Simplicity in ikebana

Simplicity in Ikebana

My dear teacher Shoso Shimbo says often,” Keep it simple, keep it simple… so that it will be more effective.”  In ikebana, less and definitely more!  And I used to “trim and trim and trim”- thinking… oh dear there isn’t much there anymore!   But he is right!  Less is more!

I have a very “young” garden and there isn’t much to pick from it.  Often, I found one or two things that I want to bring into the house- and yes, only 1 or 2 things!  Then I realise that the trick is to manipulate and accentuate the strong beautiful parts to make something simple but elegant.  No fuss, No buying extra materials… just one or two pieces, but I must think hard, think hard on what container to use, how to arrange them, where to put the finish work- that will all make a big difference to the end result.

Church Flowers 4 Sept 2010

Recently I have been very engaged in experimenting with leaves. Since my garden has a good supply of Mondo grass and Iris, I have been doing a lot of curling and weaving of leaves. Then I saw in a magazine, the Japanese “Florist”, which suggest putting a wire behind so that the leave can be “shaped”. And here is the result of my experiment. The Protea and Arums Lilies are from my garden. Ibonlt bought the big leaves and the flowering Wax. I am not very happy with placement of my Proteas but the 90 degree stems made them very hard to place.

Arranging flowers for church is a very exciting thing to do. You can get the basic concept not only from the different festivals but also from the different colours representing the different time of the church calendar.