Level Up Your Floral Design： Mastering Foliage for Pro-Style Arrangements

Hello flower friends. Do you think that foliage is just unnecessary background filler? Think again. In today's video I'm going to show you why I love foliage and how you can use it like a pro in your designs. My name is Ellen Frost. I'm building a community of flower nerds online by sharing knowledge and creating connections. If you're a flower nerd like me, subscribe to my free weekly newsletter. The link is in the description. There are lots of pros to using foliage in your floral designs. The first one I want to talk about is creating a natural garden style design. If you are a gardener or you've seen flowers growing out in a park or in an arboretum, you know that flowers grow together with foliage. You don't see flowers growing without foliage with them. And so to create a very natural garden style design, you want to include some of those foliages in with your flowers. The next thing that foliage does in your design is creates lots of texture, it adds lots of color, and it can even add a lot of scent. So let's talk about texture first. So you can see in these foliages I have here, just by looking at them, their textures are all very different. The first one I want to show you is Dusty Miller. Dusty Miller is almost like velvet. It is the softest, most velvety foliage. That's the same or similar to Lambsear. This even has a name that describes how soft it is. So both of these foliages are very soft to the touch, and when you use them in a design, they're going to create a soft feeling. So these are perfect if you're trying to create a design that's very romantic or very lush feeling. You want to use something that has this kind of texture. There are other foliages that have completely opposite texture. So Rosemary, for instance, has a very spiky texture. The same with this very branchy Deutzia. You can see this is a woody stem and these textures are completely different. They're going to create a different feel in your design. So where before we were talking about a soft velvety foliage, this is more of a spiky, this feels more woodsy, woodland even, than that soft romantic look that you're going to get from a softer foliage. Another type of texture that you can get from foliage is a more whimsical, more airy kind of texture. So this is one of my favorite foliages. It's called Bupleurum, and you can see it has a much different look than the foliages we've talked about before. It has a lot of movement. It has a lot of airiness. It's a type of foliage that is going to create a lot of whimsy in your designs. Another type of texture that you can get when using foliage is what I would call a furry texture. So this is Scented Geranium. They are going to add a really unique look in your design. They also have a lot of, you can see all of this ribbing inside. So it's a foliage that when you put it in a design is actually going to make somebody look and sort of want to touch it because it does feel and look so unique. It's going to really add a lot of garden feel to your design. Geranium is a common foliage and people are going to recognize it, but because this one is so furry, I think it does add a lot of uniqueness to your design. In addition to texture, foliage can add a lot of color. And I know a lot of times people think of foliage as neutral, but they're not really neutral. They do add color to your design. So it is, you do have to be thoughtful when you're choosing foliage. It's not just in the background. You have to really be thoughtful about what color your flowers are and what color foliage is going to complement those. So for example, this is Solomon's Seal. This is one of my favorite, all-time favorite foliages. And you can see it's variegated with some sort of creamy yellow. So this is a warm green. It has some yellow undertones. So I'm going to choose this kind of foliage when I'm using warmer colors in my design. So more yellows, reds, oranges. This is really going to make those colors pop. When we're looking at the Lambsear or something like the Dusty Miller or even Eucalyptus, this has a much different color that it's going to bring to your designs. This is a cool green. It has some blue undertones, even some gray undertones. So this type of foliage that has this softer, grayer blue color undertone, I want to try to use that in designs that use cooler colors like blues, purples, even some other greens. This is going to be a more complementary color to cooler colors in your designs. One of the biggest benefits of using foliage in a design is that it can create what we call an armature or really a natural mechanic in your design. And a mechanic is just a tool that allows your flowers to stay in place. So sometimes you would use a chicken wire or a floral frog as a mechanic. For this type of vase, because the vase is pretty wide, I'm going to use foliage as my mechanic. So I'm going to create a structure with the foliage so that my flowers have a place to rest. The first foliage I'm using is just euonymus. This is one of the most common garden foliages. In the spring it's really bright green and I make sure to keep all of the leaves out of the vase. And I'm just going to put them in sort of in a cross, sort of crossing each other. That's what is going to create the armature or the mechanic. So after the euonymus I'm going to use a little bit of scented geranium. This is a little bit of a darker green but what that's going to do is first it's going to add some scent to my design, which I love. And it's also going to add a different texture because you can see it has really frilly, really frilly leaves. So I'm going to add a little bit of that. And again I'm putting them in at an angle so that I am creating that armature where my flowers are going to sit. You can also use the foliage to decide how tall or how wide you want your design to be. So in this case, you know, I'm thinking about double the height of the the vase. So my foliage is acting as sort of a guide for me of how tall I want this arrangement to be. So I'm also going to add a little bit of the Solomon's seal. Again this gives me a little bit of a different texture and because it's variegated it gives me some more color interest as well. So it has these creamy sort of almost light yellow stripes on them and that's going to add a lot of interest into my design. All right lastly I'm going to put in some of this bupleurum and like I said before the bupleurum adds a little bit of whimsy and a little bit of a different shape to my design. And I'm going to still put these in at an angle but I'm going to let them be a little bit taller. I'm also going to cut a couple so that they hang off of the side so that you can really feel that little airy droop. My arrangement could be done honestly. If I wanted to just have a foliage arrangement this is a very interesting, it's full of color, it's full of texture, it's full of scent but I am going to add some flowers. So I have created this structure to hold my flowers in place because I would not be able to just put these flowers in a wide open vase without any structure. These are starting with snapdragons. These are really skinny so what my foliage is going to do is hold these in place right where I want to place them. So I'm adding these bright pink snapdragons and they are really popping against this green. That's another one of the benefits of using foliage is that it allows your flowers to have a background to really pop. All right next I'm going to put in a little bit of this blue delphinium and I'm going to keep these a little bit taller but again this stem is skinny so without the foliage it would not have anywhere to be held. So the foliage is holding my delphinium in place and allow it to stand up almost straight in exactly the position I want it to. I'm taking these leaves off. I want to just point out that while I have a lot of foliage here I don't want to keep the foliage on these flowers because that's not their intended purpose. They don't add to the design so I am taking all of my leaves off and making sure that it's just my flowers that are being highlighted. Next I'm going to add some tulips and again you can see thin stem that would not be held up without some sort of structure and I'm going to just weave these in so they're going to be right in the exact place I want them to be. You can see too that we're starting to have that garden style feel. So what foliage does is helps create a design that feels like it was just picked from your garden. All right so I've got my orange tulips in. I'm going to put a few of these whites in. This is exotic emperor this white. It has a really unique shape. It's almost pointy. Then lastly I'm going to add some of these yellow poppies and the I really wanted to include the yellow because they do complement this yellow undertone in the Solomon's seal and in the bupleurum. You can see that the bupleurum has a tiny little yellow flower on it and the poppy is really mimicking that same color so they work great together and poppies again have a very thin stem. While they would be able to stand up in something like a bud vase they wouldn't be able to stand up here without structure. I can even use the foliage to prop up the head of my flower if I need to position it so that its head is upright. Poppies do sometimes have a downward facing habit. You can see this one has a little bit of a curve so I can use my foliage to prop that up. Again that's a benefit of having foliage in your design. So now that poppy has got its head propped up so that you can totally see it. When I finish an arrangement with this much foliage I want to just go back and double check to make sure that all of the edges like this little piece here looks a little too long for me so I might just do a little trim so that it feels more in line with the rest of the arrangement. Don't be afraid to do just a little trimming here and there if you need to. If you thought this video was helpful give it a like, subscribe to my channel, and be sure to subscribe to my free weekly flower newsletter.