Fresh Flowers for the Home
The power of flowers is very special, they are used to celebrate love, birth, growth, life and so much more. This is why I love being a florist, the feeling of brightening someone’s day with something grown by our wonderful earth is my favourite thing. Flowers can speak a million words.
Nature in your Home
Nature is such a beautiful thing and we are very lucky in New Zealand to be surrounded by so much of it. Bringing nature into your home can bring life into a room, generating happiness and lifting moods and that’s a fact.
Creating your Flower Framework
When arranging a bouquet or arrangement there are some fundamental ingredients to consider in your creation that will help you to make something effortlessly beautiful. Structural foliage, foliage establishes the framework and forms shape, you’re likely to have some in your garden. Supporting ingredients mimic the existing framework and create and nest for our next ingredients. Supporting flowers, once creating your base, add supporting flowers which should be flowers that come with many heads (spray flowers) these will infuse colour into the arrangement and complement the other ingredients. Focal flowers are the featured blooms that are highlighted by all of the other ingredients they are typically larger. Lastly you can add airy accents that add magic to an arrangement and can take it to the next level.
Bud Vases
Something to consider when bringing life into the home is to use bud vases. When you see flowers on mass it’s easy to overlook their individuality. Using a bud vase we focus on that one flower and its beauty. Placing bud vases around the home can be a simple and effective way to appreciate and enjoy the power of blooms.
My tips bring flowers home and caring for flowers:
- Remove lower Leaves from stems: Foliage remaining on the stem will quickly decay once it’s submerged in water. The bacteria created during the decaying process can build up and prevent the stem ends from taking up water.
- Keep your flowers in a cool spot, away from fruit: Flowers last longer when kept away from heat, bright light, and ripening fruit and vegetables, which emit ethylene gas that can shorten vase life.
- Cut on a 45-degree angle and straight into water, Give flowers a big drink before arranging if you leave them in a cool place for 1 to 3 hours to take in water can bring blooms to perky condition and make them more wilt-prone.
- Always use clean buckets and vases: Thoroughly clean vessels with hot soapy water prior to putting flowers into them. Make them clean enough that you would be happy to drink from them. Dirt and bacteria can quickly clog flower stems, and will significantly shorten their vase life.
- Flower life varies dramatically from flower to flower: Fleeting blooms bear no ill-will; learn to appreciate this as part of their charm. Enjoy their beauty.
Hope this inspires and helps you to get into the garden or pop into a florist to explore the joy of nature.
