an easter bouquet

Forgive me if I'm playing it easy this weekend, but working on the theory that you can never have too many spring flowers, I bring you my 'bouquet du jour'; a setting of spring flowers brought in from the garden and popped into a an old baking dish.

Ivy, blossom, magnolia, hyacinths, grape hyacinths are here along with others whose names I won't bore you with, which is my way of saying that I can't remember what they are all called.  Who cares if they don't last long, ephemera has its own very special charm.

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the home made flower display

I love being offered a bouquet of flowers.  Guests arriving for dinner can always make me smile with a few roses or a posy of tulips.  A dear friend, a real gentleman, has flowers delivered to my door in the afternoon before a dinner, and that has to be the ultimate courtesy.

But for all the pleasure I get from a lovely bunch of fresh blooms, I may secretly enjoy them more in the following week, when some flower heads begin to fade and the bouquet is taken apart.

 

Because sometimes all it  takes to make a table look special is a few simple flowers and an assortment of interesting containers.

In these pictures I display flowers in old stone bottles, vintage jelly moulds, a jam pot and my favourite old cups.  Set against a backdrop of an old tureen or a pile of old books.  Takes a few minutes  and adds a little weekend interest to a table in the entrance hall.

How about you, do you have a favourite flower container, do you use stuff

 that wasn't originally designed for flowers?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend, celebrating Easter, or simply enjoying friends and family.

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mon bouquet du jour - it's the autumn

Caught short this weekend by a last minute invite to dinner, nothing left in my 'reserve' to take as a hostess gift, I had to scour the garden to see if there was anything left that could make a bouquet.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the sedum was still just red, not brown yet from the frost, and that hidden away protected beneath the lower branches of the hydrangea, there were a few last blooms half green half red.   I toyed with some rose hips, but they looked too orange, then turned to the ivy whose berries are beginning to turn from green to black. 

 Finally I added some sprigs of sage, which my friend may not totally appreciate, because it smells rather strong !! - I told her she could discard the sage if it got overpowering!

Not being a very organised person, I do not have a roll of florist's cellophane to hand, so my bouquet just had to be made up as a posy and held together with a ribbon.

What do you count on for last minute gifts? 

A pot of jam, a cake, a favourite book?

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mon bouquet du jour - in cider bottles!

At this time of year, bouquets that come from the garden are more about texture than colour.  So this weekend I bought myself some ivory roses and tall ornamental cabbages for my flower arrangement.

I've been loving using small antique glasses for grouping individual flowers, and thought to do the same with some antique cider bottles I found recently.

I love the palette of subtle colours, the way that the indidual stems come together as a bouquet by being cut at differing heights before popped into the bottles.

It's amazing how the colour of these bottles changes with the light, I'll definitely be using them outside in the summer.

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my first autumn bouquet du jour

Haven't been able to show you any bouquets for a while, August is a difficult month to keep the flowers going in the garden.   Now we have the first of the autumn flowers, dahlias, roses, sedums beginning to turn pink and with a couple of baby apples and some blackberries, the whole things melts in tones of pink and purple.

We are swimming in brocante fairs at this time of the year and I'm off early treasure hunting this morning - hopefully tomorrow I'll have a good loot shoot to show you!

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mon bouquet du jour

Sometimes you don't even intend to create a bouquet, your mind a million miles from home, and the flowers just come together unassisted.  It's happened to you too -  out on a country walk and returned home with  a posy, you know how it goes.

Last week I was driving home from Paris and as I turned the corner onto our valley, I couldn't resist pulling off the road  and getting out of the car to admire the view.    From the sky my eyes wandered down to my feet and I discovered that there were all sorts of wild flowers growing on the road edge.

 It was irresistible: five minutes later I found myself holding a bunch of flowers that were simply plopped into an old French utility jar as a vase.  As I said , some bouquets are not even intended ....

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mon bouquet du jour

Sometimes I enjoy the making-of the bouquet even more than the finished result. This was put together quickly one evening a couple of weeks ago, when the garden was at its best and giving generously.

I'm not sure if everyone is going to like this one, not very structured, rather busy, but at the time it just seemed gloriously lush, if rather difficult to capture on film!

As I walked around the garden finding suitable flowers for my vase, I carried them in an old wooden trug.  If there had been a way of keeping them in water in the trug, they wouldn't even have been transferred to a vase.

This bouquet was definitely as much about texture and contrast as simple colour and pretty flowers.

If you haven't entered the grain sack giveaway yet, there's still time!

click  here

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my bouquet du jour

Greenery in a bouquet is vital for adding bulk and serving as a backdrop to the colour of the flowers.  Here I wanted a very quick bouquet on the terrace, didn't have time to scout around the garden looking for interesting foliage, turned around towards our enormous lime tree and   Bingo!

The lime tree 'flowers' at this time of year to the delight of the garden bees.  The pale flower or seed heads actually hang beneath the leaves on the tree, but for the arrangement I turned them the other way up, added some tiny apples, and my irreplaceable Pierre de Ronsard rose.  I liked the effect with the bottle of rosé wine, soft and summery!

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