The roadside ikebana

The holiday season can be really busy with festivities and celebrations. But a few days off can be the perfect opportunity to reserve some time for yourself. Learning to make a roadside ikebana is a perfect combination of spending time outside and inside. Making the home cosy and practice slow living. Learn yourself this new skill during the holiday season.

Decorate your interior in an inspiring new way. A beautiful botanic still life made with your own hands. Let your creativity bloom into a green table scape to surprise guests or to comfort yourself with some botantical home decoration.

The Japanese art of flower arrangement, ikebana (kadō) is often seen in the tokonoma or alcove of a traditional Japanese house. It is seen as one of the three classical Japanese arts of refinement along with kōdō (appreciation of incense) and chadō (appreciating tea and the tea ceremony).

Create a piece of Japanese inspired botanical art for your home, put on your coat and roam your neighbourhood on a chilly Sunday afternoon for the perfect ingredients for your personal roadside ikebana.

Learn the principles of ikebana While making your arrangement, take a fresh approach, think about movement, balance and harmony. While building your structure think of line, color and mass.

Here is a list of essential points in learning how to make and ikebana yourself:

• beautiful flowers do not always make a beautiful ikebana
• focus or emphasize on one flower, one branch. create the arrangement as an essence of nature
• do not be over-concerned about the result at the beginning of your practice.
• when arranging, take a view of the work form a distance, like a painter.
• Ikebana must appear as if it is a product of the environment in which it is displayed.

Choosing the right spot and container:

• exposing your flowers to wind is even more damaging than keeping them out of water.
• If the flowers are the main feature, the container should be subordinate to the flowers. Likewise, if the container or vase is the main focus, then the flowers should be secondary to it.

Choosing the right spot:

• exposing your flowers to wind is even more damaging than keeping them out of water.
• If the flowers are the main feature, the container should be subordinate to the flowers. Likewise, if the container or vase is the main focus, then the flowers should be secondary to it.

Where to find your flowers?

Get creative, explore the forests or roadsides close to your home and find branches or residue of trees. Even in winter making an inspiring ikebana is possible. Think of faded flowers, seed pods, evergreens like spruce and pine or dried grasses and thistle. Or make a paper arrangement with the Jurianne Matter flowers.

What tools do you need?

• sharp scissors/garden scissors
• a vase or container to put your ikebana in, local thriftshops are the perfect place to find interesting ceramics. Or find something you like from our bloomingville collection of interesting shaped vases.
• something to stick in the brances (osasis) or search your local thrift shop for one of these beauties: https://bit.ly/3F7zxdC
• your collection of brances

How to make your ‘roadside’ ikebana

• collect your brances and winter ‘flowers’ in the wild
• prepare them; cut, trim and sort them carefully
• lay them out on a table and prepare your vase/container with water and your flower frog or oasis
• now it is time to let your creativity flow and build your ikebana.

Now you’ve learned to collect, assemble and create your ikebana. Enjoy practicing your new skill during the holidays and reserving a little time for yourself.