Flower Arranging 101
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Friday, March 15, 2019
By Charleston Flower Market
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The easiest way to make your home grammable? A gorgeous bouquet of fresh flowers! And, while we have plenty of incredible arrangements to select from, sometimes you want to create your own brag-worthy bouquet for your guests to swoon over. Now, you can DIY your own perfect flower arrangement with some of your favorite blooms from Charleston Flower Market and these tips! Here are some of our secrets to creating a lush, show-stopping flower arrangement for your home:

Before you begin arranging, start out by re-trimming the stems at a 45-degree angle to ensure your flowers last as long as possible. Not sure what height to make the stems for your bouquet? A good rule of thumb is 1.5 times the height of your vase. However, for some types of flower arrangements, shorter or taller can be better, so go with your gut!

Now is also the time to trim off those excess leaves from the stems. Anything that falls below an inch from the top of your vase should get snipped off. Don’t throw them away just yet, though! You can often reuse those trimmings for filler greenery later on. Now that each individual element of your bouquet is ready to go, it’s time to get arranging:

Step One: Greenery

Start off with your filler flowers to create the shape and structure of your overall arrangement. Myrtle, seeded and silver dollar eucalyptus, grevilia, Italian ruscus, and leucothoe are all beautiful, long-lasting fillers in brilliant shades of green. In addition to providing structure, your filler greenery is another way to add more natural textures to your bouquet.

Step Two: Mass Flowers

Fill it in with your bigger mass or focal flowers. Now that you’ve got your overall shape for your bouquet in place, it’s time to add in those show stoppers. Peonies, sunflowers, roses, hydrangeas, tulips, daisies magnolias can all be eye-catching focal flowers that serve as the “main act” of your bouquet. The majority of your mass flowers should be placed around the center of the arrangement. However, you can also sprinkle them around the outer edges, especially for shorter vases and bouquets.

Step Three: Line Flowers

Finish off your arrangement with some striking line flowers. Like any outfit is polished by adding the right scarf, necklace or earrings, line flowers are accessories of your bouquet. These are those tall, thin flowers often with small blooms up the height of the stem. Some of our favorite line flowers include snapdragons, gladiolus, delphinium, speedwells, and poms. Place your line flowers anywhere you see a bare spot in your bouquet. Take a step back and see how balanced your arrangement seems to the eye. If one side seems slightly “heavier” than another, consider adding in some more line flowers.

A few other things to consider when creating your own floral arrangement:

Like most beautiful designs, remember the rule of thirds. In the case of flower arrangements, go for a visual balance of one-third vase, two-thirds floral.

Rotate your arrangement as you work so you don’t miss any spots, especially if your bouquet is going to be displaced as a table centerpiece.

A little asymmetry is natural and perfectly lovely! While you don’t want one side of your arrangement significantly taller than the other, a little height variation can make certain flowers in your bouquet really pop.

 

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2 Comments
Louise Thackeray - Karen,
we will have some classes coming up soon!
Karen Perlmuttet - I would love to take a flower arranging class and I just saw this today that I missed one