This is a competition title we don’t often see but it does encourage us to think about using more than just flowers in our designs. Floral art/design in competition work is about using “plant” material so the opportunity to incorporate branches was a welcome one.
Staged on a 600mm based plint and judged all around, the actual design space allocated was 1m square. This means extending the design beyond the base as well as utilising the vertical space to advantage.
I have used two sections of banksia branch as the structural base with a small water source attached in between them. Floral foam does not provide Australian native flora with an easy way of taking up the water, so here there are some vials filled with water for the stems that require it.
The central arrangement is designed to resemble plant material “branching out” from the joined branches with the longest extension being two gymea lily stems that have some banksia flowers and foliage placed in the ends to further extend them. All the plant material in this design needed to be Australian native flora so I have used banksia, tea tree, eucalyptus/gum tree foliage and woolly bush to give a variety of textures and colours.
This design placed second.
Judges comments: Whilst scale and proportion are good, this design needs more height to balance the width within the space allocated.