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

🔻 When Three Lines Become a Conversation 🔻Look at the three main directions in this arrangement.One branch reaches upwar...
18/10/2026

🔻 When Three Lines Become a Conversation 🔻

Look at the three main directions in this arrangement.

One branch reaches upward, another stretches far to the left, and a flower extends to the right. Each has its own direction, yet they work together. They create balance, movement and space.

In Japanese ikebana, we learn to work with three principal elements called shin, soe and hikae. They help us understand how different lines relate to one another.

I gave my teacher students an assignment: create an arrangement in which these three elements are clearly recognizable, without making a traditional basic arrangement.

Because learning ikebana is not just about following rules. It's about understanding how lines interact and using that knowledge to create something of your own.

Which of the three directions catches your eye first?

Follow me for more insights into ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging natural materials.

Materials: Rosehips, carnations, celosia, peony foliage and eucalyptus.
Container: Black cylindrical vase.

#生け花

🔻 One Last Feeling to Guess 🔻This is the fourth and final arrangement in our little series about expressing feelings and...
17/10/2026

🔻 One Last Feeling to Guess 🔻

This is the fourth and final arrangement in our little series about expressing feelings and character through botanical materials.

This one may be harder to guess.

What is the first word that comes to mind?

Look at the strong contrast between black and white, the restrained use of colour and the combination of very different textures. The orange dahlia becomes a small but deliberate focal point.

This arrangement was created around the idea of being sophisticated.

In ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging botanical materials, character does not come from flowers alone. Colour combinations, texture, form and contrast can completely change the way an arrangement feels.

Would you have chosen sophisticated, or another word?

Follow for more small lessons about how design choices influence what we see and feel.

Material: Paper, bleached fern, aspidistra, amaranthus, dahlia

#生け花

Your mind may not need more input. It may need something to focus on.Ikebana, the Japanese botanical art, brings your at...
16/10/2026

Your mind may not need more input. It may need something to focus on.

Ikebana, the Japanese botanical art, brings your attention to a flower, a branch and the small changes in nature. It can help quiet a busy mind and reconnect you with the world around you.

Curious? Join our free newsletter for lessons, ideas and arrangements from Ilse Beunen. Sign Up Here: https://newsletter.ikebana.be

🔻 Where Do New Ideas Come From? 🔻I learned this technique for making a stiff, foldable cord from Els Goos. At the time, ...
11/10/2026

🔻 Where Do New Ideas Come From? 🔻

I learned this technique for making a stiff, foldable cord from Els Goos. At the time, I simply stored it somewhere in my head.

I had never used it on a container.
Then, while preparing a Zoom workshop called Pimp Your Vase, the two ideas suddenly came together.

That is often how creativity works. Not by inventing everything from scratch, but by combining things you have learned, seen or tried before in a new way.

In ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging botanical materials, techniques are not only there to be repeated. Once you understand them, they can become part of your own visual language.

Sometimes a technique waits quietly for quite a while before you suddenly see where it belongs.

Follow for more ideas about creativity, design and working with botanical materials.

Material: hydrangea, aucuba and branches
Container: tall vase transformed with stiff, foldable cord

#生け花

🔻 What Does This Arrangement Make You Feel? 🔻Number three in our series, and this time colour gives us fewer clues.What ...
10/10/2026

🔻 What Does This Arrangement Make You Feel? 🔻

Number three in our series, and this time colour gives us fewer clues.

What is your first impression?
Look instead at the direction of the materials. Much of the movement is downward. The soft grasses hang and fall, while the dark structure gives the composition visual weight.

This arrangement was created around one emotion: sadness.

In ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging botanical materials, colors and lines influence how we experience an arrangement. Upward, horizontal, curved or downward lines can each suggest a very different feeling.

Did you see sadness, or did another emotion come to mind first?

Follow for more small lessons about line, space and expression through botanical materials.

Material: Grasses, transformed packing material
Container: Black cylindrical container

#生け花

09/10/2026

🔻Can an Arrangement Take You Somewhere?🔻

Sometimes a branch is just a branch.

