Our new neighborhood is hit-or-miss for flowers…come to think of it, our old one was as well. Sometimes, when you REALLY need them to liven up the place, there just isn’t much of a selection. Then we took the word “liven” to heart in thinking about alternatives we could use when we couldn’t find great flowers. It’s having something alive, and from nature that really works the magic…flowers just happen to be one of many possibilities. We love these summer apricots in the brass basket a friend recently gave us from The Museum of Arts and Design’s store in New York City (and available by mail order). Imagine the setting WITHOUT this alt-arrangement and you see what a difference it makes.
We’ve also taken to picking up leafy, newly fallen branches from the park across the way.
Arranged in a pretty vase – we used a label-less globe olive oil bottle -…
leafy branches can do the work of flowers, a lesson we learned from our friend Maria Robledo…
(We highly recommend Lynn Davis’ book of photographs Monument. It’s one of the books we prop open to make an instant artwork and decoration.)
Related posts: open art books as decoration + artwork
almost vaseless flower arrangement
vase-less flower arrangement (right on the table)
flower + vegetables = charming arrangement
dill weed (and other edible) flower arrangements
little makeshift vases
alt flower arrangement: a little vase of herbs
copy this: vines and leafy vegetables as flowers