I teamed up with the incredible Brian, from Myrtie Blue, to demonstrate how to make a beautiful floral arrangement from plants in your garden. He makes it look so effortless, and honestly, it is pretty easy! Brian's work is truly art, but his goal was to show that you are more than capable of doing some simpler arrangements, yourself. You can see the full write-up on Style Me Pretty.
Here is a list of materials you will need:
Favorite Centerpiece Bowl or Compote
Oasis Floral Foam - alternatively you can use a floral frog and chicken wire
Florist Bowl Tape
Floral Knife
Garden Pruners
Dozen Roses of choice from your grocer
Selection of Garden Clippings. We used:
Heucherella Foliage
Blooming Azalea
Bear Claw Fern
"Lady Banks" Rose
Blooming Spirea
Blooming Vinca Vine
Loropetalum Foliage
Blooming Blueberry
Instructions on putting it all together:
Buy a dozen roses from your grocer. Choose a color that makes you happy! Keep them in water until you are ready to arrange them.
Then head to the garden in the cool of the morning or evening and forage! Cut from your favorite plants. If you cut in the middle of the day chances are the cuttings will suffer from stress and not survive as long as you might like. Be judicious about where you cut so that your plants remain beautiful and well shaped after cutting.
Choose both blooming and non-blooming plants. The variety is amazing once you really look around your garden. If you don’t have access to a garden, then visit a garden center. There are always plenty of plants to cut and forage from at most garden centers. Plunge the cut ends into cool to tepid water for safe keeping.
Prepare you container. If using floral foam, float it in water prepared with floral preservative or a little sugary soda water and a tiny bit bleach. Tape the foam into the bowl.
Begin your arrangement. Start by inserting a few stems from the garden that might define the breadth or length of your centerpiece. Make secure and firm insertions into the foam about 12” deep.
Be conscious of how the plants appear in nature or how the stems layer themselves amongst each other. This will help your arrangement to take on that natural garden appeal.
Continue adding your garden cuttings moving back and forth from end to end and side to side; keeping in mind that the core of your arrangement will be a dozen roses and provide real central mass and focus to the finished piece.
Add shorter stems between longer ones to create depth and dimension.
When you have something that looks almost finished, add your roses. Place them mostly in the core of your arrangement, creating focus and mass. You have a dozen at your disposal, so feel free to experiment a little with placement.
Before you know it, you have a gorgeous garden foraged arrangement featuring a dozen roses from the grocer.
