Keeping your flowers beautiful at home.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like summer is almost over! The monsoons have been an amazing relief and the cooler temperatures have been wonderful. Now that the heat is on its’ way out, this is a great time to bring fresh flowers back into our homes.
One of the most common questions I get is “how do I arrange flowers in a vase that I bring home from the store?” When you come by our store, or when you are at the market, you might pick up a bouquet of flowers to bring home. The flowers look beautifully arranged when they are wrapped up, but the moment you take the wrapping off, it looks like a garden exploded on your kitchen counter. In this article, I will provide some simple steps on how to make your bouquet of flowers just as beautiful on your kitchen counter as they do in a magazine!
Anytime I receive a bouquet of fresh flowers, I separate them out into a couple of different groups of flowers. First, I pull out all the greens. I then separate them out into flower types, such as my taller flowers, my large flowers, and even my favorite flowers. Another small group should be your filler flowers, those flowers that are smaller or that you have the most of that we will use to “fill in” our arrangement after we are done.
After our flowers are separated, we can begin arranging them in a vase. I always like using a small vase so that our flowers are nice and full. You will begin any flower arrangement by laying your greens in first. Place the greens low and right up against the rim of the vase so that they are on the bottom of your arrangement. After the greens are in the vase, you can start to put in your tall flowers. Your tallest flowers should be no more than one and a half times the height of your vase. This keeps your design in proportion with the vase. I recommend putting the taller flowers in the back of your arrangement or in the center.
Now comes the fun part! You will want to select a flower or two for your focal point. These are going to go front and center in your design. I prefer to keep the focal point low in the arrangement, resting on your greens. This should be a larger flower, such as a sunflower, mum, peony, dahlia or zinnia. The focal point is the star of the show, so make sure to build around it! After you place your focal point, you can put in other more prominent flowers. I recommend putting in flowers such as roses in this step, so they have a dedicated place in the design as well.
After the focal point and your favorite flowers, you can use the rest of the flowers as your fillers and fill in whatever you have left of your flowers. Designing a vase arrangement really is this simple!
The most common mistake is unwrapping the flowers and plopping them in the vase, which is a big no no! Spend time separating the flowers out and taking a few extra minutes placing them intentionally. You will not be disappointed!