Louise Worner
Foraging for Ikebana Material

Creating ikebana with children doesn’t require expensive vases or flowers. While on holidays in Galicia, we were amazed at the amount of lush green plant material growing by the roadside and in the vacant lots near the farmhouse where we were staying.

Inspired by the abundance of material, my daughters and I set out in the cool of the early morning to collect Morning Glory flowers. As we returned to the farmhouse, we realised that we didn’t have suitable vases to create ikebana arrangements. Inspired by Christine Donck-Guelton (@ikebanachristine), one of my classmates in Ilse’s International Teacher’s class, we created ikebana vases from reused plastic water bottles.

My daughters placed small stems of Morning Glory leaves inside their vases and added water.

Once they were happy with the placement of the leaves, they added a flower and used the curves in their vases to help support their material.

Once they were happy with their individual arrangements, we decided to place them together to form a larger arrangement with more movement, and depth.
