The Principles and Elements of great design in floral art and flower arranging is finally now available in an exclusive CD, " Principles and Elements in Floral Design" with Ngaire Clarke. Follow a lesson on each element and principle with a floral project to try, read more here. The feature illustrated here is texture

"The visual and physical surface quality of plant material and objects. Texture creates character in design and stimulates interest by contrast." From Flair, The FASNZ book 

Texture is the surface quality of the plant material and how the eye sees that. If the plant material is smooth and shiny, your eye will travel over it quickly as it sees all there is to see very fast.

The texture can be rough, dull, or coarse and the eye will stay longer as it takes in all the different tones, tints and shades created by the shadows and light plays.

Smooth flowers with smooth containers look great together, shiny flowers and leaves with shiny containers, etc. However contrast in texture can be wonderful, as each makes the other stand out more.The contrasts in texture can be used to make the viewer's eye rest on a particularly stunning flower,  or unique plant material. Often a coarsely textured container  with smooth flowers such as camellias inserted, will draw attention away from the camellias and on to the container so be aware of where you wish to draw attention.

Pavé is a style of design where plant materials are placed closely together to form a flat patter.

The four pavé designs on the right were all created at a workshop and demonstrate the wonderful contrasts in texture.

To work with texture, start by going on a "texture hunt" Find  15-20 of each object such as flowers, fruit, leaves, seeds, shells anything in the same scale.Look for the contrasts as you collect and  you will need 6 different object groups: smooth, shiny, rough, fine, coarse, dull.

They could all be the same colour or  2  colours or all differrent.

Sort into piles and put the smooth by the rough, the shiny by the dull, the fine by the coarse. Now  put the piles in other orders, looking at contrasting textures and colours. Decide on the order you like the best.

Lay  blocks of wetted floral foam in a container. With one group from your pile of objects. make a pathway or swirl around the foam, then fill in the other areas grouping all the same object tightly and putting contrasts in texture in the adjoining grouping.

Fill all the foam so there are no gaps, and you have a wonderful design for a coffee table, as well as a great exercise in texture.