Tuesday...

Red Hot Pokers, especially when savaged by snails, are tricky to incorporate into an arrangement, but I really love trying to use plants even when they're fading beauties...

I get a lot of my inspiration from the garden itself, as it's the place which develops the best and most natural arrangements without even thinking...

The pokers become such a statement against outdoor textures, and I try to observe how my plants grow, what grows alongside them and how they naturally place themselves in the garden so that I impose as little as possible in any arrangement... 

So this morning I collected a lot of different foliage, as well as a couple of flowers to pick out the fading poker colours, as the pokers stand tall within the greenery in the garden...

I needed to choose a tall vase, and one which had an earthy, outdoor quality, and I eventually picked the one on the left, ( they both belonged to my late Granny ) as it is just a bit wider...

I like using the natural curves of the plants and echoing the shapes and colours throughout ( as well as the snail!! ), and although the fading poker is not prominent in my final arrangement it is essential to its overall shape and colour...as it is in the garden.