people...a way of relaxing, a way of
listening to programs on the radio or to music without fidgeting, a way
of showing affection to people I care about.., a way of centering
myself...especially for me if it involves certain fragrances.... roses,
stock, freesia, lily of the valley, peaches, nectarines, honeysuckle.
It’s like cooking. There’s no one way to do it right. You can start with what flowers are available at any given moment, as if they were ingredients, and improvise on those; or start with an idea, and see what ingredients would bring it into focus; or choose a container and think about various ways it could be shown to its best advantage. Or, most likely, use some combination of all these approaches.
In this case, I started out with “Double Delight” roses, a little past their prime, found the ornamental kale (also a little past its prime and therefore nicely overblown) at the flower market; liked the idea of their similar shapes and similar shades of white and picotee markings; grabbed some green amaranth and a wine-colored dahlia and its buds (also from the flower market) to give some irregularity and height to what otherwise I thought would look too prim. And then at the supermarket, where I’d actually been looking for Brussels sprouts to use as accents, found something I’d never even seen before – these beautiful lime green, shell-like miniature cauliflowers, which, in the way they echoed the compote’s curves and the pointy scales of the antique milk glass container’s dolphin stem, turned out to be a more felicitous finishing touch than anything I could have planned.
– Originally published on Ava Living, The World's First Stop for Interior Design