The David Hicks Book of Flower Arranging

This week has been marked by relentless, cold rain. It is hard accomplish anything. It is the kind of weather that lends itself to sitting inside and pouring through books. So that is where I am.


The generic boilerplate of jacket flaps of is either too simple or overstated or, as on the flap of The David Hicks Book of Flower Arranging, both:

“Flower arranging is probably the best loved and most widely practiced of the crafts.”

The qualifier of “probably” alludes to the fact that flower arranging is practiced because putting flowers on a table is considered part of setting a table. If it is considered a “craft” it bears a marked craft-like appearance. For those who do actually arrange flowers, it is an art. Alas, I fall into the “craft” section of flower arranging. David Hicks understands the art.

“For me, one of the greatest pleasures of flowers is their juxtaposition with furniture, objects, pictures and the general atmosphere of a room.”

“My love of flowers began in childhood. Although my mother did not arrange them, she was a very good gardener and so I grew up surrounded by plants and blooms. I remember, when I was about sixteen, doing a wildly elaborate autumn arrangement with apples and figs, gourds and berries and yellow and orange flowers with foliage, a crescendo of orangey-red colours at a time when I had certainly never seen anything like it done by anyone else. There was a container, but, by the time I had finished, it had vanished under the harvest extravaganza. Of course, in the exuberance of youth, I had gone too far, but I have never forgotten it and every autumn it is at the back of my mind as I do the flowers at home.”

Not a bad way to spend a rainy day.