In a Vase on Monday: Shapely

I am joining Cathy at Rambling in the Garden for her weekly meme. Since I am unable to find any fresh flowers in my garden for a vase this cold January, I am using dried materials again, and have put together a collection of oddities for my shapely vase, all collected from my 2025 garden.

I think the lack of colour in this arrangement is perhaps compensated for with the mixture of shapes, which become even more pronounced with the light from the snowy garden behind them…

The very tall spike is a Cimicifuga seedhead.

These are spectacular flowers late summer, with a divine scent, attractive too butterflies as you can see below…

…

… and by late September the seedheads were a beautiful pinky green…

 

I cut just one to try drying it, along with a spiky seedhead of a Morina longifolia.

This is one of the few spiky plants I grow, because it is simply so pretty! Here it is in the summer…

Both plants dried well, but the colour did fade. (Earlier cutting may help).

The Allium seedheads I dried have also faded, but some more than others retained a slight pinkish hue. I also added a Crocosmia seedhead – another experiment – but I think I should have cut this much earlier too, as it has shrivelled extensively.

Crocosmia seedhead on the left

Other materials here are Sedum (again, I should have picked it earlier), Salvia nemorosa, the seedheads of wild Thalspi arvense, Echinacea and poppy seedheads, various wild grasses, Centranthus (not terribly attractive once dried!) and wild Achillea (👍).

An interesting observation was that the dried stems of the Sedum had actually produced some tiny green shoots after being strung upside down for months!

I’ll be posting more about my experiences drying plant materials for vases later in the week. In the meantime, take care in this nasty weather (more snow here) and have a cosy week!



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