Ikebana Belgium

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Ikebana Belgium

Ikebana connects you to nature while your creativity breathes new life into flowers and branches.

Slow down, Be Creative and Enjoy Nature

Ikebana, Japanese flower arranging, is more than just arranging flowers. It is a philosophy and lifestyle that helps you slow down and find inner peace by developing creative skills to make beautiful living art. We love to do projects with other like-minded artists and ikebana teachers, thereby growing a community to spread the ikebana way of living. Contem

porary or Japanese inspired decorations for shop windows, restaurants, or companies are our favorites.

19/06/2026

🔻THE PATH I FORGOT🔻

When you see something meaningful, it’s easy to notice the person who made it.

The artist. The writer. The architect. The teacher. But recently, someone reminded me to look a little deeper.

A viewer left a comment on one of my videos about the different paths of growth the Japanese botanical art with flowers and branches can offer. Her suggestion was simple.

Community.

About a week ago, I travelled to Brussels to create an installation for the New European Bauhaus Festival. As I explored the exhibition, I kept noticing the same pattern. Children learning from architects. Researchers building on one another’s ideas. Artists, educators, and designers sharing what they had discovered.

The more I looked, the more familiar it felt. We often think of growth as something personal. Yet so much of what we learn comes from teachers, friends, books, workshops, conversations, and communities that support us along the way.

The same is true in ikebana, the Japanese botanical art with flowers and branches.

For years, I thought about ikebana as a path of artistic growth, creative growth, aesthetic growth, inner growth, and spiritual growth.

What I had overlooked was how often those paths are travelled with others. Perhaps community is not another path of growth. Perhaps it is the thread that quietly connects all the others.

Because in the end, none of us grows entirely alone.

If you’d like to read the full story behind this reflection, sign up for our newsletter before Saturday, June 20. The link is in the bio.

#生け花 community botanicalart

14/06/2026

🔻When Light Becomes a Design Material🔻

Most people focus on flowers, branches, and containers. But there is another material that often goes unnoticed: light. Change the lighting and you change the arrangement.

In this design, the Japanese maple and calla lilies create one composition. The light creates another.

Look closely at the shadow. The arrangement and container are built mainly from straight and angular lines. Yet the shadow introduces a strong curved line that does not physically exist in the arrangement. Light has added a new element to the composition.

This is an important lesson for anyone interested in visual art. What we see is not only determined by the objects themselves, but also by the way light interacts with them.

Painters study it. Photographers study it. Sculptors study it.

In the Japanese botanical art of ikebana, light can also become part of the design. It can strengthen a line, soften a shape, create movement, or even introduce entirely new visual relationships.

The next time you create an arrangement, don't stop when the flowers are placed. Walk around it. Observe it in morning light, evening light, direct light, and soft light. You may discover that the shadow is contributing as much to the composition as the branches themselves.

Follow for more insights into the art and design principles behind ikebana.

Material: Japanese maple, calla lilies
Container: Custom-made glass tube container in a metal frame

#生け花 #いけばな

13/06/2026

🔻The Beauty We Usually Walk Past🔻

Most of the materials in this arrangement grow in places we hardly notice.
Along roadsides. At the edge of a field. Between cracks in a path.
We call them weeds, walk past them, and rarely give them a second glance.
Yet what happens when we change the context?

In this arrangement, wildflowers, grasses, and seed heads are not simply gathered and placed together. The geometric structure woven from grass introduces a layer of design. Straight lines and angles contrast with the untamed character of the plants. Nature and human creativity enter into a dialogue.

Suddenly, the same materials look different.
Not because the plants have changed, but because our way of looking has changed.

This is one of the lessons I love most about the Japanese botanical art with flowers and branches. Beauty is not reserved for rare flowers or expensive materials. It can be found almost anywhere when we take the time to observe, select, and compose.

The journey from roadside to gallery is often much shorter than we think.
Perhaps the real art is not arranging the plants.

Perhaps it is learning to see them.
Follow for more reflections on creativity, nature, and the art of seeing.

Material: Wild grasses, rushes, daisies, dandelion-like flowers, seed heads, roadside foliage

Container: Handmade sculptural container created from painted drain pipes

#生け花

12/06/2026

🔻When Values Meet🔻

Have you ever been invited into a project and thought:

“Wait... this already speaks my language.”

