In a Vase on Monday: An Experiment

The heat that plagued us last week is slowly ebbing away.  Other than my pink Eustoma grandiflorum and Gaillardia 'Arizona Sun', there's not much in bloom that looks good right now.  As both those flowers have already received lots of exposure in my vases this summer, I looked around for an alternative and came up with succulents.  While I've used succulent flowers in prior vases, I haven't created an arrangement using succulent plants so I tried my hand at this on Sunday when I had time to futz.

Here's the finished product:

 

I looked at a couple of on-line videos about how to construct a floral-style succulent arrangement before I started.  (You can find one of these here if you're interested.)  Unfortunately, I didn't have all the specified materials on hand.  My husband had wire in a variety of gauges in his workshop but all were either bigger or smaller than prescribed so I improvised by cutting up a few wire hangers we got with our dry cleaning and one of the lighter gauge wires from his workshop.  I had no floral tape to make tidy succulent "stems" either but, as I selected a vase that hid these, that wasn't enough of a problem to send me to the store in the heat.

I used the wire from the hangers on the succulents with beefier bases and the lighter wire with the smaller succulents.  Two of the succulents I used had long, thin woody stems so I simply inserted pieces of those plants as is.

As shown in these photos, I inserted 2 lengths of wire crosswise through the base of the heavy-headed succulents, then bent the wires downward to form stem-like supports.  I skipped this step with the 2 succulents shown in the bottom row in the left and center photos.

 I arranged the plants in the vase without any water in the basin, starting with the largest succulents and adding the smaller ones as fillers.  I used the following plants:

Clockwise from upper left: Graptoveria 'Fred Ives', Aeonium arboreum, Aeonium 'Kiwi', Graptopetalum paraguayense, Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi 'Marginata' and a no ID succulent  (Also used but not highlighted here were stems of Oscularia deltoides)

I cut a few Aeonium and Sedum I didn't end up using but I just stuck them in the ground in the garden to root when I cleaned up.  Unlike my usual compositions, this arrangement involved no waste.

The arrangement is sitting on the dining table.

The textured white vase was a birthday gift from a friend last year.  It has an irregular opening which is perfect for supporting the heavy succulent "flowers."  My friend gave me the vase with a Tillandsia, which I managed to kill with neglect earlier this year.  Fortunately, my friend painted the vase and the Tillandsia and gave me that as a gift last Christmas so the Tillandsia has been properly memorialized.

In its position on the dining table, the vase can be viewed from multiple angles, which is good as it looks very different from each side.  I haven't been able to decide which view I like best.

The arrangement should last at least a couple of weeks but I can take it apart at any time and plant the component parts in the garden if I'd like.  I can't say that about any of my prior arrangements.

Visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden to see what she's got "In a Vase on Monday" and to find links to other gardeners' creations from materials they have on hand.


All material © 2012-2015 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party