Rustic Fall Bouquet

We had company from Australia this weekend.
My Mother is Australian, and we have LOTS of family in Melbourne and it's surrounding area.  I have never had the priveledge to go to Australia, but maybe one day I will.

We hosted a dinner for my Mom's cousin, and I knew I wanted to make a fall table centre piece.  I wanted to do it for free, and I was prepared for something a bit rustic.  It was fun to do.

First I walked the dog on Saturday morning, and I started to gather interesting pieces along the way.  Everything I gathered was on public property along the green belt that follows a creek in our neighborhood. 
I managed to get a pretty good selection by the time I was heading home.
It looks like this:

 

Next I found 2 glass vases in the cupboard and I started to trim the foilage and stuff them into the container a bit at a time.  I was careful to leave the flowers until last as they were quite delicate.

Here is the work part way through.

From this point I continued to stuff pieces into the vases, this way and that, and moved them around until I managed to achieve something that resembled a bouquet.

I am not a flower arranger, and I have never held myself out to be one, that is my Mother's area of skill, but she was busy and honestly, it was just plain old fun to do this.

Here is what my bouquets looked like when finished.

Here is the first one, up close:

 

And here is the second one.  Not as even and pretty as the first, but still unique and fresh all the same.

The last thing I did was add water to the vases.

 

Contents of my Rustic Fall Bouquets:

1. Red Maple Leafs (from trees along the creek)

2. Yellow Leafs (from trees along the creek)

3. Green leafs (from a bush along the creek)

4. Dried old burrs (In honour of our dog who gathers these without even trying. LOL!  I found some really cool dried bunches of burrs and took some home)

5. Purple wild flowers (creek area)

6. White wild flowers (creek area)

7. Silver dollar plant (on city property at the back of someone's house that backs onto the green belt)

8. Yellow Flowers (on city property at the back of someone's house that backs onto the green belt)  

Everything I gathered was 100% free, honest and for real and would qualify as wild or naturally growing, as I gathered it all along the greenbelt and creek area.

If you wanted to do one of these, you could have done it into a taller vase and not cut the flowers down, but i wanted mine for a dinner table, so I made mine into shorter vases.

So, if you are a Canadian, Thanksgiving is coming this weekend, you can plan for a morning walk, and a simple assembly of  wild flowers and foilage into a vase for a beautiful rustic style fall bouquet.   If you aren't Canadian but it's fall where you live, you can still do an awesome bouquet, you just don't have to worry if it will fit on your dinner table or not!  

Happy gathering and arranging!

Cassie

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