Freddie’s Top Tips for Arranging Flowers
We’ve compiled our tip tips for arranging flowers to help you get started and find your own style. From grouping your flowers, considering your vessel and colour palette, to the classic steps for arranging, read on to get the best framework for your creative flower displays.
Getting Started
Before you can even start arranging your flowers, you’ll have to consider how you want to display them, starting with the choice of your vessel. Whether you’re going for a classic glass vase, a shallow ceramic bowl for a flower frog, or little bud vases to dot throughout your house - each one is the first step in determining how to style your flowers. Luckily for you, we’ve already covered how to choose the right vase in our neat little guide here.
Your Flowers
Once you have selected your vessel, turn your attention to your flowers. Putting in your first blooms can feel a bit like staring at a dauntingly empty canvas, waiting for inspiration to strike. A good way to avoid feeling stuck on where to start is by grouping your flowers in categories first.
Focal Flowers
Big blooms and round, billowing shapes
Examples: roses, lilies, and chrysanthemums
Secondary Flowers
Flowers with multiple or smaller heads
Examples: Spray roses, alstroemeria, tulips, and carnations
Architectural Stems
Tall and striking stems that add height and drama to your arrangement
Examples: snapdragons, gladioli, and kangaroo paw
Filler Flowers
Fine, lacy textures and airy shapes; stems that can be woven and teased through
Examples: limonium, solidago, and aster
Foliage Stems
Lush greenery that add depth and texture to your arrangement
Examples: eucalyptus, ruscus, and any grasses
Categorising your flowers like that not only gives you an overview of the stems you have to play with, but it helps think about which purpose they are serving in your arrangement. Note that you may not have a stem for each category in your bunch, or some of your stems could qualify for multiple categories - these are guiding groups and by no means hard and fast rules, which means you can be playful in the roles you want to assign your stems.
Which flowers are best for arrangements?
Similarly, there are no hard rules on which flowers to use in your arrangements, and sometimes the most unexpected choices bring the most spectacular results. That said, there are certain factors that you may want to consider, such as:
Longevity & vase life
You want to choose flowers that are long-lasting when cut to make the most of your display. Sometimes, you may however have a favourite stem that has fleeting beauty, such as Peonies or Irises, in which case you want to showcase it front and centre and then switch up your arrangement with the remaining stems once it’s bloomed.
Arranging flowers that are still in bud, such as the picked-to-last stems in our Freddie’s boxes, not only adds to the longevity of your floral display, but also means you get to enjoy watching them open, unfurl, and bloom.
Seasonality & colour palette
Flowers are living things and each stem has its own preferred environment, such as climate and soil. This means, depending on where you live, what season it is, and who’s selling at your local flower market, you will have different stems to pick from. Each season brings its own star stems to play and experiment with, while some of your trusted favourites may be available year-round. In our arrangements, we like to use the seasonality as a guiding principle for picking the stems that go in each box throughout the year.
When it comes to colour palette, you can let your creative juices flow as there are unlimited options. Whether you’re looking for contrasting colour pops, or a harmonious gradient, the choice is all yours. Green foliage will always add a nice backdrop to let your flowering stems shine. If you’re going for a look in one shade, make sure to pick different blooms and textures to add visual interest.
At Freddie’s, our floristry team gets creative in the flower studio picking the best of the season and curating a different arrangement each week, playing with colour, texture, and unexpected stem pairings. Here are some recent examples to give you some inspo for your colour palettes:
You may also want to consider where you’re planning to place your arrangement when it’s finished and think about the colours in that space to give you some direction on the stems you want to choose.
The right prep
Alight, you’ve got your vase and you’ve got your stems, grouped, in front of you. Before you start arranging, the most vital step is the right preparation.
Food & water
Fill up your vase to about two-thirds with water and pop in some flower food. In our boxes, we provide our Freddie’s flower food, made to nourish your blooms, keep your water clean, and thereby extend the vase life of your stems.
