Floral designers use plant materials and flowers to create a pleasant and balanced composition emphasizing color and variety of botanical materials (not just blooming flowers) in mass gatherings of multiple flowers in bouquets, centrepieces and sculptures. Floral designs are not just about arranging a mass of flowers, they also include wreaths, garlands, boutonnieres and corsages.
Tips for creating art with flowers
1. The more leaves you cut from the stem the more water goes to the blooms, helping them last longer.
2. Flowers from a grocery store are dehydrated, so let them soak up water before arranging.
3. Use a scotch tape grid to arrange flowers. Tape a design over your vase and hide the tape with greenery.
4. Blow on your roses to open them up right away.
5. Keep your center-piece for dining table arrangements under 12” high or much higher with spaces left to see through.
6. Don’t use overly fragrant flowers like lily of the valley, freesia, some roses, sweetpea and jasmine as an arrangement in your dining area as their fragrance will collide with the food.
7. As a general rule for your home, one room should have no more than two floral focal points.
8. For extra greenery in your floral design, take cuttings from your house-plants.
9. If you have evergreens in your garden, cut them back in the winter and you’ll have an additional source of greenery for your designs.
10. If you want to use flowers that are out of water in your design, consider calla lilies, carnations, orchids and antherium that just need a one-hour drink each day
11. When you get roses from a florist, remove the outside guard petals before arranging.
12. You can take off the plastic tubes from gerbera stems
13. Remove the stamens from lily flowers to stop their dust spreading over the rest of your arrangement.
14. Hydrangeas often wilt before your arrangement is completed. Submerging the flower heads in water for an hour revives them.
15. The best time to cut flowers is after sunset or in the early morning, less stress from sunlight means they’ll last longer.
16. To keep gerberas, tulips or any weal-stemmed flower from collapsing, thread floral wire or any thin, flexible wire up through the stems.
17. If you want to add dried flowers to your living floral design, use a glass tube to keep the water out. Just stick the empty tubes into your oasis or support material and slip in the dried material.
18. Woody stemmed flowers such as lilacs require special treatment. Split the ends in quarters about an inch high so they can absorb water more easily.
19. Holding a lighter on the ends of poinsettias and euphorbia until they stop sizzling can make them last longer.
20. Grow hostas, iris and ornamental grasses in your garden for greenry to fill out and complement your floral arrangements.
21. The best flowers to use in floating arrangements are roses, tulips, orchids, and then add delphinium, gardenia, peonies and lotus.
22. If you want stems to bend in your arrangement use orchids, calla lilies and tulips
23. Tulips continue growing after they have been cut, so you have to expect that they will twist and turn. Design your arrangement to allow for shifting.