That was my reaction when I was invited to create an installation for the New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels.

The New European Bauhaus brings together three ideas: beauty, sustainability, and togetherness. As I learned more, I was struck by how closely these values align with my own work. For many years, I have explored similar ideas through ikebana, the Japanese botanical art that brings flowers, branches, and space into a harmonious relationship.

That connection became the starting point for my installation *Connected by Nature, Different, Yet Together*.

The installation is built from bamboo, a fast-growing material valued for its strength and flexibility. The colours represent different cultures, traditions, and perspectives. Willow weaves through the composition, connecting these different elements.

Together, they express a simple idea: being together does not mean becoming the same.

Nature reminds us that diversity and connection are not opposites. Different materials, colours, and forms can coexist while retaining their own identity. Perhaps people and communities can do the same.

If you are interested in Sustainability, Beauty and Community, stay tuned for our newsletter on June 20th, where we will tell you more about our New European Bauhaus adventure. Link to sign up is in my bio.

Ikebana & New European Bauhaus - In collaboration with EIT Community NEB

#生け花

07/06/2026

🔻When the Container Refuses to Be Quiet🔻

Some containers simply support an arrangement.
This one never does.

A few years ago, I visited the Mafka glass studio while this container was being made. I was involved in choosing the shape and colors, and I remember watching the glass take form.

Ever since, it has been one of the most challenging containers in my collection.
Not because it is difficult to arrange in, but because it has so much character of its own.

The pink and ochre glass immediately attracts attention. The bold shape demands space. No matter what materials I place in it, the container becomes one of the main actors in the composition.

That may sound like a disadvantage, but it teaches an important lesson.

In the Japanese botanical art with flowers and branches, the container is not merely a vessel. It is part of the design. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes, as in this case, it speaks quite loudly.

The challenge then is not to overpower the container, nor to disappear beside it, but to create a dialogue.

Here, the pink lisianthus echo the pink glass, while the yellow gerberas pick up the warm ochre tones below. The branches provide movement and space, allowing both flowers and container to breathe.

Good design is not always about finding harmony between quiet elements.

Sometimes it is about finding harmony with a strong personality.

Follow for more insights into the Japanese botanical art with flowers and branches.

Material: Spindletree, lisianthus, gerbera, Astrantia
Container: Handcrafted glass container by Mafka, created to my specifications

#生け花

06/06/2026

Oops... Its Ikebana Day

This Sunday, we celebrate Ikebana Day.
Every year on June 6, the Japan Ikebana Art Association selects a flower for the occasion. This year, the flower is Agapanthus.
The problem was that I only remembered it yesterday.

Last week, I was completely immersed in preparing my Glass in Ikebana workshop. The commenting sessions had just finished when it suddenly dawned on me: Ikebana Day was almost here. There was no Agapanthus in the studio, no time to go flower shopping, and no obvious photograph ready to share.

So I asked Ben to search through our photo archive to see whether I had ever used Agapanthus before.
We searched for quite a while.
Nothing.
Apparently Agapanthus has never played a major role in my ikebana life.

Then another photograph appeared on the screen. Lilies arranged in a transparent glass vase. Which was slightly amusing. Agapanthus is often called the Lily of the Nile, so after searching everywhere for Agapanthus, we somehow ended up with lilies in a glass vase instead.

Not the flower I was looking for, but somehow the right container. It was the Glass in Ikebana workshop that had made me forget the day in the first place, and now glass had quietly found its way back into the story.
The photograph dated back two years and had been created for a video tutorial about straight lines. The longer I looked at it, the more it felt exactly right.

Perhaps because Ikebana Day is not really about one particular flower.

It is about paying attention. About noticing the beauty of a branch, a leaf, a flower, or sometimes even an old photograph quietly waiting in an archive. It is about taking a moment to see what is already there.
And perhaps there is a small lesson in that.

Sometimes we spend a great deal of time searching for the perfect thing, only to discover that something meaningful has been patiently waiting for us all along.

So this year, I am celebrating Ikebana Day with a lily.
Happy Ikebana Day.

#生け花 #いけばなの日2026

05/06/2026

🔻Every Classic Was Once an Experiment🔻

Every classic was once an experiment.