Trim
Give all your stems a sharp, angled cut to trim off the ends. This helps increase the surface area for your flowers to absorb water and prevents them from sitting flat at the bottom of your vase, restricting the water flow. To trim, you can use secateurs for most stems. Some more fragile flowers, like Amaryllis, will require a sharp cut with a knife, so they don’t get squashed.
When you’re beginning to arrange, you may want to cut some stems shorter to play with different heights. We recommend giving them all a short snip at the start and adjusting their height as you’re fleshing out your display.
In order to make the most of your arrangement, don’t forget to change the water, refill the flower food, and re-cut the stems every few days to keep your flowers happy and thriving.
Arranging Steps
If you’re arranging from our boxes, you’re in luck as each one comes with a beautifully illustrated guide tailored to the stems you’ll find in your delivery. Additionally, for each arrangement, Freddie offers his personal styling insights in “One Box, Three Ways” - offering tips on arranging in a classic vase, a flower frog, and bud vases.
These steps give you a framework to make your stems look their very best, but of course, you can always come up with a creation of your own! The power is in your hands. However, if you’re just starting out and want to build up slowly to let your creative spark fly, here’s a few key steps to give you direction.
Foundation & foliage
The best starting point for any arrangement is creating a foundation that provides structure. Usually that means placing stems around the edge of your vase to provide support for other stems, or crossing over stems in the middle to create what we call a “stem grid” at Freddie’s for later flowers to sit in.
In most cases, you want to start with your foliage, as those stems will provide good structure or a sort of nest. Or, if you’re arranging in a way that’s front-facing, they’ll create a nice, green backdrop against which your blooms can shine.
Hero Stems
The next step is placing your key focal flowers in different positions, where they can truly pop. Play with the placement - either turning your vase as you go to make sure it’s balanced from all sides if you’re creating a table centrepiece, for instance, or working out different levels and heights if you’re arranging to the front for a vase that sits on top of a mantelpiece, for example.
Balance here truly is the key, whether that’s the size of the flowers you’re choosing, the height in which you’re placing them, or the colours you’re putting together.
Filler
Your filler flowers are perfect for exactly what their name suggests: filling in visible gaps in your arrangements. Their lacy texture makes them perfect to add to open spots and weave their branches through your other flowers.
Final Flourish
A final flourish can be whatever your heart desires. It may be dotting around smaller flowers here and there or adding another striking architectural stem - there is room for whatever you have to play with.
Remember too that you don’t have to use all the stems you have for one vessel, you don’t want to overcrowd or unbalance. You can always grab a few stems to dot around the house in bud vases, or create an interesting flower frog arrangement that only showcases a few chosen, spectacular stems.
The above steps are really just here to give you some direction on how to create a good basis for you to grow from. Explore, play around, find your own style - that’s what it’s truly about. And don’t worry, nothing is permanent. If you’ve made an arrangement you’re not happy with, you can take the stems out and start again - nothing is fixed or set in stone, that’s the beauty of it. If you’re worried you’ve cut your stems too short, simply pop them into some bud vases or a cut-down vase and dot them throughout your home. Each arrangement will grow and change just as your style and experience will.
FAQ
What does 'conditioning flowers' mean?
Conditioning flowers refers to the steps we outlined to prep your arrangements, i,e, stripping the foliage and any thorns from the stems that will sit below water, cutting the ends, and placing them in water to re-hydrate.
Why is my vase water smelling?
The vase water may smell due to a build-up of bacteria. To prevent this, you need to make sure to change the water regularly and use flower food to aid keeping water clean. Keep in mind that some flowers release more into the water causing it to smell, like allium for instance, so they will need more regular attention.
Why are my tulips drooping?
Sometimes, these flowers will take up too much water into their heads and become heavy. It is also due their natural lifespan and movement as they grow in the vase to move downwards as they reach their peak.
