The difference between a weed and a decorative plant or flower is only a matter of interpretation. At one time all flowers were weeds until someone decided to notice their beauty and cultivate it.

For me, a fascination and affinity for all things that grow wild and free has been there since the beginning. I would fill my mother’s dishes with wild flowers until she’d complain, smilingly, that there aren’t enough left for their intended use in the kitchen. And there wasn’t one trip out in the fields without returning with armfuls of flowers. In my mind these were the flowers that were waiting to be noticed and enjoyed, full of sunshine and colour, swinging in the breeze by the side of the road or in the endless fields of wheat. The garden variety, nursed into being with care and tended to, were in a different category, one I couldn’t relate to in the same way.

The unrestricted freedom and creativity of nature is ever so present in the palette of wild flowers it offers. Their discovery fills me with happiness, whether I’m walking through the woods or letting my gaze contain the expansive vista of a field through the window of a moving car when I drive in the countryside. One of the many reasons that country life, with its rhythmic, seasonal beauty is embedded so deeply in my DNA.

I’ve included here some simple and easy arrangements that can be made with leftover branches pruned from the garden, wild flowers, weeds, the unwanted shoots from decorative trees. The possibilities are endless. The outcome represents an expression of creativity and originality, playfullness and even resourcefulness.

A reminder that beauty is everywhere and the reward we feel in capturing and enjoying it.