Floral Media - Sarah Raven's - How to Make an Autumn Wreath

Sarah Raven shows you how to make an Autumn Wreath, from start to finish. A lovely way to decorate your home in the glorious season.

Here is another brilliant video by Sarah Raven where she makes an autumn wreath that she then uses as a centerpiece with candles in the middle. She starts with a pre-made round shape that she adds autumn flowers, seed pods and foliage.

It will work for a big dining table, coffee table or hall table. She gives very good instruction on how to do it in the video - so I feel there is no need for me to repeat it in writing. 

I love sharing these videos in case you have not seen them before - so watch the video and try to make your own! 

Here is a little bit about Sarah in case you have missed my previous posts with her videos:

Sarah Raven is well known in the UK for presenting gardening programs on television, writing lots of books about gardening and plants, teaching floral workshops and flower arranging courses, giving talks and demonstrations and also for being an enormously successful business women running a plant, seed and gardening internet business.

Have a Great Floral Day and enjoy your flower arranging!

I will be back later in the week with more floral delights from Of Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~

[Text © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]

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FLOWERS by ingrid and titti - Bouquets of Herbs

The theme for FLOWERS this week is Bouquets of Herbs. 

I think we all love herbs - growing them in the garden or in pots on the window sill, picking them to use in food and drinks, chopping them up and cooking with them - in general herbs are a delight and they will brighten up any dish you create in your kitchen.

Or like here using them as flowers and making lots of pretty little arrangements.

I made myself the challenge to only use herbs when making the bouquets and not using any flowers. Above are some of them all lined up.

The herbs I used in the bouquets are:
- Chives
- Dill
- Mint
- Parsley
- Rosemary
- Sage
- Thyme

In the background - and just for pleasure and not used in the bouquets - are two potted herbs - Lavender with lots of lovely flowers and Thyme.

I really liked the idea of making it all look a bit rustic and I wanted to try to re-cycle as much as possible when styling for the shoot.

So I re-used old jam jars and an old zinc pot, I planted up a weathered terracotta pot and adding some little pebbles from our garden to hide the visible soil in the pot. The garden fork with lovely patina is from the 1930's.

As background I used an old hessian coffee sack from my grandfathers country store and a rag rug woven by my great-grandmother, and I even found my aunts old school writing slate board and wrote 'HERBS' on it.

Conditioned the herbs I did more or less the same as I do with flowers - except that I left a lot of the leaves lower down on the short stems. 

I tied a short piece of different coloured ribbon around each jar but kept the colours to green and grey. The ribbons are from Jane Means ribbon collection. 

When I arranged the herbs in the jars I wanted to have as many different textures as possible - so I happily mixed large leaves with small leaves and added long chives, dill and stems of rosemary for height.

The dill flowers had such a phenomenal texture and so much grace that they got their own little vintage bottle.  

Titti over on HWIT BLOGG is also posting about herbs - so please go over there and have a look at what she is doing.


Here is a link to all the previous FLOWERS Titti and I have done so far.

You can also find all the images on my Pinterest. 

Have a Wonderful floral Day!

I hope you are having a lovely summer!

See you on Friday for 'A Bunch for the Weekend'.

xoxo Ingrid

FLOWERS by ingrid and titti - Spring Wreath

The theme for this week of FLOWERS is 'Spring Wreath' and making a spring wreath was both a challenge and lots of fun. I wanted a wreath that I could hang on a door or in a window; or one that I could just lean against a wall. 

I also wanted a wreath that would last for more then a day - neither did I want to use oasis or make one using just twigs. 
I didn't make it very easy for myself as I imposed quite a few restrictions.

I had to think long and hard about what was available to buy or what I could find in my own garden - especially at this time of year when plants have a lot of fresh soft growth. I wanted something that would not whither away or drop their leaves but stay green for a while. 

What I ended up using was rosemary and box/Buxus sempervirens from my own garden - I knew both would last for a while without water. I also used a small amount of Alchemilla mollis flowers that lasts out of water for a few days.

I started off with a wire coat hanger that I shaped into a circle. Using the notch for cutting wires on my Felco secateurs I cut off the hook on the hanger. That part is up to you - some of you might like to keep the hook as it could be handy to use if you want to you hang it up. You could paint it or cover it with fabric.

I made little bunches of box and rosemary. Trim the stems to the same length and wrap florist's wire around the bottom of the stems. I then wired the bunches onto the coat hanger. Starting at the top right - overlapping the bunches to hide the ends - winding the wire around as you go along. When you have done the right side you do the same on the left. 

I used a bunch of Alchemilla mollis to hide the gap at the bottom - even though I later turned the wreath around so that the Alchemilla was near the top.

For some added interest I made two little arrangements to go with the wreath - the last of the pretty English bluebells and some lovely stock flowers.

I cut the stems of the bluebells very short and packed them tightly in a vintage enamelled container - that was once used to contain soda crystals.

In a Victorian blue and white floral patterned vase I stuck three stems of stock flowers. 

And I continued the blue theme with some other bits and pieces of knick-knacks - a large oval platter, a pretty mini cup my daughter gave me as a present and a contrasting checked blue and white fabric. 

My collaborator on FLOWERS - Titti Malmberg over on HWIT BLOGG is also posting about spring wreaths today - so make sure to go over and see what she is doing.

Here is also a link to all the previous FLOWERS that Titti and I have done.

Have a Wonderful Floral Day!

See you later in the week.

xoxo Ingrid

FLOWERS by ingrid & titti - White Flowers for the New Year

Hi, Titti and I are back with our second - FLOWERS by ingrid and titti. This time we thought it would be nice to do a table arrangement for New Year's Eve. 

We both agreed that white flowers would be a nice idea after all the bright colours of Christmas. I found some white Hyacinths and some white tulips at my local flower stall. I then added a few long sprigs of dark green rosemary from my garden - a lovely contrast both in colour and texture.

I used two different sizes of vintage apothecary jars and a vintage fish paste jar. The common denominator is that they are all clear glass - that way you can see the lovely flower stems and they will also reflect the candle light. 

The three vases sit on a vintage table mirror - a clever way of making it look like there are twice as many flowers - as well as obviously reflect even more of the candle light. 

Titti and I also wanted to add a second little floral arrangement for the table. I did a mini bouquet to add to the napkin ring. 

I used only foliage plants for the napkin - Buxus or boxwood that has little dark green leaves, as a contrast I used the light green variegated Pittosporum tenuifolia and for a little bit of scent some rosemary - these are all from my garden. I also added some long leaved also dark green Danae racemosa from the flower stall.

I made some napkin rings using a striped ribbon and simply tucked the little bouquet under the ribbon. 

I have also added a little bit of lace tape around the votive candle holders - the candle light looks very pretty through the white lace.      

Here is a link to the first FLOWERS by ingrid and titti - that we did before Christmas.

Here is a link to Titti's blog - HWIT BLOGG - so you can have a look at what floral creations she has come up with.

Have A Wonderful Floral Day!

See you soon!

xoxo Ingrid

[Ribbon from Jane Means.]
[Votive candle holders: Marimekko.] 

[Styling and photography © Ingrid Henningsson for Of Spring and Summer.]