HOW NOT TO DO IT.
Just occasionally one sees, and profits thereby, how not to arrange the flowers and plants in a room. Unfortunate vases are a pitfall. Daffodils in a pink and black vase are not seen to their best advantage, and a crimson azalea in a mustard-coloured flower pot draws more unfavourable criticism to the combination than either warrants singly. It is hardly going too far to generalise that the best flower effects are seen where their container acts as a foil, or merges its identity with the interest of the flowers which it holds. Hence glass, pewter, earthenware, copper vessels, and green, grey, black, or neutral .coloured pots are always happy displayers of blossoms, provided, their shape is not peculiar or unattractive, for they draw small attention to themselves, and show to full advantage their contents. The highly patterned vase is less happy, for it provides another and competing interest to the flowers.
On the other hand, snowdrops are charming in a turquoise bowl, and a modern orange pot tilled with pale hyacinths is as decorative to a room as one could wish. Softly tinted flowers in old china show both to great advantage. Generally speaking, vases and flowers may act as foils to one another’s beauty, but their interests should not compete. To arrange flowers with conventionality is to give them less than their full value; one sees them sometimes in bunches, just as they are bought, tulips in dozens or half-dozens, violets and snowdrops with leaves all round the bundles, daffodils, without any relieving spikes, and the lack of imagination portrayed in this method manages to impress itself on the scheme of the room.
But much more often flowers by reason of, the thought and understanding with which they are arranged, attract almost first interest in a sitting-room. The costliness of the flower scheme is no criterion of its excellence, exotic blooms and out-of-season varieties often contribute little but a feeling of ostentation, where budding branches, dried beech leaves, cape gooseberries, palm, and even sprays of leaves, can give a fresh and friendly beauty. Sometimes the love of the plants is outstanding in a room, and every flower looks comfortable, and even the smallest blossoms are placed so that their beauty cannot be missed.