FLOWER ARRANGING TIPS
Even amid early December’s hectic and often chaotic bounty, flower-arranging tips are always appreciated. As luck has it, reading (another) arranging book by Ariella Chezar’s The Flower Workshop, has inspired today’s post.
A few quick, December friendly,flower-arranging tips of hers you could start with are:
Start with Colour
Don’t know where to begin? In a previous post about planning to design a cut flower garden, we talked about picking your palette with nature as your guide. Spending some time planning before wildy planting, looking at what flowers around the same time and what images of these plants look good together means you have already done a lot of the hard work! Working to a palette is such a helpful way to aide your bouquet building.
Chezar prefers to use floral frogs (or kenzan) to keep flowers in their place. These sturdy stem holders were commonplace generations ago and sit comfortably at the bottom of a sturdy pot to hold even the trickiest flowers upright, without the crumbly mess of plastic floral foam.
Go green
In addition to colorful, seasonal flowers, Chezar loves to add in leaves, branches, and vines for both texture and character. These green, neutral tones add another element of visual interest to the arrangement. You could also use sturdy foliage branches as the ‘support structure’ first, instead of a flower frog and then flowers will be held quite nicely in place from there.
Any arrangement needs a centre point, or a focal point, to pull it together. Start with stiffer stems and work towards the more delicate, and remember to work all the way around your shape. The pops of brilliant a contrasting colour and asymmetry in arrangements keep the eye intrigued. Experiment with the details, try using very light, delicate things as well as sturdier head turners. Don’t be afraid to experiment!
An arrangement idea with clear focal point and looseness of form.
Grow together
On her Zonnefeld Farm in Ghent, NY, Chezar grows a mix of trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, annuals, and bulbs. This harmony out in the field is reflected in her relaxed arrangements, inspired by how plants loosely grow together, rather than in tightly bound bunches. Here at NDB GARDEN STUDIO, we have a similar loose and “wild” style ethos and source echinacea, chamomile, dahlias, and roses from our own garden that grow alongside smoke bush, eleagnus, blackberries, sweetpeas, brachyglotis, and more.