That sounds obvious, yet we often forget it.

Music is full of forgotten experiments. So is painting, architecture, literature, and just about every other art form. We remember the masterpieces. We rarely remember the thousands of ideas that quietly disappeared along the way.

The difficult part is that nobody knows in advance which new idea will last.

Nearly 100 years ago, Sofu Teshigahara faced the same challenge. He believed that the Japanese botanical art with flowers and branches had to evolve if it wanted to remain alive. He introduced new materials, new forms, and new ways of thinking. Some people loved it. Others were less convinced.

History has a habit of sorting these things out. Many innovations disappear. Some become trends. A few become traditions.

Sofu understood something important: a living art cannot stand still. Respect for tradition matters, but so does the courage to explore new possibilities.

Nearly a century later, that idea feels just as relevant. Every generation inherits an art form. Every generation also helps shape its future.

Perhaps that is how traditions survive: one experiment at a time.

Follow for more insights into nature, creativity, and the Japanese botanical art of ikebana.

Container: Bought

#生け花 #草月

31/05/2026

🔻Volume Held by Trust🔻

One of the exercises I occasionally return to is working without a fixation device.
No floral foam. No pin holder. Just branches, flowers, gravity, and patience.
It sounds simple. In practice, it asks you to slow down and pay attention to every movement.

The flexible branches were bent into loops, creating what artists call an open volume. This is one of the fascinating ideas behind mass and volume in art. A volume does not have to be solid or heavy. It can be suggested by lines alone.

Although this arrangement contains very little mass, it still occupies a considerable space. Your eye perceives a volume, yet you can look straight through it. The surrounding space becomes part of the design.

What makes the exercise challenging is that every branch influences the others. Add one stem, and the balance changes. Move a flower, and a branch may shift. The materials must support one another.

There is something quietly satisfying about this process. Instead of forcing the branches into position, you work with their natural flexibility and search for a balance that feels right.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy exercises like this. They remind me that creating is not always about control. Sometimes it is about paying attention, adapting, and allowing the materials to participate in the solution.

The result is not just a collection of flowers and branches. It is a volume created with almost no mass at all.

Have you ever noticed how a few simple lines can define an entire space?

Follow for more insights into ikebana, the Japanese botanical art with flowers and branches.

Material: Flexible branches, gerbera

#生け花

30/05/2026

🔻Similar Shapes. Different Thinking.🔻

Recently, somebody remarked that contemporary Sogetsu sometimes looks more like floristry.

Or is it perhaps the other way around? At first glance, the comparison makes sense.

Modern floristry and contemporary ikebana can share dramatic lines, asymmetry, unusual materials, and sculptural forms.

But resemblance in shape does not always mean resemblance in thinking.

In ikebana, the arrangement is not only about the final image.

It is also about the dialogue with the material.
The space around it.
The rhythm of placing one branch after another.

You are not simply arranging flowers.

You are observing:
how a branch bends,
how a leaf catches light,
how empty space changes movement.

Perhaps that is why the borders sometimes blur.

Not because the worlds became identical,
but because they continue to influence one another.

There is, of course, much more that could be said about this relationship between ikebana and floristry — perhaps enough for a future newsletter article.

29/05/2026

🔻Ideas Are Curious Things🔻

A bit like seeds.

They travel farther than we expect.

As a teacher, I see this every year. I give a class the same assignment. Everyone receives the same instructions. Sometimes they even work with similar materials.

Yet what comes back is never the same.

One person creates something bold and energetic. Another makes something quiet and contemplative. One is drawn to strong lines, another to color, texture, or mass.

That is why I worry less about people borrowing ideas than I once did.

An idea is only the starting point. What matters is what happens after it lands in your hands. Your experiences, preferences, mistakes, and discoveries all shape the result.

In ikebana, the Japanese botanical art with flowers and branches, students often begin with the same exercises. But over time, their individual voice becomes unmistakable.

Ideas travel.

Techniques travel.

Inspiration travels.

But no one grows them quite the same way.

Follow for more insights into creativity, nature, and ikebana.
Container: Alvar Aalto

Adres

Onafhankelijkheidslaan 5
Antwerp
2020

Website

https://www.ikebana.be/

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