On Friday evening I had the pleasure of attending the private viewing of the Art For Cure exhibition that I wrote about last week. Not only was the evening a feast for the senses – it was also a resounding success – Art For Cure has sold over £60,000 of art & sculpture already with another two days of viewing to go. What a credit to Belinda and her amazing team!
For this weeks Flowers On Sunday I thought I would show you a few highlights from the evening, as well as some pictures of the flowers that I took to the event.
To start you may remember the beautiful wisteria that I have previously mentioned I hoped would be in flower for the evening – Bredfield House was literally cloaked in wisteria and looked stunning!
I had been planning to take a few floral contributions to help decorate the Sponsor’s Tent and had in mind some beautiful pink tulips to add to the pink theme in support of Breakthrough For Breast Cancer. Sadly with this early spring my tulips are almost over and certainly would not last for a three day event. I had to think again. Inspired by the idea of all that beautiful wisteria I thought about my lavender coloured lilac tree. I tend to carry flowery inspirations around in my head waiting for an opportunity to try them out and this seemed the perfect occasion to try making an extravagant lilac wreath. In fact I made not one, but two wreaths to surround glass hurricane lamps.
Friday morning found me out in the rain cutting literally buckets of flowers from my lilac tree. Fortunately the tree is covered with blooms – it must be a good year for lilac and even after all my hacking it was still full of flower. These lilac wreaths were surprisingly easy to make. I cut the blooms into smaller sprigs and filled the well soaked oasis with them. This is certainly something I will repeat in the future – in fact it will be an annual arrangement now and I will make sure to plan a party or supper next year so that I will have an excuse to make another one of these. The scent in my car as I drove them to Art For Cure was delicious.
In the spirit of the event I also wanted to make something with a little pink in it. As tulips were off the menu and the roses have not started to bloom yet, I spotted a bush of Weigela just coming into flower. Belinda had expressed a desire for flowers to be country and vintage style, so with a supporting cast of white lilac and Queen Anne’s Lace I enclosed the whole arrangement in this vintage style birdcage.
This birdcage is a favourite find from last summer and looked like this the last time I arranged flowers in it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this arrangement will last for the duration of Art For Cure, but white lilac is notoriously difficult to keep going. At least it looked fresh and wild for the opening night party.
Finally I have a few photos of some of the sculptures. The event was too crowded inside to use my camera in the house. These photos were taken as the light started to fade and the beautiful pink lighting around the grounds took over highlighting the trees and sculpture.
Outside the welcoming entrance to Bredfield House you can just see one of the quirky sculptures by Paul Richardson welcoming the guests.
At the entrance gates another Paul Richardson sculpture:
In front of the house was this beautiful life size horse, also by Paul Richardson:
And finally my favourite piece of the evening by the very talented bronze sculptor Kate Denton:
To see more and read about how the event is going please have a look at the Art For Cure website. The event continues until 5pm tomorrow, so if you are in the area there is still time to pop in and enjoy the wonderful variety of art on exhibition. There is no charge for entrance and there are lots of small ways to make a contribution to this valuable charity if you prefer to look at art rather than to buy it.
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The lilac wreaths are very unusual and inventive, I can just imagine the perfume was almost too strong in the car. I will enjoy the lilac sugar you so kindly gave me when we met, thank you.
Make sure you keep the lilac sugar somewhere dark for a month or two to let the flavour develop. I am imagining using it over fruit or in a pannacotta or jelly. I have never made it before, so we might all hate it! It was lovely to meet you last week – your blog looks different now I can put a face to it – it feels more personal now.
What a beautiful bronze statue, I can understand why its your favourite. Whenever I bring flowers in from the garden, I always bring a few insect visitors as well, do you have any suggestions for reducing this?
That is quite a hard question to answer Julie. In many ways it depends on the bug. I start off by blowing on all my flowers as I condition them to see what is hiding in their petals. If there are a lot of insects I put the conditioned stems in a vase of water in my dark potting shed over night – most bugs will fly of in search of light. If I am really desperate I submerge the flowers in water – the insects will try to swim to safety. After all that I still sometimes see the odd bug on the tablecloth – in the end I think I would rather have a few bugs than florists flowers grown with lots of chemicals.
I think thats where I am going wrong, as I go straight from the garden to indoors, I shall try the dark potting shed tip. Thank you.
The weekend seems to have been a resounding success, thanks to the hosts and the contributors as well as visitors – and your floral contributions are as pretty as always 🙂
Thank you Cathy – I am looking forward to hearing the final figures, but whatever the result it was clearly a success.
That Kate Denton sculpture made me smile. It is called Lazy Days, we saw it at Pashley Manor in 2012. see: http://wellywoman.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/garden-tour-pashley-manor/ I absolutely love it, and would love to have one of her sculptures in the garden.
Thank you for your link – she looks just as lovely at Pashley Manor. I agree – it would be lovely to have one of Kate’s sculptures in my garden!
Glad the event went well for you Julie. Your lilac and hurricane lamps make a pretty match and the bird cage arrangement was lovely. That hydrangea is amazing too.
Thank you Susie – I have just been told that the lilac arrangements were sold so I am pleased that my ‘floral art’ contributed to the success of the event.
The wisteria is fantastic, it must have smelled wonderful. Your lilac arrangements are delightful as always, I’m sure they got lots of wonderful comments. Love the horse sculpture, very realistic. So glad the event was such a success.
Thank you Pauline – estimates today suggest that over £100,000 was made for the charity by Art For Cure.