Camellia Arranging: The French Alternative

In the winter when the garden is looking drab, camellias come to the rescue with their beautiful flowers and glossy green foliage. It's natural to want to bring them inside and use them in flower arrangements, but the problem is they have very short stems and won't stand up in a vase. Jackie French has a few suggestions for displaying camellias to their best advantage.

Cheat with sticky tape

Use sticky tape to crisscross the mouth of the vase. Now simply stick the camellia stems in between the sticky tape. For the finishing touch add some greenery, and you'll have a vase of perfectly behaved camellias.

Float bowls

For a more elegant solution try using float bowls. Simply drop as many camellias as you like into a bowl of water. Glass bowls are ideal, but clear white or dark pink camellias also look stunning floating in a black bowl. Very shallow dishes are excellent for miniature camellias. If you use fingerbowls at your next dinner party, place one mini camellia into each bowl for a really special effect. You could also try adding a couple of drops of rose oil to the water to softly perfume the room.

Further information:

Any sort of shallow dish could be used as a float bowl, but you'll find that most florists stock some bowls as well as vases. Details of the float bowls used in our segment are as follows: Blue Glass

Hand Blown - $18.50, and Glass Bowl with Stand - $45, both from Juliet Justice Floral Design, phone (02) 9810 9089.

Glass with wrought iron stand, $34 from Bloomsbury's Florist, phone: (02) 9818 3322.
Lothar Bowl, $395 from Kosta Boda.

Black Ikebana bowls are available from the Australian Ikebana Centre, 44 Ashmore Road, Bundall, Gold Coast, QLD, phone: (07) 5526 2055.

The large ceramic bowl was an individual design by John Dermer of Kirby's Flat Pottery, Yackandandah, phone: (02) 6027 1416.

Copyright CTC Productions 1999