A cluster of flower-filled buckets created a chaotic garden next to a display table in the front of the meeting room at the Slovak Center in North Catasauqua last month, as Lehigh Valley gardening columnist Sue Kittek began her presentation.

The topic was flower arranging, and many of the buckets of greenery and blossoms had been provided by Catasauqua Garden Club members, who had brought cuttings of whatever happened to be blooming that day on their home gardens and flowerbeds.

Kittek's talk would help bring order and artistic creation from what seemed at first to be a mish-mash of cuttings.

While she spoke about selecting supplies and vases and cutting stems properly to keep them hydrated, club member Martha Capwell, horticultureal committee chair Donna Sheckler and club Chaplain Joanne Spengler put their heads together and began creating arrangements on the display table.

There's a lot to learn about flower arranging. Garden club members meet monthly to share their expertise on this and other topics with each other and to bring samples from their gardens and flower arrangements they have created for judging. While they focused their attention on Kittek, a gardener from another club examined their entries displayed on tables in the back of the room.

Kittek recommended the use of a color wheel for selecting flowers that create complementary, monochromatic or analogous balances, for example, rather than randomly selecting colors for an arrangement.

Besides color, some of the other factors Kittek said would determine the success of an arrangement were decisions about the arrangement's density, variety of texture and the placement of larger and smaller blooms.

As the arrangements being created by the three club members began to take shape, the once quiet audience got into the act, offering opinions and guidance, some leaving their seats to select a stem for consideration, others calling out suggestions.

Kittek encouraged everyone to get involved.

"You should work together," she said. "You've got people who know what they're doing who can help you."

As one less experienced member stepped up and placed a large white flower high in an arrangement.

"Does it need something here?" she asked, and several members called out "No!"

Another member trimmed the stem of the same flower and placed it low in the arrangement, prompting a round of "Yes!" responses from the audience. The rookie's happy expression indicated it was an "aha" moment for her.

By the conclusion of the program, as Kittek suggested considering creating seasonally themed arrangements and giving thought to the expression of an arrangement, she could hardly be heard over the chattering of the club members as they collaborated, bending over buckets of blooms and calling out suggestions from their seats.

In the end, from the miscellany of flowers and the spirited input from everyone in the room, the display table was filled with beautiful arrangements.

From chaos came order and artistry.