And sometimes it brings back a season, a garden, a walk, a person, or a place you have not thought about for years.

That is one of the things I find so interesting about working with natural materials. They come with their own colours, shapes, textures and seasons, but they can also carry associations.

Autumn maple may make one person think of a forest walk. Someone else may remember a garden. Another person may simply feel warmth, change or the end of summer.

As the artist, I can choose the materials and create a certain atmosphere. But I cannot completely control what you will see or feel.

That part belongs to you.

And perhaps that is why some arrangements stay with us longer than others. They connect with something that was already there.

The arrangement stays here. But you may already be somewhere else.

Where did this one take you?

#いけばな

🔻 This Is Not a Flower Arrangement 🔻I live in Belgium, so perhaps a little surrealism is allowed. The Belgian painter, ...
04/10/2026

🔻 This Is Not a Flower Arrangement 🔻

I live in Belgium, so perhaps a little surrealism is allowed. The Belgian painter, René Magritte famously painted a pipe and wrote underneath it: “This is not a pipe.”

Looking at this arrangement, I sometimes felt like writing: “This is not a flower arrangement.”

Ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging botanical materials, is often translated as Japanese flower arranging. It is a convenient explanation, especially when introducing it to someone for the first time. But I have never really liked it.

Because flowers are only part of the language.

In this arrangement, the branches create most of the structure. The small fruits bring rhythm and detail. Space is just as important as the botanical material. And then, almost as an accent, two flowers bring in colour.

That is much closer to how I experience ikebana: not simply arranging flowers, but creating with botanical materials, line, space, colour and season.

Follow for more stories and small lessons about ikebana.

Material: rosehip branches, dahlias
Container: midcentury sculptural ceramic container from

#生け花

03/10/2026

🔻The Movement Remains🔻

While I’m making an arrangement, movement is obvious. I cut, bend, turn and place the branches. My hands are constantly doing something.

But the more interesting moment comes when I stop.

The branches are still, yet the arrangement can continue to suggest movement. A curved line may seem to sweep through space. A branch rising upward can feel as if it is still climbing. A line bending downward may suggest weight, gravity or a slow fall.

Lines are powerful elements. Painters, photographers, sculptors and designers all use lines to suggest direction and movement.

So next time you look at an artwork, notice the lines before you notice the objects.

Are they resting quietly, or do they seem to be going somewhere?

#いけばな

🔻 Can You Guess the Emotion? 🔻This is number two in our four-week series about expressing feelings through botanical mat...
03/10/2026

🔻 Can You Guess the Emotion? 🔻

This is number two in our four-week series about expressing feelings through botanical materials.

Take a moment to look before reading further. What emotion comes to mind?

The deep reds may give you a clue, but colour is only part of the story. Look at the branches reaching in different directions, the strong movement through the composition and the concentration of flowers around the centre.

This arrangement was created around one emotion: passion.

In ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging botanical materials, emotion can be expressed through colour, line, movement and the way different materials interact.

Did you guess passion, or did the arrangement suggest another feeling to you?

Follow for more small lessons about looking, designing and expressing ideas through botanical materials.

Material: Rosehips, roses, amaranthus, celosia
Container: By Marijke Fortuin

#生け花

🔻 It Starts Before You Arrange 🔻An arrangement does not necessarily begin when the first branch is placed.Very often, it...
27/09/2026

🔻 It Starts Before You Arrange 🔻

An arrangement does not necessarily begin when the first branch is placed.

Very often, it starts much earlier: while walking, looking, collecting and choosing materials. A piece of bark that might normally be overlooked can suddenly become the starting point for an idea.

This is an important part of ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging botanical materials: learning to see possibilities in what nature offers you, and assembling materials that can work together before the actual arranging even begins.

This arrangement was created during the latest workshop by Anne Feyereisen for the Sogetsu Azalea Study Group. Thank you, Anne, for assembling such wonderful autumn material for us to work with.

Follow us for more ideas about looking at nature, choosing materials and creating with them.

Material: bark, sunflower

#生け花

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