Foraged Flora

Book excerpt: A gorgeously photographed new take on flower arranging using local and foraged plants and flowers to create beautiful arrangements, with ideas and inspiration for the whole year. Roadside fennel, flowering fruit trees, garden roses, tiny violets; ingredients both common and unusual, humble and showy, Foraged Flora is a new vision for flowers and arranging. It encourages you to train your eye to the beauty that surrounds you, attune your senses to the seasonality and locality of flowers and plants, and to embrace the beauty in each stage of life, from first bud to withering seedpod. Organized by month, each chapter in this visually arresting and inspiring book focuses on large and small arrangements created from the flowers and plants available during that time period and in that place, all foraged or gleaned nearby. The authors reflect on surprising and beautiful pairings, the importance of scale, the scarcity or abundance of raw materials, and the environmental factors that contribute to that availability. Whether picking a small tendril of fragrant jasmine, collecting oversized branches of flowering quince, or making a garland of bay laurel, Foraged Flora is an invitation to seek out the beauty of the natural world.