How to Make an Flower Arrangement with Locally Grown Flowers

In today's video I'm going to take apart this very loose and organic arrangement that has been designed in wire netting and I'm going to place it in floral foam just like the modern style of arrangements that are currently being used on top of plinths or pedestals for modern style weddings. Keep watching if you want to see how I can recreate a completely different design. So welcome back, I've taken all of the flowers out of that previous arrangement and I'm now just left with the chicken wire and the base and I'm going to replace that with some floral foam so let's get rid of that to start with. Now when arranging in floral foam there's a possibility that I'm going to need to add extra flowers but I've basically collected by my side here all of the fresh flowers that I took out of the arrangement. Now there's a trend at the moment for flower arrangements for weddings where there is no container and it looks like they're sitting flat onto a plinth, well they are sitting flat on a plinth and we're seeing them outside churches, either side of top tables. I think it's a trend that's come from America but it's a style of arranging that doesn't have a great deal of foliage in it unless you're using those tropical flowers like stralizias, anthuriums, birds of paradise, that type of thing. If you're using this country style of flowers then there is very little foliage used and often when you're using less foliage you have to use more flowers to be able to cover your floral foam. So my first tip for this style of arranging is to minimise the amount of floral foam that you're going to use because the bigger the piece of foam the more flowers you're going to need and the design might lose the shape of the style that we're trying to create. Now if you've been arranging for a long time you're going to recognise this container here, this is what we affectionately call a top hat although I did pause because it's square and are top hats square? No I don't think so but this is a base that is used quite a lot in a pedestal stand so if you've got a square pedestal stand that sits in quite nicely on top. This wouldn't be my first choice of container for this arrangement because it's got quite a lot of depth in it. The ideal container for this design is something completely flat that is just going to hold the foam and stop the water spilling over the edge. It's not like an arrangement where we've had nice urns and nice ceramic containers and something attractive to look at. There's no visible base at all and what I find is really good to use is either a dinner plate and you quite often get black or white square dinner plates in the lower end budget shops and they work fantastically well for this. I didn't have one to show you but it's this type of style but square rather than rectangle and this incidentally is a sandwich or serving platter. This was only £1.50. I'll probably talk about this in another video but that's great for mezzo styles and parallel arrangements and it's quite inconspicuous because obviously there's nothing vulgar to look at. So a square version of one of those is ideal for this type of arrangement. It doesn't work quite so well with a long one so square or circular is the name of the game. So two tips, flat container, the smallest amount of foam that you can use and the design is front facing. It can be done to be viewed from both sides but this is going to be a front facing design and I'm going to start by creating some height and the tallest flower I had in that previous arrangement was the lovely, my mind has gone completely blank but I do have a so I'm going to blame the cold. What is that called? It's poisonous, it's a foxglove. Oh we got there in the end. So I'm not going to do that very traditional style of place it smack bang in the middle of my floral foam. I'm going to put it off to one side and I'm going to follow the curve so rather than this curve pointing you over there I'm going to angle it this way so the curve is more pointing to the ceiling and what that is going to do is it's going to open up some space in the arrangement and it's going to stop me creating a triangle because if we put it in the middle we're instinctively going to get that triangular shape and I've placed it about two thirds of the way back in the foam and because the little pennycress is cut short I'm going to go in with that next because that's going to help cover my foam and you can use the pennycress in two different ways it curves naturally and in a traditional arrangement we would probably face it down but you could if you wanted to bring it upwards so we get a completely different style with it and I don't want to cut too much off the bottom of these because I want to make I want to be able to use them at the same length so you can really see the difference in the two different styles so what I'm doing now is in grouping it together rather than more randomly spreading it out in the arrangement although if you've watched some of the videos you might realize that random isn't as random as we think it is so I'm going to come in on the opposite side so the color is slightly balanced but we've got a bigger more dominant part on this side here and then before I go on any further I'm going to use these shorter pieces that we used in that previous arrangement really really close to the foam because I don't have greenery so I don't have anything to cover that foam and starting doing this now right at the very beginning is going to be much better than doing it at the end now this one was in the arrangement to give me some height and all I did then was cut off a few of the side shoots because I know that I'm going to be really desperate to cover this floral foam and the easiest way to do this would be to use a big hydrangea but I haven't got any hydrangeas today and if your bride didn't want hydrangeas then this would be a nice alternative and even though we're going to see the design mainly from the front because it's a front facing arrangement I'm going to cover whoop I snapped that then I'm going to cover the back of the foam as well because the vicar might see the back or the photographer and there's nothing worse than a photographer taking a photo from the back of the church and the florist hasn't covered her foam and you can see it all in the wedding photos you see it all the time so those shorter little bits I've