We are all spending LOTS of time at home at the moment, and I think many of us are surprised at how much we are enjoying it now that we are settling in!
Don't get me wrong, I cannot WAIT until the next time I can have the freedom to meet my friends for a drink at the pub, drive up to Narrabri, or sit in a yoga room with others. But while I'm here in my little flat in Centennial Park, I'm really enjoying how simple life has become.
So while we are at home, why not spend a bit of time on our immediate surroundings and style them up!
This doesn't mean spending a fortune on new furniture or artwork online. It could be as simple as cutting a branch of a tree in your garden and popping it into a vase on your dining table, picking up a beech tree seed on your daily walk and popping it on your coffee table, or snipping a few stems of rosemary off your bush outside and popping it next to the kitchen sink.
This is otherwise known as "foraging", and is a lovely past time!!
Amy Merrick has some great tips for foraging in her book "On Flowers" -
And Annabelle Hickson also has some great tips in her book comes to the rescue with her book "A Tree in the House". Annabelle has many suggestions on where to look for flowers when you don't have a garden, going as far as to recommending not going anywhere without a pair of secetaurs.
Annabelle suggests roadsides, abandoned lots and laneways are often the best place to find the prettiest "blooms", or even knocking on your neighbour's door and asking for a small cutting from their rose bush!
But please don't limit yourselves to deliberately grown flowers and foliage! As Erica Tanov says in her book "Design by Nature" "A weed is just an unwanted plant, which means any plant, really, can be considered a weed". Funnily enough, many "weeds" which are so popular with florists - such as pampas grass, hops, and asparagus fern, are actually illegal to sell at Sydney flower markets, which just goes to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
Source: Design by Nature
OK, so here are a few of my styling hacks to beautify your home with foliage and flowers:
1. Do you have a herb garden at home? These don't have to just be for cooking! Put together a little posy of up some mint, rosemary and basil, add some geranium foliage, some pretty seaside daisies and some lavender and pop it next to your kitchen sink. You'll thank me next time you do your washing up!
2.Keep it simple – a big branch of gum, olive, banksias or magnolia looks dramatic and gorgeous in a large vase, and some foliages, particularly gums, can dry out and last for months!
3. It’s amazing how effective a little posy of tomato red geranium, or some cuttings from that cyclamen plant you got for Mother's Day last year can look on the coffee table. Something simple like this can add a really gorgeous splash of colour to a neutrally decorated lounge. Or for a more dramatic look, go for a huge bunch of rhododendrons, roses or azaleas en masse.
4. For something longer lasting, a simple cut of succulent can look really abstract in the right vessel anywhere in the house.
So, go outside and have a good look at what you’ve got in your garden, or in the streets around you. I promise you will find something.
Comments (0)
Back to For Flower Lovers