I couldn’t let Cathy’s (cathy@ramblinginthegarden) celebration of eight years hosting the meme ‘In a Vase on Monday‘ pass without a shout-out. Congratulations Cathy! 416 beautiful flower arrangements is an inspiring achievement … But that’s not all, because each vase is lovingly themed, playfully titled, displayed with appropriate props and presented with a story. Fun and impressive!
This year the anniversary challenge was to produce a vase, but without using any fresh flowers. Dried flowers might be an obvious option then, but unfortunately I don’t have any! Happily, we are at the tail end of the season of autumn’s fruitfulness, so berries, hips and seed heads are still in a plentiful supply. Usually, I try to keep such treasures intact as winter resources for local wildlife, but what the heck? This is a celebration! So, I’ve been chopping off heads all over the garden (seed obviously 🤣). I’ve looked out my large square glass vase and I’ve put all the culled stems in said vase. Here it is:
The vase has turn out to be more colourful than I had imagined. There are autumnal yellows and oranges from crocosmia and stinking iris (Iris foetidissima) seed heads.
Rose hips higher in the arrangement pick up these orange tones too and with dark leaves of Persicaria ‘Red Dragon’ threading behind them, they show up even more.
Asphodeline lutea seed cases add some interesting textures:
As do the spent Ammi major umbels and Japanese anemone clusters.
By November the dried and sun-bleached, upright candelabras of the honey lilies (Nectaroscordum) have become so insubstantial that they have started to blow around the garden, but gathered into clusters in the vase they add some nice vertical shapes.
Airy volume is suggested by a couple of large, branching water plantain seed heads in the centre of the vase, while Rush, Miscanthus and Pennisetum grass heads softly fill the spaces between.
Since bringing the vase indoors, I’ve had to evict two spiders and two ladybirds. There are probably plenty more insects hidden in the pods and seed heads.
Thanks for reading. Head to Cathy’s post to celebrate some more!
Frogend dweller's Blog 
I love the airy seedheads – like a galaxy of stars!
Lovely. It is brightly colorful. Nice textural effects too.
Your knowledge just amazes me. Most of what’s in your vase is entirely new to me, but those autumnal colors and the way you’ve arranged them is glorious.
Love it! All the berries create a warm autumn glow to show off the seedheads. Lots of lovely texture. 😃
Those iris seed heads are really beautiful and of course I love the rose hips.
Aren’t the iris berries gorgeous?! Love your Asphodeline lutea – and everything else actually! It has certainly made me think again about what can be ‘dried’ and I will read the book in depth for more information – I hadn’t considered persicaria, for example, but have now picked some heads to experiment with. Thanks so much for joining in
A gorgeous combination of bright berries and airy seedheads..I love it.