Tiny Vases

tinyvases

This is what passes for a flower bouquet at my house.

As a small space gardener I can’t grow the volume required to create large and frothy bouquets. I need to work with what I’ve got since we’re not growing cut flowers in Oprah quantities around here (I followed her Instagram account for a few weeks and could not believe the buckets upon buckets of roses that are harvested from her gardens). There wouldn’t be a whole lot left to enjoy in the garden were I to pilfer from it regularly. Instead, I harvest little bits of this and that and display them in tiny vases comprised of old perfume and medicine bottles, bud vases, and tiny bowls. I found a small stack of the tiny bowl (front right) at a market in Chaing Mai, Thailand. My favourite is in the right back, a rock with a hole carved in the centre. Can you believe I got that one free from a local junk shop? “Oh, you can just have it,” the proprietor replied when we inquired about the price.

Colourful bits of plant matter from my garden and an oddball assortment of free and practically free vessels = priceless (literally).

Gayla Trail
Gayla is a writer, photographer, and former graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the author, photographer, and designer of best-selling books on gardening, cooking, and preserving.

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11 thoughts on “Tiny Vases

  1. I do the same. This is my first year with roses here, so I only have a few to pick. It’s nice to have a little flower tucked here & there.

  2. Tiny vases are cute on a bedside table or bathroom vanity, where you couldn’t have a big one anyway!
    It’s past their season, but those teeny tiny daffodils look so nice in cobalt blue glass bottles. I have some that started life as salt and pepper shakers.

  3. Another lover of tiny vases here. I actually have a hard time cutting flowers to bring indoors, they always last so much longer outside. I also use the little bowls with the flower frogs or spikes glued inside them. They will hold a stem upright. Very “oriental” looking and makes it look like I fussed!

  4. I do the same, especially when my herbs produce flowers. They make the house smell wonderful. Right now I have beautiful purple sage in various bottles around the house.

  5. I love small vases. I like to keep the majority of flowers growing naturally in my garden. With a small vase, I can cut just a few. That way, I can enjoy them inside and out.

  6. When I was in the hospital with my final baby, I remember being amused by the tiny glass Heinz ketchup bottles they brought with meals. My mom told me to save them for little flower vases. I did…and I use them constantly!

  7. Small is beautiful…and as much as I love a huge, frothy arrangement, the little ones are often more closely observed.

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