…to displaying flowers and foliage in a vase, but that art could be anything from utilising learned floristry techniques to basically plonking them in a receptacle. Perhaps after plonking we might then rearrange them slightly to achieve something we see as more satisfactory, without necessarily recognising why we want to tweak things, or perhaps we might place them a stem at a time to achieve some perceived kind of balance, without having any formal or even informal training in floristry.
For IAVOM, however, none of this matters as we are creating the vases for our own pleasure, to bring elements of our gardens inside so we can enjoy them at closer quarters – and, to be honest, the blooms are invariably an art form in themselves and a single stem in a vase or jam jar is a work of art. That is certainly the case with today’s dahlias, Dahlia ‘Art Deco’ which are glorious in both form and colour, with their slightly quilled peachy petals and contrasting red centres and undersides. Most of the main stems had multiple blooms, so these were left intact, giving a variable height to the arrangement. There were so many other blooms I could have chosen today, but these dahlias demand to be shared this way at least once in the season. I didn’t have to search for supporting material either, as the adjacent Persicaria ‘Blackfield’ was begging to be cut, reflecting the darker contrasts of the dahlias.
As you know, I like to have an appropriate title and prop for my Monday vases, and although inspiration often strikes with barely a thought, at other times it proves to be more of a challenge. Having scraped together a title, I scoured the house for anything vaguely Art Deco in style but without success, until I remembered we might have a
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