  HOW TO ARRANGE FRESH FLOWERS I I THINK one must really love the flowers in order to arrange them perfectly. If you love them you will feel in sympathy with them, and that alone will help you to understand what is needed to bring out and emphasize their exquisite beauty. Yet some knowledge of the rules that govern the best arrangement of flowers is necessary also, for it saves many experiments and makes the pretty task much more enjoyable and satisfactory. You may crowd a room with the rarest and most expensive flowers, but so arrange them that more than half of the effect of their beauty is lost; and you may have only one flower, but if it be the right kind of flower in the right kind of vase, and placed in just the right spot, your room will appear abundantly decorated and be filled with the beauty and sweetness of the one blossom. In a house where good taste always prevailed there stood, one day, on the uncovered top of a grand piano a tall, colorless, transparent vase which held just one long-stemmed American Beauty rose. The queenly flower with It was not merely a happy accident that placed the one flower in its prominent and effective position, but the experience and unerring taste of the daughter of the house. Imagine a Number of Nasturtiums, with no green leaves to relieve them, packed tightly into the neck of a brightly colored porcelain vase, and set primly on a stiff mantel-piece amid other prim ornaments. Then think of a clear glass rose-bowl standing on a table, where lie the newest magazines or books, filled and running over in riotous beauty with the same nasturtiums in their free, untrammelled state. The viney stems with leaf, bud, and blossom drooping to the table or hanging over its edge, and the other blossoms standing up in sweet liberty with room to move about if they will. Can you hesitate between the two arrangements? Yet I found the first in a flower-lover's home. Do Not Crowd the Flowers Few flowers look well packed tightly together and all are better for loosening up a trifle. Purple violets are almost the only flowers that will bear crowding, though many think wild daisies adapted to this arrangement, and spoil their beauty by making them into hard, tight bunches. A good rule is to follow Nature as far as possible in this It is almost always well to Combine Green Leaves with the Flowers although there are some that do not need this relief. Closely packed flowers should have no foliage; chrysanthemums, one species of the brilliant poppy and the sweet-pea need none, but there are few others that do not show better amid green leaves. While flowers of different varieties seldom look well together, you may sometimes add much to its beauty by giving a flower the foliage of another plant, and a trailing green vine will often be just the touch needed to soften a stiff arrangement. Asparagus fern is an airy and feathery green, but you must use it with discretion, as it is suitable only for fragile, delicate flowers in very loose arrangements. Other ferns, though often used, do not really combine well with any flowers, they are too distinctly another species of plant and hold themselves aloof in their separateness. The wild oxalis, wood-sorrel, or, as the children call it, sour grass, has pretty delicate leaves that look well with sweet-peas and other small flowers. As a rule, a flower's own foliage suits it best, however, and you may be certain not to offend good taste by keeping to it. Fig. Do Not Combine Flowers Fig. that are different in kind or color, it can seldom be done successfully. To be sure, a mass of sweet-peas in all their variety of color is very lovely, but even they are more effective when separated into bunches each of one color. White Vases In the careful arrangement of flowers your object should always be to bring out their whole beauty, and let all else be secondary to that. One vase, though beautiful in itself, may not be at all suitable for holding flowers, while another, of no value as an ornament, will display them to their best advantage. Colorless Transparent Vases are always safe and in many cases absolutely necessary. Give your roses transparent vases or bowls whenever possible. If they have long stems, tall, slender vases, if their stems are short the clear glass rose-bowls are more suitable. Short-stemmed flowers do not look well in tall vases, and a flower should always stand some distance above the top of the vase. Someone gives as a rule that the height of long-stemmed flowers should be one and one-half times the height of the vase, but when the vase contains several, of course the height must vary. Fig. The Vases and Bowls need not be expensive, for they are now in the market at extremely low prices. Knowing what to choose you can find for a very moderate sum tall, slender vases with almost no markings, that will show the long stem and so display the Fig. Colored Vases and Jars will sometimes enhance the brilliancy of flowers of contrasting or complementary colors. A pale-yellow jar will intensify the richness of the purple of the violet, and a soft green will harmonize with it most delightfully. The neutral gray often found in Japanese ware will not clash with any color, and is especially suited to brilliant red flowers; yellow flowers in a dark-blue jar are quite effective. Do not use ornate or highly decorated vases. No design should conflict with the natural flowers, and the shape of the vase should also be simple. Cylindrical jars, like Fig. 495, are suited to heavy clustering flowers like the lilac and also to the large chrysanthemums. Fig. 496 is another good shape; but avoid vases like Fig. 497 with a neck so small it will admit only one or two stems, while the bowl is much too large for the few flowers standing stiffly erect. Fig. Place short-stemmed flowers, like the pansy and violet, in low jars or bowls, and it is not necessary to have them lie flat on the water. A friend of mine has invented for her own use this little Fig. Flower Lifter which holds the flowers above the water while allowing nearly the whole of their short stems to be immersed. Fig. With an old pair of shears, or a wire-cutter, snip off a dozen or more pieces of copper wire of varying lengths between ten inches for the longest and five for the shortest piece. At each end of every wire make a loop like Symmetry is pleasing and necessary in many things, but not in the grouping of flowers. You must strive for apparent carelessness in effect while taking the utmost care, and for irregularity and naturalness rather than stiff, formal arrangement. A bowl of flowers need not look, as it sometimes does, like a dish for the table, served with the confectioner's symmetrical decorations; it should rather seem as if the sweet blossoms were growing in a bed of their own. If you can take Wild Flowers up in a clump, roots and all; they will look far better than the cut flowers arranged in vases, and the roots may afterward be planted in your wild-flower garden. Bloodroot will keep a long while if the roots are not disturbed, and one of the loveliest flower-pieces we ever had in the house was a gray-green Japanese bowl filled with the growing bloodroot. The blossoms stand closely together and a small bowl will hold quite a number. Wood anemones, hepaticas, and wild violets are all adapted to this temporary transplanting. I have kept ferns Fig. Fig. |
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