cut down low and I've just realized that I haven't left myself any tall pieces apart from this one here so never mind oh I've got a spare one in the bucket behind right I also had a couple of short pieces of the olea so that can get placed in on the bottom as well just to really help cover the foam at the bottom now the difficulty I have in this style I love it but you're using a lot of flowers at the base to cover your foam so I'm not really sure where this trend came from or where it started but it seems to be everywhere at the moment right so that is the front but it's just as nice from the back if anybody's looking at it from the back you could if you wanted to cut down short the alliums to cover the foam as well you could use moss but I don't think moss is is really in keeping with the more modern style moss for me is quite organic and quite natural and then what I'm going to do in almost in the opposite corner is I'm going to do this cluster of alliums and I'm just sort of seeing which one is the taller now that is the taller one what I don't want to do is put it in the middle and because I can't get enough height difference between them this is going to have to come more over here and it's going to have to go shorter because I need to get that stepped effect between them I don't want to have them so that they're all on the same level so I'm going to bring this right out to the side and we've got that three five eighths group in between this set of placements here and then before I overfill I'm going to add in the two white peonies now if you watched the previous video when I did the design as a more organic style I mentioned that the peonies aren't as fresh as they normally are when I do videos because I've been off with a sore throat and I haven't been able to film so they're a little bit more open than maybe I would like them to have been but they're going to work just as well so if we think of this as an arrangement we've got this really clear gap in the middle there's no centre line like a traditional flower arrangement and you're looking at the front at the moment I had to pause then to think about it you're looking at the back you're looking at the front I'm looking at the back and then I have these lovely snap dragons so I'm going to group these together again in a separate group where the colour is blocked the flower colour and that texture is really exaggerated because they're grouped together and we're looking to have the turn of the stem or the turn of the top of the stem facing upwards not pointing away from the arrangement this one is actually quite tall so I'm going to place this in nice and high and I think it's optional at this stage whether you're going to leave the greenery on or not the greenery for me is lovely and fresh in this arrangement so I'm going to leave it on and before I go any further I'm going to fill in this bit here and this bit here because I can clearly see the floral foam and it's going to be really hard for me to hide that as I go along and the best flower for that and it is my favourite flower when I'm a bit disappointed I've got to cut it short but I'm going to get some short pieces in now you could use jip you'll see that in a lot of this sort of style and you will see very large open roses used at the base as well and that breaks my heart when there's a beautiful rose really flat down at the bottom so I think the main structure is in there don't stress too much if you think there's a big hole in the middle because it's meant to be and now the spray rose that I had or the garden rose that I had is going to work really nicely in this gap here and I've got to feed it through the center of those flowers that I've used to base the bottom I find it very hard to put these flowers in first and then fit all your flowers in the middle but if that style suits you you can do the longer flowers first and then fill in the gap after I find that really difficult to do and I am removing the greenery from this one which is different to the first arrangement I did which was meant to be more organic and more natural and these are going to really shoot out over the side it's like all the flowers have exploded out of the middle it's less contained we're not looking for an outline shape and we're not looking to create anything that's triangular like a pedestal I'm not particularly liking this group here because from the front it looks like it's too much in the middle of the arrangement so I'm almost going to move it and echo what I have with that fox glove over there and that the gap in the middle is more clearer so one of the important factors with this style of arranging it's similar to form linear is that you don't have you don't fill that middle part so I'm much more pleased with that now that works much better for me and then this bigger piece of the sweet william can just come out to one side and I'm really clearly leaving that empty in the middle and now I'm going to add the more whimsical softer flower so the structure is in that base structure is in but by adding those more whimsical free-flowing flowers we're going to change the dynamics slightly it's going to go from quite structured to a little bit more playful but I'm going to use all the material grouped together to create some lovely groupings and clusters of flowers but we're aiming let's just get all that one type of flower together in my hands so so this one is hesperus this is going to be the next material that I'm going to place in and I'm going to try and see if I can match the colors so there are three different colors really with the hesperus a darker purple a slightly mid purple in fact we got four a white and a lilac shade and this is now going to change the arrangement and make it look really pretty really soft and sort of quite delicate the hesperus has been out of water for maybe 10 or 15 minutes while I've been preparing to refilm so it has flopped a little bit but it will perk up once it's back in the foam so it's starting to slightly lose those more dominant groups that we had in the beginning but we've still got that more modern look because the material is grouped together and I've pretty much covered the floral foam there's a little bit in the middle which you probably can't see on the camera but I need a bit of space at the top just to keep adding some more flowers it's important with this style of arranging that you position your flowers at different