St. Petersburg #65, USA

“Coming Together Again – Back to Basics,” and “Everything Palm,” by Ikebana demonstration and workshop by Banmi Shofu Ryu, Ichiyo, Ikenobo, Ohara, and Sogetsu

The subject of our September 2023 program “Coming Together Again – Back to Basics” was just that – a coming together again after our summer hiatus. It was so good to see friends again and welcome a few new ones. This program gave us a chance to introduce the different schools in our chapter and the creative sensei lead them. Each gave a demonstration of a beginning lesson with detailed explanations as to why learning these beginning rules is so important to giving us the foundation and skill set needed to create the beautiful arrangements that we have envisioned in our minds. The afternoon was filled with making arrangements and remembering why we all love Ikebana so much – friendship through flowers.

October’s program, “Everything Palm” offered creativity and fun. Palms are the oldest fruit-bearing tree on our planet and have been associated with peace, righteousness, fertility and prosperity. For thousands of years they have provided shade, food and building materials. Here in Florida, we have over 1500 species of Palm – even our state tree is the Sago Palm.

For our morning workshops, we had three demonstrators: Jeanne Houlton of Ichiyo School, Ming Zhu of Ikenobo and Sybille Ruschmeier of Sogetsu. All used palms as their plant material for their arrangements: stalks, leaves/fronds, boots, inflorescence and their spathes, fibrous material as well as coconuts and fruits. As they pointed out, the great thing about palms is that we can gather this material ourselves… for free.

We had lots of materials to share for afternoon workshops and to practice with all the possibilities presented in the demonstration.