Picture a slim, shallow tray filled with gardenias floating in an inch of water. Their heady fragrance fills the room. What about a cluster of seven tulips in an earth-colored vase, or a bold arrangement of 50 black callas in a clear glass jar?

These are a few of the arrangements authors Brenda Berkley and Anulka Kitamura have created in their book “Zen Flowers: Designs To Soothe the Senses and Nourish the Soul” (Stewart Tabori & Chang, $30, 143 pages).

“Flowers magically transform an environment,” they write. “Rooms filled with flowers are infused with energy and vitality. … (Flowers offer) a glimpse of calm and a feeling of peace to all who enter.”

Generously illustrated with 125 color photographs by Emily Brooke Sandor, the book urges readers to appreciate the simplicity and beauty of flowers, whether a single blossom or a large arrangement. Beauty, simplicity and harmony are, after all, the cornerstones of Zen flower arranging, Berkley says.

“Flowers have the power to excite, to heal. I’ve never gotten over my amazement with flowers. People crave them because they represent the promise of a future, a new beginning,” she says during a recent phone interview. “Even when they’re for a sad occasion they still lighten people’s loads and soften their hearts.”

Berkley, who owns a flower shop in Santa Monica, Calif., decorates the homes of many political figures and celebrities. The ideas she brings to their homes she and Kitamura now bring to everyone who reads the book.

What makes her arrangements Zen? The concept means using flowers in a manner that imparts their healing and restorative aspects in the home and office, Berkley says. “It’s really just a simple touch, something that feels balanced and harmonious, but also homey and comfortable. It’s focusing on what’s beautiful about what you’re using and allowing it to just be.”

It can be a branch or a single blossom. It can be an arrangement of twigs. It can be a soothing combination of hydrangeas and roses, three lotus blossoms in a tall vase, or a bright accent that enlivens a room.

“The Zen concept isn’t a set of rules. We offer guidelines, we make suggestions,” Berkley says. “We want people to think about what resonates with them, what makes them feel good. We ask that people think just for a second about harmony and balance.”

The book tackles each room in the house as well as the office. In the bathroom, for example, they suggest “utilizing vessels that are simple and unobtrusive, and that blend with the coolness of the room. The flowers will speak volumes in such a sparse space. Let them.”

And Berkley’s favorite flowers? “I love peonies,” she says. “And freesias, ranunculus, orchids of all kinds, narcissus, dahlias, callas, and, of course, hydrangeas and roses.”[via]