What Floats your Boat?

Boat shaped containers are not easily found but worth seeking out.  They are versatile for many styles of design.  Their curves make them less weighty than their rectangular counterpoints. Subscribers know that my tables are long and narrow so I am always in search of ways to march the designs down the tables.

Here’s the boat, with a piece of Oasis inside.  Below I have chosen one variegated ti leaf (aspidistra), could be any lovely leaf or leaves that fit inside the shape or not.  

  

The pearl headed pins just hold the leaf in place (www.jamaligarden.com, Michael’s).  It will last a long time this way even though the stem is removed!

With a shear or knife cut a slit in the leaf where you want your flower stem to go in.  I am using very short stems of lilies here.  These buds will open, though not too quickly.

To connect these designs I added painted black curly willow sticks.  These are from www.save-on-crafts.com, but Michael’s, Pier One or other stores often have them.  Or you can paint fresh curly willow, but those sticks are more irregular, which could make them more interesting but harder to work with.

  

The willow stems rest between the flowers on the container and link up the arrangements. Do put the vases in place on the table before you place the willow.  These were from a lunch for the ff campers, using white lilies.

At a dinner, using pink lilies - good thing it was on the porch as the lily fragrance was almost over-powering. 

This version with sunflowers were originally placed on red and white check tablecloths at tables in a tent for a very country luncheon!  Here they have come back to my table, none the worse for wear!

Cheers!

O Girasole...

Sunflowers by any name – girasole, tournesol, or himawari - may not smell sweet as the saying (kinda) goes, but they always make us smile.  Here in the hills between Lakeville and Sharon CT, two huge fields have been blooming away, transporting us to Provence or Kansas, depending on your worldview.

Googling sunflowers, you will find over 40 varieties of Helianthus annus in yellows, reds and bronze, providing much grist for the designer’s mill.

A gentle subscriber in Rochester gave me these fabulous red milk bottles (see "Summer Marches Down the Table", June).  What a fun and easy setting they make for these cheery faces.

For a small dinner, this is a quieter version with tapered square glass containers sitting on square mirrors with candles. I am not a huge fan of colored candles but the white does look rather lame here.

With bronze sunflowers a more dramatic, if less summery, statement can be made.  This handsome piece of pottery was created by Michael Humphreys.  It is a striking piece even on its own and a very versatile container.

Added to the pot-et-fleur box used last week (see "When Pot meets Fleur", July), these yellow centered sunflowers create a sunshine in a box.  They are sitting in a water filled container which has been placed in back of the potted plants.

For something really different, a piece of garden art is brought to the table.  The sunflowers are stripped of their bright petals.  This is very sticky work so slather your hands with hand cream so the sap doesn't stick or use disposable gloves.  The less freshly picked the sunflowers are, the easier it is to remove the petals - a gentle back and forth at their base and then slip about 4-6 petals at a time.

Sunflower stems are cut very very short, with skewers used to help hold them into the oasis. Only a little of the stem needs to be in the oasis to keep them hydrated.  Above, you can just see the leaf covered tuna can that raises this design up as it sits in the sculpture.

Lily grass is used to emulate the iron.  The tough end is poked into the oasis, and the softer tip is looped over and pinned to the oasis between the flower heads.  

First, find your sunflower!  Cheers!

Hot Tamale!

The first weekend in August brings the Berkshire Botanical Garden Flower Show.  The Garden hums with exhibitors, judges and visitors.  "Garden on Fire" is the BBG's theme this summer as well as the theme of the design classes in "The Grow Show".

In design, my favorite class was called "Hot Tamale!" a design in a niche.

This artistic design was reminiscent of Flemish master paintings with the great variety of vegetables including top Egyptian walking onions (little purple clusters on long stems).

Precise symmetry is not easy using vegetables!

These delicate dainty vegetables are in perfect scale and skillfully arranged as they run up and down the design.

Many were grown by the exhibitor.  Notice the flower made from a tomatillo upper right.

Using a combination of garden flowers including zinnias and onions to form a bouquet, the designer cleverly linked it to glass container.  Also more use of walking onions with their clusters are on the top.

Colorful peppers were wired with gold (aluminium) wire to form an undulating chain inside the vase.

Matte black forms a dramatic backdrop for this bold design sitting on a upside down glass container.

This designer was the only one to incorporate tamales into the design.  Notice, also, the draped cornsilk peeking out from the right.  Both added great textural contrast to the smooth peppers.

As befits an August show, growers brought vegetables in the horticulture classes.  This artfully arranged, bounteous basket won Horticulture Best In Show.

Are you hungry?  Cheers!

Potted Inspiration

Potted inspiration

What’s in your pot?

This is the time of year it is fun to see all the imaginative pots with their plants  bursting forth.  There is a lot of inspiration as well as lessons in color and texture in them.

 The creative hands at the Berkshire Botanical Garden used all manner of galvanized pots to create this welcoming group.  The grays play off the blue spruce behind them and set off the warmer toned plants to perfection.  Lesson: what is sitting in your garage to plant in?

