Enriching Life Through Flower Arranging

Fresh flowers are a lifelong passion of mine. Reflecting on flowers and flower arrangements calls to mind so many moments of my life… heather and baby’s breath in a porcelain vase shaped as a woman in a long dress, the flowers filling the back of her skirt; a birthday gift from my father. Standing in the lobby of the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. thunderstruck by the tall glass cylinders placed on a round mahogany table and filled with twisted grapevine stems and orange lilies.

There is nothing like the look and smell of fresh flowers to enhance your personal space. You might place a single bloom to contemplate from the bath. This ruffly white tulip in a Wllliam Yeoward crystal shot glass is sculptural in the evening light. We have a set of these we use for individual servings of orange flavored liquor on cold winter evenings or, as you see here as bud vases. You could put a single bud vase at each place at the table.

Here in the Texas Hill Country our land is abundant with native plants and grasses to add shape and movement to your arrangements. The dried branches of native perennials brace gracefully drooping tulips. The little bluestem grass and dried seed pods found on the land give this arrangement height and direction.

We have native trees growing in the arroyo on the edge of our land. This arrangement is made of local vine, evergreen sumac and blooming escarpment cherry tree branches. Placed on a round table in the entrance hall it greets guests and provides a sense of the locale.

Here is an arrangement made entirely from our garden with lamb’s ear, evergreen sumac, and Henry Duelberg Salvia, a native Central Texas perennial. As a side note, the salvia blooms can be tied and hung upside down to dry for long lasting arrangements.

Imagine having a room like this with buckets, baskets, and planters filled with flowers to arrange! Most of us will not have an entire room devoted to flower arranging and will make space in an already existing room. Our laundry room serves this purpose well.

French Blooms by Sandra Sigman the founder of Les Fleurs was a gift to me on many levels. Turning the pages, it was exciting to see the author, like me, enjoyed visiting flower shops.

A photo from the book of Gabrielle Feuillard’s shop in Belleme, France. The ivy in the planters has grown into a surround for the window and awning. The bunched sticks at the top remind me of an architectural element and provide an idea to create something like this above our front door this fall!

Here is a photo of mine of a florist shop in Paris. The tiny topiaries are irresistible.

In French Blooms Sandra Sigman provides readers with descriptions of materials used by florists in creating arrangements. Creating our own arrangements gives us the opportunity to personalize and make use of local “ingredients”. The supplies are readily available online and a few days after ordering the green coated flexible chicken wire, green floral tape, and waterproof floral sticky clay arrived.  Also recommended are flower frogs and these are readily available in the vintage shops so it might be fun to add them to your vintage shopping list.

There is a chapter called “French Floral Recipes” which you can use as a guide to begin. It is likely you, like me, will find different flowers and greenery and will make it your own as you arrange. However, the text serves as a helpful and instructive guide for using the floral supports and how to proceed with the art of arranging flowers. The pieces assembled for my first attempt using the book as a guide are from a local flower shop (garden roses, Star of Bethlehem, and a spiky filler with lavender colored pods) and home grown (rosemary and flowers from one of our chaste trees.

Here is our soup tureen with an oval of green coated chicken wire pressed inside it and green floral tape ensuring the wire stays in place. My small metal tin snips were perfect for cutting the wire. As were my bamboo garden gloves for protecting hands during the process.

First insert the rosemary, then the spiky filler with the lavender colored pods.

The purple chaste tree blooms and creamy pale pink garden roses create the central core of the arrangement and extend its height.

The Star of Bethlehem flowers are green pods which will open to become clusters of white blooms.

The completed arrangement on the worktable upstairs.

As the flowers wilt and fade you can change the arrangement and keep it going. Here are photos of the arrangement moved to an antique Victorian jelly mold with the chaste tree blooms removed and later, with the garden roses removed and the Star of Bethlehem flowers in full bloom. In total, the evolving arrangement lasted for two weeks.

My enthusiasm for this is growing! On my shelves is another book The Flower School: The Principles and Pleasures of Good Flowers by Joseph Massie. This book is a compendium of techniques with detailed photographs of the steps involved. Here you see images of creating a support with florist tape and making a hand tied bouquet. Also included are instructions for creating a flower crown, a garland, an archway and so on!

(magnifissance.com)

Thinking about stunning arrangements leads me to one of my favorites, Emily Thompson. Based in Manhattan, Emily Thompson Flowers creates stunning, unforgettable arrangements. Her written philosophy is thought provoking: “…to collaborate with the rough hand of nature…we seek out rare, ill-used and unlikely flowers, seed pods, branches, and undergrowth to achieve design…” Images of her arrangements include this dramatic juxtaposition of lemons and berries with tropical flowers opening.

This Emily Thompson arrangement of passion flowers, vines, and pomegranates in what appears to be a vintage porcelain vase is exquisite. My next arrangement should include an attempt at incorporating some sort of fruit or vegetable!

This photo of one of her arrangements in what looks to be a tree trunk is inspirational. Thinking about it sent me to the clip pile where we have trimmings and large cut logs from fallen trees in the arroyo. Would it be possible to cut a log to size, hollow it out, and insert a glass container for flowers?

All this thinking about flower arrangements leads me to our shelves; didn’t we have some art books with flower arrangements? This one, Working Among Flowers: Floral Still Life Paintings of Nineteenth Century France, is a treasure! The cover photo is of a painting by Gustave Caillebotte called ‘Yellow Roses in a Vase’.

These are portraits of artists Henri Fantin-Latour and Victoria Dubourg whose works are included in the book. They met while copying paintings in the Louvre Museum collection. They fell in love, married, and worked in adjoining studios.

This painting by Henri Fantin-Latour is termed “one of his masterpieces in the genre”. He presented the painting, titled ‘The Engagement Still Life’ to Victoria during their long engagement.

Fantin-Latour’s painting, ‘Still Life with a Vase of Hawthorn, Bowl of Cherries, Japanese Bowl, and Cup and Saucer’ is a testament to the beauty of arranged objects.

As in Henri Fantin-Latour’s work, ‘The Roses’, flowers waiting to be arranged have a beauty all their own.

Another source for styling floral arrangements is the work of the Dutch Masters such as Willem van Aelst. The cover photo on this book, Elegance and Refinement: The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst is titled ‘Flower Still Life with a Watch’. Again, the objects placed around the floral arrangement can relate to it and elevate its presence.

This painting done in 1675, ‘Group of Flowers’ is one of my favorites. The actual work is approximately 12 x 10 inches. The flowers resting on the edge of a marble tabletop look as if they could drop to the floor. A closer look reveals a spider in the upper left-hand corner, a caterpillar crawling on the edge of a leaf, and a fly resting on a rose petal. Insects were frequently included in his paintings to add life and a sense of movement. It would be difficult to train our exotic Texas Hill Country insects to remain within the floral arrangement. We will get our sense of movement through other means!

This photo of mine captures an image covering the wall behind the desk in the lobby of the McNay Museum in San Antonio during an exhibit in December of 2017. It looked as if a flower arrangement of brooches had burst apart to cover the wall. 

Perhaps you too will find life enriched as you create personal floral arrangements. Endless opportunities for pleasure exist as you search for vessels, forage the wild and choose from the offerings at your local flower shop!