Pine is revered in the East as the noblest of all evergreens. In Japan the pine stands for longevity, steadfastness and perseverance. "Matsu", the Japanese word for pine is a homonym of "wait", reinforcing the steadfastness symbolism.Also since pine needles are typically depicted as two needles joined at the base, Japanese wedding florals will often include pine.Being such an auspicious symbol, no wonder the pine is ubiquitous in Asian gardens, art and culture.

In this arrangement I chose pink Lilies to serve as a counterpoint to the powerful statement made by the two pine branches. In the end, it felt like a mating dance to me, with a great display of strutting gestures and coquettish charms.

Living Sculpture...

...is how someone once described Ikebana.
Art in 3-D with live plants and flowers as sculpting medium.

This simple arrangement is composed of just 2 elements:
agapanthus flowers and New Zealand flax leaves. I was going for something that felt airy and open---like an atrium. Yet, as I was finishing it, I wondered if there was too much open space. So I tried more flowers, but even adding one made it feel cluttered.

My sensei liked it and said, once again, "the simplest arrangements are the most difficult". Today's lesson was "Leave well enough alone" The trick: when is it good enough?

Today was a precious day: filled with sunshine, friendship and flowers at one of my favorite places, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Signs of spring were everywhere there. Like these clusters of cheerful crocuses. Imagine a huge field carpeted with these delightful flowers, birds chirping, and children gleefully rolling down grassy slopes. If it weren't for our seemingly interminable, blustery NY winters, would we relish such days as much?

"Ya can't please all da people all da time", as the saying goes.

But for the last 3 years, I've been trying to do just that, as the florist for the Eagle Warehouse, a turn-of-the-century building with 85 cooperative apartments. The residents reflect the wide variety of units within: Not a single one identical. So, every week, I try to offer a different kind of arrangement.

Being Brooklynites, most of them are not shy. I get feedback, good and bad. I've even gotten love letters (in the first year when my identity was kept anonymous)!
It has been a great laboratory for experimentation, and I feel very lucky to be retained by them.

This week's arrangement was done for the lavender lovers, a pair of sweet ladies on the third floor. Gladiolus, Leucanthos, and Scottish heather in vintage Japanese rattan baskets.

Ultimate Zen

People often ask me, what is the essential idea behind Ikebana? I think what sets it apart from other styles of flower arranging, say Western style, is the point of view that although flowers and plants are in perfect shape in their natural environment, there are excess parts. So, removing the unnecessary parts is essential to the art of ikebana.

The trick, always, is to know just what to remove and how much. A key to that knowledge is practice.

Hence, this exercise in ultimate simplification: maximum expression possible by the minimum parts possible. In other words, I had to try to eliminate unnecessary parts to the ultimate so that, if any more is removed, the original materials can no longer be identified or what remains cannot be ikebana.

Did I succeed? Can you tell what kind of plant material I used?

Less is more.

This morning at class, I was in the mood to do something zen-like, so I chose this slim lavender-hued vase. It's opening is only 1/2 inch wide, so a makeshift "kenzan" out of crumpled up vines had to be used. After shaping the pussy willow branch just so, I had quite a nice line going. Cool. But then I found that no matter what I tried to add, it seemed to take away from the overall zen feeling. So leaving well enough alone, I sought out a second vase to complete the arrangement, using a few sprigs of heather and one gladiolus stalk (split into 5).

Sensei said it is often most difficult to do the most sparse arrangements. As usual, she was right.