Still at the Berkshire Botanical, this lovely column holds a monochromatic grouping with exciting contrast of form, all in green against green.  Lesson in balance:  Do you love the large alocasia leaves hanging out on the top, are not?  Does it work because of the big pot?  

The master colorists at White Flower Farm in Litchfield CT composed this red hot scheme of begonias, coleus and fuschia, with a little cool gray helychrisum peeking out of the right.  All in a stunning classic pot.

Doesn't every talented person make their own boat?  to use as planter?  This woven branch structure at the BBG is planted with a new scheme every year.

More structures in structures at Terrain, Westport CT.  These wood planters hold conical structures planted with alocasia and vines.  A big contrast between the huge alocasia leaves and the small vines.

These billowing window boxes in Stockbridge celebrate The Bride's wedding color scheme of purple and orange.  Fuschia and petunias are happy here.

In honor of the same scheme, I planted my doorway pots - old British washpails - with orange lantana, purple nicotiana, coleus, bronze fennel and grasses.  The fennel looks pretty good here, but not so good now.

What’s in your pot?

Cheers

Let us entertain you

 Colors chipped

For Mother’s Day I received a wonderful present from The Bride (see June post, “Beginning with a Wedding”).  Paint chip placemats!  There isn’t a paint color sample card that I don’t love, and my drawers are full of them.  Now I am able to set the table with them.

These colorful placemats are from Avril Loreti at Modern Home in Canada via www.etsy.com (once on the site enter ‘paint chip placemats’ in the search box) and make a colorful splash on the dining table.  The bands of color have names in English and French: " you’re so cool/tu es genial", "sunshine soak/embrasser le soliel", "gum ball/rose bonbon".  Always more lovely in French, n’est pas?

The cotton sateen napkins are from Crate & Barrel. Because I waited for these to come on sale ($1.95 vs $4.95), I did not have as many colors from which to choose.  I console myself that as a group the three napkin colors (lavender, marine blue and lagoon) can be used with other mats.

 Only green was used for the flowers in a simple low design.  Left over  from the last post: "Two dish design", variegated aspidistra (also called ti leaf) was rolled into a tube shape, a small oasis blob (technical term) inserted at one end, the mum or hydrangea at the other. The leaf can be held by stapling it, using a glue dot, or using a pin from one leaf into the other.  A few leaves were left without a flower or oasis, and the whole thing set on the same leaves.   Once in place, and not falling over, lily turf grasses linked them.

These rippled water glasses in various colors have long been waiting for such a vibrant setting (from a terrific shop in Wilmington DE called The Blue Streak)!

Crate & Barrel has colored votives in sets of 4 cool colors or 4 hot colors and sold in sets of 18 in long plastic tubes.

The fruit tarts had a scheme all their own, and since I didn’t make them, they were delicious!

Cheers!

Two-dish design

Dishing it out….

Last Friday at the Berkshire Botanical Garden (www.berkshirebotanical.org), I taught a class called “Cutting Edge Design: Not your mother’s flower arrangements”.  We began with a brief power point on the exciting new arrangements that take on the aspect of organic sculptures.  Then we got down to the business of making a two-dish design.

The students used these wonderful glass plates with cobalt blue swirls (www.target.com  & only online) in two sizes, dinner and salad.  These very reasonable plates come from Murano, the glass making island near Venice.  

Using two pieces of Oasis, we set them up with an oasis between the dinner and the salad, and one on top of the salad.  A quarter slice of oasis went between each plate, the edge covered by part of an aspidistra leaf.  These are variegated leaves with random white striping.

The other materials were:  white mini calla lilies, sky blue agapanthus, bright pink roses, lime green spider mums, variegated aspidistra, lily grass, galax leaves, bear grass, baby artichokes and small limes. 

The students did a great job!   Once they had assembled their plates - rather like making a floral an ice cream sandwich - they then chose where they wanted to put the fruits. Limes and artichokes were left whole in some places and sliced in half in others.   

Despite the fact that they all used the same materials, each design had an individual flair. Rhythm is created by the linking of the two levels of the design.  Assorted glass headed corsage pins  (www. jamaligarden.com) help to hold some of the plant material in place.

Using the bear and lily grasses, the levels can be linked and the design gains some exuberance from these large spaces which are created. 

Any shape plate can be used as I did here with square plates, putting one on the diagonal to the other.  Glass plates with an interesting edge (see demonstration of oasis above, plates from Crate & Barrel)  sets up a cool summery water-like aspect to the design.  The artichokes which have the look of water lily buds carry that idea through. 

Always use two skewers parallel to each other to hold the fruit into the oasis.  Oil of clove (health food, drug stores) on the skewer will create a seal and eliminate the opening as a source of fruit flies – but cannot promise the same for the surface of a cut lime.

The design above was done several years ago in East Hampton.  These plates are much larger and you can see I have used much more material including some white and green tulips and moss.  No rules to this idea, its fun and sturdy!  To keep the oasis moist put some ice cubes between the flowers and let them melt down.

Cheers!