Material: Filipendula rubra, Mischantus sinesis 'Gracillimus', ferns, spontaneous flowers: Knautia longifolia and Vicia villosa.
Container: basket.
June is heating up day after day, preparing us for the fierce summer sun. Rains, however, mitigate the heat, giving to meadows and woods a green and dewy look that becomes part of the chabana, the flower arrangement for the Japanese tea ceremony.
Tempting colorful flowers bloom in the garden, but they do not seem appropriate for Chabana. This is not a mere decoration, a rich and sumptuous flower composition to be admired, but an expression of the heart and soul, of wabi. Henry Mittwer, the author of The Art of Chabana: Flowers for the Tea Ceremony, defines it as 'a state of emptiness, quietude, poverty, and solitude'. It is not the denial of the joy of life but the awareness that we need very little to live and that in pursuing this simplicity we find a longer-lasting beauty. Inspired by the quiet refreshing beauty of nature, flowers for the tea ceremony take us back to the essential.
Oenothera odorata and Commelina communis are among the flowers suggested by Henry Mittwer for June. Fleeting flowers that last only few hours, so it's better to pick them up at night and use them in the morning. Even the white flowers of Spirea japonica are included in the list for June, but, actually, they are more interesting later in season, when just sporadic flowers evoke the frothy mass in full bloom now gone.
For June, I was inspired by the soft inflorescences of the Filipendula arranged with spontaneous flowers and green leaves in a basket.
Photos:
TravelinaGarden, June 2016.
Further reading:
Henry Mittwer, The Art of Chabana: Flowers for the Tea Ceremony, Charles E. Tuttle Company Inc., Tokyo, 1974.
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