Ashton Hayes and Tarvin Flower Club – April meeting

Ashton Hayes and Tarvin Flower Club – April meeting

Our own area demonstrator, Sharon Nolan, showed us her expertise at our meeting last week. Her subject was supermarket bunches as that is the way most of us now buy our flowers or receive them as gifts.
She went back to basics and told us about removing all the leaves which will be below water level and explained how to condition flowers to make them take up water before arranging. She gave us a good tip- if you do not have flower food provided use 1 teaspoon of sugar and a few drops of bleach in the water.

From 5 bunches Sharon produced 4 interesting designs. The flowers in each bunch consisted of Mauve and yellow spray chrysanthemums, White spray carnations,1 larger carnation, a stem of alstomeria and a piece of leather leaf fern. Not an exciting array of flowers.

However Sharon made them look attractive!
Her 1st bunch went into a glass vase but she had put clear glass marbles in the base and made a grid of sellotape across the top of the vase to hold the blooms in place (a very useful tip)

The 2nd design was very different and used 2 bunches. She used a charger with a chunky piece of pruned shrub across it and then arranged in floral foam.
A basket is always useful to arrange flowers in and can transform a bunch into a very attractive gift so for her 3rd design that was what Sharon did.
The final bunch were made into a tied bunch.

Sharon also treated us to 3 large designs which she wanted to try out for future use. Using 3 metal containers, one medium sized, one large and one very large, Sharon used the same flowers and foliage in each
In the smallest was a round design with sunflowers, fatsia leaves, leather-leaf and some dried garrya elliptica catkins. In the next she introduced lucky bamboo to the design and produced a tall, upright
arrangement. Finally in the largest container she did a horizontal shape. They looked stunning and of course there were some lucky raffle winners who took home attractive designs!.

I await our next meeting with great interest as I cannot imagine what it will be about. The visitor is Ruth Rees and her subject is "Travels in the Fun Bus" on May 13th at 7-30pm
Thanks to June, once again for her photos.