During winter when the nights are long and the days are short and dull, it helps to look forward to spring and remember how colorful our gardens were the previous summer. Flower bouquets brighten up our rooms, remind us of spring and warmth, but often the commercially forced imports from the other side of the world seem too perfect, bold and artificial. Not quite our cup of tea. For most of us now may not seem the ideal time to go out into our gardens to cut flowers, but believe me there is an abundance of texture, colour, and structure out there to create endless floral arrangements.
Colours are often more subtle, earthy and and monochome, plant material may have withered or dried, by simply adding a few red berries or perhaps a scarce single rose bud, they become magical.
Flower arrangements can be so incredibly simple and minimal, the fact is we gaze at them absent-mindedly and focus on every detail, e.g.: while we eat our cereal, like studying the back of the cornflakes box. A vase with a single snow drop can evoke stronger feelings than a bucket full of white lilies.
Helleborus keep much longer if you wait a few days till the flowers are polinated before you cut them.
You can force many early flowering shrubs and trees by cutting well budded twigs and taking them indoors. Suitable are cherry blossom, witch hazel, forsythia, and many more.
In the darkness of winter our creativity can take on a dimension of purity and honesty. We think of new ideas and combinations for the coming season without being distracted by visual abundance.
