HARRIET LADY Kidd, who has died at the age of 89 in Belfast, was the widow of Robert Kidd, a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Finance in Northern Ireland.
Robert Kidd was involved in the creation of the Ulster Museum, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and a purpose-built Public Records Office. In 1976, he became head of Northern Ireland's Civil Service and he was knighted on his retirement.
He was chairman of the Ulster Historical Foundation and was also chairman of Co-operation North. He died in 2004.
Harriet Kidd (née Williamson) was born in Co Down, but the family moved to Mayo when her father, Dr Ernest Williamson, became the Presbyterian minister in Ballina.
She was the eldest of four children. Her younger brother John was to become the first moderator of United Reformed Church in the Mersey province. With Bishop David Sheppard and Archbishop Derek Worlock, he was part of the ecumenical triumvirate that endeavoured to end the sectarian feuds in Liverpool.
Harriet Williamson went to Wesley College, Dublin, and then to Trinity College where she read natural sciences. She would have been one of the very few women at that time who could boast that both her mother and grandmother had gone to university.
Her mother had been the senior lecturer in modern languages at Queens University during the first World War.
It was at Trinity that she met Robert Kidd and they were married in 1942 when he was serving in the Royal Ulster Rifles. Later, he became a major in the intelligence corps.
After the war, he was recruited into the Northern Ireland Civil Service and they lived at the family house in Massey Court. There she laid out a remarkable garden in which each plant had been specifically selected for its form and shape to give harmony to the design.
Kidd was one of the best-known flower arrangers in the North, being vice-chairwoman and chairwoman of the Northern Ireland Group of Flower Arrangement Societies. She was once a flower festival co-ordinator for a festival in Westminster Abbey.
She did decorations for such occasions as the opening of the Belfast Grand Opera House. She taught flower arranging at City and Guilds Adult Education classes where she encouraged her pupils to experiment; she was herself an inspirational and innovating arranger.
She contributed articles regularly to the Belfast Telegraphand often appeared on Ulster Television. For many years, she was a judge at the rose trials in Dixon Park.
At the Chelsea Flower Show, she saw an exhibition of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, which dates from the 7th century when flowers were placed as offerings in Buddhist temples.
She was so impressed that for many years she took lessons in London and became a master of the Sogetsu school of ikebana, a disciplined art form in which nature and humanity are brought together with an emphasis on minimalism and organic material.
In 1982 she introduced this form of flower arranging into Ireland and was founder president of the Belfast chapter of Ikebana International. Through the difficult years of the Troubles, when her husband had an increasingly high-profile career and the couple had to be under constant protection, she found support in the philosophy of ikebana.
Harriet Kidd was a governor of Strathearn School and Richmond Lodge School, which is now part of Victoria College.
She is survived by three sons and two daughters.
• Harriet Lady Kidd: born July 29th, 1919; died November 12th, 2008