AUTUMN LEAVES in MELBOURNE'S GARDENS

The theme for the 50th Anniversary Exhibition of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana, Victorian Branch is 'Autumn in Melbourne'. Our forebears who established the gardens in the second half of the 19th century in Melbourne have left us a great legacy of many, now mature, exotic trees from the northern hemisphere. This results in a rather european feel to the city and is in marked contrast to the natural vegetation of this part of the world. So the season of autumn is more immediately apparent than out in the countryside where native vegetation predominates. Below are some photos I took this morning of colourful autumn foliage in the Domain Gardens.

My eye was caught by the mass of plane tree leaves piled up against this gate.

Here is an interesting contrast of luminous looking smoke bush leaves with branch of blue green eucalyptus cascading from the left of the photo.

For people in Melbourne on Wednesday May 21st, the demonstration by Mr Kawana will be a must see. If you are quick you will be able to get a ticket through the following link. Click on the coloured text: Mr Tetsunori Kawana's demonstration. As I mentioned in last weeks posting, the Victorian Branch Exhibition will be open from 11.00am to 6.00pm at Yarra Gallery Federation Square from Tuesday 20th to Sunday 25th

In this weeks ikebana I have used some wisteria leaves and orange trumpet flowers in a ceramic vase made by Shigeo Shiga (click on coloured text for further information), the highly influential Japanese ceramic artist who worked in Australia for many years.

(Click on coloured text to link to Emily Karanikolopoulos' Tokyo blog)

Greetings from Christopher