Winter beauty in a vase

Flowers in my home are as important as pictures on the walls. I’ve said this many times, but I really do feel that our home loses some of its soul when its not filled with flowers from the garden.

In October dahlias, zinnias, cosmos and the like are still bringing large displays of colour into our homes, then the sudden shock of frost can leave rooms looking bare and empty, without the vases of blooms we become accustomed to during the year. There’s a great risk that the winter months of November, January and February can look stark and cold with that empty feeling similar to when Christmas decorations come down, the warmth and fun of the festive season over, replaced with cold, damp, monochrome winter days. We need to start planning alternative vase displays for those tricky months winter months.

With the popularity of naturalistic (prairie) planting in our gardens we’ve come to realise the beauty of our garden borders in winter. The great proponent of this and my garden hero, Piet Oudolf values the garden in winter as much as any other season, he believes the winter garden and its magnificent decay is about texture and shape, the seed heads and the skeletons. This has become an important feature of my own garden, I’m also keen to bring it into the home, filling the flower gaps and embracing the detailed structural beauty of the winter garden inside as well as out.

So, I’ve been out in the garden looking for inspiration.

eupatorium seed heads

Echinops seed head

Echinacea seed heads

These are some of my winter arrangements so far:

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