The Difficulty of Flower Work

In taking up flower design, there are several important elements. Do the flower materials used and the vessel come together as one, as a single work, without any sense of discord? How beautifully is the balance—left and right, up and down, front and back—brought out? How is the flower given its water; how does it breathe? What purpose or situation in daily life does the work answer to, and can it show its worth in existing? Through the flowers, what did the maker wish to convey within the work? And so on—there are several points that must be cleared.

Yet even having cleared all of these, what matters most is how much the people surrounding the finished design come to take an interest in flowers and to feel gratitude for a life with flowers in it—and the flowers, surely, wish for this too.

Work that involves flowers comes down to this: how many people with a heart for flowers we can go on to increase.