SLOW FLOWERS: Week 2
January 13th, 2013
Winter’s Multi-Hued Palette
This is what you can harvest during the 2nd week of January!~ Pretty amazing!
Ingredients:
Harvested from Jean Zaputil’s Seattle garden:
7 stems Corsican hellebores (Helleborus argutifolius)
5 stems Japanese aucuba (Aucuba japonica ‘Variegata’)
7 stems sweet box (Sarcococca confusa)
Harvested from Lorene Edwards Forkner’s Seattle garden:
3 stems oak leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia)
7 stems witch hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Jelena’)
3 lengths Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica ‘Aureoreticulata’)
Vase:
12-inch tall x 8½-inch diameter vintage cream urn (lent to me by Lorene – thanks!)
Eco-technique
Easy-to-use twine: Here’s a great idea I learned from Jennie Greene, a Portland designer and partner in the flower shop called Artis + Greene. To anchor a branch, stem or vine in place, use bind wire. Available from craft
stores and floral supply outlets, spools of the pliable, twine-wrapped wire come in tan or green (you’ll need wire cutters to work with this material). In this arrangement, I allowed the honeysuckle to drape down the side and
wrap around the foot of the vase, using a short length of bind wire to secure it. The tie disappears into the foliage but does the trick to keep things in place.
More pics:
Beautiful detail of the oak leaf hydrangea and Corsican hellebore foliage
A “vine-wrap” detail embellishes the foot of this vase.
NOTE: Each Sunday of this year, I will post my photographs, “recipe” and tip for that week’s floral arrangement, created for my new book, Slow Flowers. Enjoy the floral journey through 52 weeks of the year~
January 13th, 2013 at 6:10 am
Minor correction, doesn’t Lorene live/garden in Portland, not Seattle?
Hello David – thanks for your note! Lorene definitely does live in Seattle! Check out her web site at http://www.plantedathome.com
January 13th, 2013 at 11:45 am
Lovely once again! I wonder if my friends would let me clip a few stems from their gardens?
January 14th, 2013 at 10:07 am
It just struck me this morning that clipping cuttings from my bedraggled (Seattle!) garden clipped and brought in for a seasonal bouquet MIGHT just distract me from the mess of a landscape that is deep in the process of being reinvented. It’s just too sad to look at it directly~
January 15th, 2013 at 10:22 am
beautiful.