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Perhaps one of my all time favourite flowers are aquilegias which, for obvious reasons, are sometime called granny's bonnets.
I love their elegance, their grace and uniqueness and I love the fact they are so unusual but so beautiful.
I also like their colours and the fact they self seed so readily and can suddenly appear absolutely anywhere in a garden ... they are a
complete cottage garden classic.
I like to make my garden sculpture by starting with careful observation of real plants and flowers "in the flesh".
Simply looking at a flat image on a computer screen doesn't seem to give me enough of a feel of their "essence".
I usually start by carefully dissecting the flower I'm studying and then making scaled up paper templates which are used to cut out the sheet metal.
I got as far as this last year but became too busy with ongoing commissions and suddenly there were no more flowers in bloom!
I made sure I could find the time this year and with a bit of observation, and some careful sculpting with a hammer, managed to shape this beauty.
(more pictures of it can be seen on
this page)
I'm extremely happy with it but it's still only a prototype and I've got a few tweaks and adjustments to do before I start on a full flower sculpture.
I still haven't decided on the final arrangement but there will probably be around 3 or 4 flower heads to the sculpture, each about 2 feet across, and it will probably stand around 6 to 8 feet tall.
Watch this space!
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