Class title: Nursey Rhyme/Fairy Tale of Your Choice
Staging: floor base 1 metre square, height unrestricted, judged from front
Each spring my local Anglican diocese holds a Flower Festival where the community Church groups are encouraged to display a floral arrangement in keeping with the theme of the Festival. For many years I have been privileged to be invited to mount a display for them as well.
This time the theme was “Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales” – I chose Oranges and Lemons.
A rectangular terracotta planter box is filled with heavy black polished stones. The two palm spathes are secured in the box and tied together at the top with fine wire to create the arch usually made by our arms when playing the game associated with this nursery rhyme. To hide the wires at the top I have suspended a leaf covered test tube with some yellow and orange gerberas – both colours conveniently in the one flower!
The base has gardenia foliage to mostly cover the stones and floral foam in the planter box. Two long bamboo stakes have alternate oranges and lemons skewered on them and these are interspersed with long, wired stem gerberas in matching colours.
Flowers in the base are ranunculas, gerberas and iris with some loose oranges and lemons. One long branch of tortured willow comes from the base and curls around and behind the display to emphasise the curling spathes.
As this was not a competition piece I did not have to focus too much on the “odd” rule – 1,3 or 5 units of floral material we usually are expected to use in competition.
I always try to make this display something that the visitors will both enjoy and appreciate as different to the flower arrangements they might generally see.
Judging feedback: Although this was a display piece only, I can look at it with a judges eye and say that it could have been improved (for a competition piece) by the use of a more sympathetically coloured base container, something that matched or enhanced the colouring of the palm spathes.