angles tilt some forward some to the side some to the back don't have it mirrored on both sides otherwise you'll end up with a design that doesn't quite work so right at the back now we're going to have a cluster of the nigella again I'm going to try and work with the same color in the same group so we've got this really simple shade of white all clustered together and if I didn't mention in the previous video don't forget that if you save the seed heads from these flowers you'll be able to grow your own next year they're quite simple to grow although I'm very good at growing seeds I can get seeds to grow really well but then I seem to lose them between germination and planting them in the garden but you know I do try every year so this is the back of the arrangement remember by angling material back you're adding actual weight because we don't want it to tip off that pedestal base and it also gives the design that three dimensional look so don't face everything forward angle everything in different positions now I can normally tell if a video is going well because if I look in the analytics people are still watching at the halfway mark if this is a design that you really don't like and you don't understand let me know why and let me know what you don't like about it is it because it looks quite messy and untidy especially if you've been arranging really traditionally then you might not understand this concept and then we're left with your layer I think I'm going to have to add in some extra flowers because we've got quite a gap in the center but you can just compare the two designs and see how they've worked so I mentioned in the beginning two important factors and that's to have a flat container and a small amount of foam the other one would be to remove all the foliage on the flowers so you get that nice clean and simple lines I have left them on with a snap dragon because I think the snap dragon looks a little bit naked when it doesn't have any greenery the fourth factor that is important is you don't have a center line you don't arrange flowers in the middle and your materials should be grouped together for impact you can mix the groupings together which is what I've done here with your layer and the rose and there should be a heavy weighted amount of flowers at the base whether it's carnations grouped together it can be chrysanthemums it could be a hydrangea or it can be a large open rose if your budget allows now I was thinking that I was going to add some extra flowers to the middle but I think if I do that I'm going to make it too traditional and because it's asymmetrical and the height is slightly taller on this side I'm just going to add in another of the snap dragon over here it's a quite a dominant color and I don't have any of it over this side but I'm only going to add one piece in so we've got a linking color but we don't have a definite repetition now if you haven't watched this previous video you might not realize that all of the flowers that I've got here in the arrangement are locally grown they've all come from my local flower farm and they are an exceptionally good quality I was hoping to film this about two days ago and my throat has been really sore so I haven't been able to film I'm just going to remove that and put it a little bit higher um so apart from the peonies and it is really warm and they've been stuck in the studio for about three days with not a great deal of ventilation but all the flowers are such a good quality they are amazing to work with and I love this time of the year when I can order a bucket of flowers and I can arrive at work not knowing what I've been supplied with and then I can be as creative as I want now I've just got a couple of grasses to put in I'm just going to lift that up because I think you might be losing the bottom part of the arrangement I'll give you a better picture so in a perfect world when this is displayed you can't see the container at all so I probably would have benefited from having a couple of bigger flowers right at the base maybe a couple more of the peonies to cover the bottom um but I wanted you to be able to compare the two different styles I'm going to finish off with these really lovely little pieces of grass and what we need to be careful of with this style of arranging is that we don't point everything out towards the edge oh I'm having difficulty getting this one in we don't point everything out like like sticks pointing away they need to curve back really elegantly back towards the arrangement this one is pointing in the opposite direction but this brings your eye backwards into the arrangement rather than send you over to something of less importance so I've just got three of these lovely little quaking grasses to place in there's an obvious gap in the middle which you might not like as a traditional arranger you might be thinking Sharon you've got a great big hole there in the middle but this is the style and it can be quite tricky to arrange in this style and not put a flower in the middle so I've got one piece of the sweet William left which is just going to camera it towards the middle there and it'll help draw your eye in I don't like that it's too tall I don't know whether you'll see it in the camera it's this one here when we look from overhead I want to cut it lower you need that flat plane in the middle and then everything elevated up around it so I love this style it takes a little bit of getting used to but I really do like it so that's a very loose and organic quite a trending style it's very fashionable at the moment I hope you've liked it my fifth key point for this arrangement is to not pick flowers that are sprays go for individual flowers a single flower on a single stem it's okay to have a really statement flower like the olea but things like small headed spray carnations lisianthus don't work particularly well things like freesias really don't work at all because they get lost go for a bigger flower head and something that makes more of a statement and then you get this nice dramatic effect so I haven't followed the traditional one third two thirds rule for this arrangement I've looked at using the three five eighth rule which I've introduced to you in several different videos if you've got any questions just put them in the comment box don't forget to subscribe because that's really important and I look forward to seeing you in the next video very soon bye for now