A Rustic Spring Floral Arrangement
WORDS:: Chyka Keebaugh
PHOTOS:: Lisa Atkinson
Everyone needs a floral arrangement in their home to welcome Spring, so head to your local florist, buy some of your favourite blooms and lets make your best floral arrangement.
I love the idea of mixing an assortment of spring flowers to say a big WELCOME to this gorgeous new season. People are often scared of breaking up bunches of flowers, but I am telling you now - don’t be scared! I am working with one group of each type of flower, and I am going to break them all apart and play around to get the vase how I'd like.
hen choosing my flowers, I have decided to stick to the same basic colour palette of purple tones as I love it freshness. Because we are using a glass vase, it's important to keep the water looking fresh so whether you use a freshening agent or sparkling water, keep changing it each day to stretch the lifespan of your bouquet. Also remember when using Kale to change the water daily as Kale is known to smell up the water.
Spring Flowers used are::
- Tulips, take outer leaves off
- Purple Kale
- Hyacinths
- Hellebores
- Scalia
- Lavender
Always cut your flower stems on the angle, this keeps them fresher longer, and we all want that! I am going to start off by placing the biggest and strongest flowers in the vase to create a strong base; then we can begin to fill with the assorted flowers. I always liked use one flower at a time, if you can’t fit them all in one vase leave them for a smaller vessel, but keep filling and spinning your vase to make sure your bouquet is balanced. Don’t be afraid to mix up the colours and textures because the look we are going for is a garden spring bouquet like you’ve just walked through the fields and picked them yourself!
When creating your arrangement, don’t feel as though you need to trim all stems at the same height, a little depth and height is great, the more rustic, the better. Cut some shorter and place them around the base of the bouquet. A spring bouquet is not complete without using some gorgeous lavender. I like to keep the lavender stems together (say two or three) as it keeps them standing taller, this way they won't get lost amongst the other flowers in the bouquet. When grouping, make sure you rid of the dead foliage around the lavender as it gets a bit smelly otherwise.
How to increase the life of your flowers::
- Buy tight buds so you have as many days as possible
- Remove all outer leaves and always cut stem on the angle
- Don't use flowers like daffodils and jonquils in this type of spring arrangement, the sap from these flowers can reduce the number of days they are alive for
- Tulips can keep growing in the case, recut so that they don't bend
- Always use cold water and change the water often!
- To keep the arrangement longer in winter ( not freezing cold weather! ) put outside at night time. They will be standing up straight again.
- Don't have the arrangement too close to heating or the sun.
- Hyacinths when cut release a sap so always cut the stalks under water and put straight in a vase with cold water. Allow them to sit for a couple of hours in this water before mixing other flowers in.
- Sometimes tulip heads can get a little heavy, you can use a bamboo skewer to hold the head up.
- If some flowers start to fade quicker than others in the arrangement - pull them out so they don't start to make the other flowers die faster.