Holi is the festival of colours. And, as if on cue, nature also gifts us the colourful flowers of spring. There is an amazing array of flowers that provide us with dyes for making herbal Holi colours as well as give hues to clothes and food. They are extracted by crushing or boiling and then used with a mordant or a fixer on textiles, paper or other mediums. Nature has so much to offer for sustainable living.

Metallic upbeat design

This arrangement has a combination of natural flowers with a display of fabric silver and golden flowers. A 18-20”-diameter clay platter is used. Eight balls of nearly 4”-diameter each are made with waste crushed newspaper. Silver and golden gota flowers are fixed on each ball generously so that the basic crushed newspaper is fully covered. These gota flowers are readily available in the market or online at reasonable rates. A golden gota ball is fixed with glue on a silver one and vice versa. Four such sets are created and glued to the clay platter. The rest of the plate is crowded with orange marigolds. Tecoma stans tubes are gently inserted on top of these balls to add fresh beauty. Artificial silver and golden gota flowers with fresh marigold and Tecoma stans create a beautiful balance, which is finally finished with green creepers that connect the entire design to create harmony. Some pieces of mithai can also be placed as it is time for celebrations.

Music from wind chimes

Red clay bells are available in all local markets of Bengal. Three or four medium-sized ones are coloured bright yellow and attached to a jute string (see picture). It creates a beautiful rhythm in the arrangement. Bixa orellana (achiote) seed pods are gently attached from top to bottom in this vertical design. They are sometimes addressed as lipstick tree. Even the traditional sindoor (vermillion) is made from its extract. Bright-coloured dracaena leaves are used for further decoration. The unique combination of bright yellow border and the green is amazing when it is folded in small fan shapes, stapled to secure its shape and randomly attached to the long design with wire. These can be hung from a ring or a hook near the entrance of your home. It welcomes all guests and represents the auspicious sound of triumph of good over evil.

Greetings for Holi

No festival in India is complete without cooking delicious food and offering it to the Gods and, then, guests. Thus, the focus moves to a dinner table arrangement, which is basic and inviting. One such array is a platter filled with a variety of flowers and placed as a table-top arrangement. Regular red clay platters of different sizes between of 8” and 16” diameter are bright clay painted to create similarity and harmony. Each of them is filled with a variety of flowers like rosebuds, jasmine mala, palash flowers and leaves. Each platter can be encircled with juhi malas that are fragrant. This basic design can be further enhanced by adding little clay bowls of gulal and small platters of sweets for decoration and consumption.

Physician flowers

A smart and elegant arrangement is created for the outdoor or even a large corner indoors. Of course, it is best suited for garden parties. Four to five empty bottles are sprayed up to a fourth at the bottom with golden, white or silver colours. Colourful splashes of paper cutting are pasted on them to disperse the monotony. A beautiful texture is created by encircling the bottle with thick bright yellow and pink woollen cords pasted above it. Light green and pink straws are used to make interesting geometrical (triangle) designs and placed above the bottles with one straw partly inserted in the mouth of the bottle to hold it in place. A splash of pink and red jatropha flowers are inserted on top of each bottle to remind us of the pink gulal. Due to its medicinal value, jatropha is called “physician” in these groups of shrubs. This entire arrangement is placed on bright jute paper and finished by adding exotic green creepers around it.

Spring salutations

This is an outdoor garden arrangement encompassing all spring colours. A large kalash (pot) is painted yellow, a bright and sunny daylight colour. A large tall cluster of bleached dry sticks are placed in the pot, providing vertical strength to the design. Baby chrysanthemums and a few ashoka flowers, which largely blooms in spring, are placed on the pot. The yellow, orange, red blooms add to the bright hues used in this classic design. A simple technique is further used to make cones from bright jute material pieces and fastened together. They are then suspended from the bleached branches. This technique is very simple but adds drama to the arrangement. All the materials assembled here are easily available and it is effortless to create this outdoor decoration.

Sunita Kanoria, trained at Pushpa Bitan, is a judge for national-level flower-arrangement competitions, and currently utilises her time and talent as a floral-decor demonstrator at various forums