How to Make Flower Arrangements at Home

Flowers brighten our homes and our lives. We put them on our tables at dinner and enjoy them for their scent of summer in the middle of winter. There's no reason to depend on the kindness of admirers or the local florist for floral arrangements, though, if you learn a few simple concepts of floral design. Whether you plant your own garden or harvest your flowers at the grocery store, your own creativity can produce lovely arrangements of live and artificial flowers to beautify your home year-round.

Things You'll Need

• Flowers Plastic buckets Vase or container Sharp knife Scissors Soft or bottled water Florist's flower preservative Dishwashing soap Bottled bleach

Instructions

1. 

   Grow your own flowers, if you can. Tuck a cutting garden into a sunny corner or join with a few friends to plant one in a community garden. Grow a few reliable perennials like innocence, bee balm and garden phlox as well as bright annuals and a few stars like lilies and roses. Perennials tend to bloom only for a few weeks of the year, so make sure to choose plants that bloom in "succession" to spread the bloom time throughout the summer. Include a few late-bloomers like chrysanthemums and you'll have flowers right up to (and often just past) the first frost. Annuals like zinnias and marigolds bloom all summer long---the more you pick, the more they bloom.

2. 

   Collect containers and the things that come with them. Florists send flowers in lovely, inexpensive glassware and pottery. If you save the containers, you'll never have to buy one. Keep a cardboard box with foam "frogs" in the bottom to store the pretty silk flowers often used to accent plants and arrangement elements like liatris and baby's breath---flowers that dry well and can be re-used.

3. 

   Sink freshly harvested flower stems in water (add flower preservative exactly as directed to avoid over-stimulating or starving your flowers) and cut them to stand about twice as tall as the vase or container you'll use to make your arrangement. Use a sharp knife or pair of floral scissors to avoid smashing the ends of the stems. Establish the "line" of your arrangement (horizontal, vertical, triangular, crescent, oval or free-form) with a few tall flowers or accent branches. Add your predominant flower in "mass" settings of odd numbers---they should look like they're growing as plants rather than being placed uniformly around the container. Finally, "fill" spaces with smaller or more insignificant flowers or foliage. Try to work from the outside of the container into the center in each step, saving your best specimens for accents. Let your flowers "rest" in a cool, shady place before moving them to their display location.

4. 

   A bunch of zinnias and marigolds gathered in a small vase makes a great table centerpiece for a summer picnic, but more formal occasions may require something more elegant. Formal arrangements always require more than one type of flower, often one for line, one for mass and one for filler. Use odd numbers of flowers in your formal composition but different shades of the same flower may be used. The most important ("focal") flowers in the composition should be placed above and within the edges of the container's diameter. If the design is asymmetrical (crescent or "S"-shaped), make sure that the focal flowers follow the shape of the curve.

5. 

   Don't stop arranging when summer ends. Use silk flowers for arrangements and wreaths. Harvest dried flowers for accents and for filler with silk flowers. Bind silk and dried flowers with wild grapevine to make wreaths and sprays to adorn your door to welcome each season.

Tips & Warnings

• Always cut flower stems under water to keep as many of the little channels (called capillaries) that carry food and water to the bloom open as possible.Cut them on a slant so that the opening of the capillary is as large as possible. Certain semi-woody-stemmed flowers, like hydrangea, clematis and poppies, contain chemicals that can foul the water. Cauterize the stems by dipping the ends in boiling water or holding over a candle flame for 10 seconds. Smash the ends of woody-stemmed flowers like lilacs to increase the intake of water. Some flowers, like gladiola, lilies and hemerocallis, will continue to bloom for a week or longer if old blooms are removed and water is kept absolutely fresh.

• Avoid those attractive galvanized flower buckets; plastic or glass are less reactive with tender stem ends and your flowers will last longer. Hard water contains minerals that clog the capillaries in flower stems. If you don't have soft water, use "drinking" or "nursery" water, sold in gallon jugs at groceries.

Resources

• Complete guide to flower design
• Floral decoration including holiday ideas
• Ikebana--minimalist classical Japanese flower arrangement