How To Arrange Mixed Flowers In A Vase

Hello and welcome to Flower Juice. My name's John McDonald, and today we're going to follow up on a request we had. One of our subscribers got in touch and said, could you do a vase of flowers? Now I know that this is a very popular item over in the United States. It's not so popular here, so probably actually I'm not an expert, but I'm going to show you a vase arrangement with just mixed flowers that we tend to do quite regularly. So we've got quite a nice medium-sized vase, and you can use any style. And really, there's different ways that you can do this. You could create a hand tie, and then instead of tying it off, you could just drop it into your vase. That's one way of doing it. Or you can really just create a little bit of structure with some greenery and then feed your flowers through. So that's what we're going to do today. So to start off, I've got some lovely salal. And salal really does work very well because you've got this structure already. So we're just cutting it, and really just straight away, I've got a bit of structure. The good thing with the salal is it's quite long-lasting, and it's quite sturdy. And it doesn't matter if there's the odd leaf that's not great, because really this is going to be within the bouquet or within the vase. So this is really our structure. I then want to use some eucalyptus. And what I'm really keeping an eye out for is that we don't really have plant material going below the water line, which isn't so good. And again, this eucalyptus is perfect because it's got structure. So the more of this that we put in or the more structure that we put in at this stage, the easier it's going to be to support our flowers. So I'm really looking to create a vase that's got a good volume of water, but the recipient's not going to have to really think about this. They're going to be able to just place it and enjoy it. So straight away, we've created a bit of a framework with our foliage. Now you could add different types of foliage. We've really just got the two here, but I want to add a little bit of pipericum. I don't know if I would call this a foliage, but it's got the berries, which gives us a bit of texture and adds a bit more interest. So I'm really looking for a gap in our structure that I can put that in. And if you're working in this kind of way, what I would suggest is you, like a hand tie, you either work in threes or you do things opposite so that you get a nice balanced effect. So our main flower for the centre is going to be this beautiful white oriental lily. And this is just a perfect point in its development, really. Now, depending, you can take the pollen off or you can leave the pollen on. The choice is yours. Depends where it's going. If it's at this stage, then you're not going to get pollen marks on you. Personally, I like leaving them on. If it was in my house, I would leave them on because I really like the fact that they create a focal point in the flower. But if you're going to give it to a customer and you want to be on the safe side, you're probably better just to remove them. So I'm adding some Solidago or goldenrod. And again, this is just taking some colour into our arrangement. And I also have some beautiful snapdragons. So I'm really just removing any leaves that I think are going to go down and get into the water and become a problem. So I put that in. So really, this is going to be our highest point. And then we're going to have our other flowers coming from that. So just by using that placement is going to make it look balanced. So when I'm saying you can use like threes, you don't have to stick rigidly to three. You could use three or five. But if it's very clearly a number with like two, then it tends to look a little bit odd. So I'm going to add just a few of these lovely green carnations, which I think is just a beautiful colour to go with our lemons and our whites. And we can actually bring these down a little bit as well, just to bring the colour lower down into the vase. So you could really make this if you got some flowers from a supermarket as a base and then get into the garden and get some nice foliage and really just create something that's got much more interest. Now, I wouldn't throw these away. I would keep all these little bits for another arrangement. And to finish off, I've got some beautiful roses, some white roses, and this is a large head white rose. So really now I'm looking for where there's gaps that need another flower. And again, I want to put these in in a kind of balanced way. So we can have one up, we can have one down. We can kind of work our way around like that. So we're really just looking for the flowers to be spaced throughout the vase and for it to look good from every angle or from every side. And if you've got one that's maybe more of a bud, you could go more into the middle and sit that in with your lily. And just to finish, I've got some lovely crassvidia, which I love because they're just fun. And we can just pop them in to add a little bit of fun. And really it's as simple as that. Now, the one thing that I would do is we've used a lot of different materials and sometimes materials can be a little bit dirty. So what I would do is I would give it a little bit of a wash off and get a vase with clean water with flower food and transfer that over. Already you can see that there are some pieces there. So this spoils the look of the vase. But now it's in nice clean water, it's looking fresh and this is just ideal to go into home for people to enjoy. You could also gift wrap that or you could put it in a box to protect it for delivery as well. So thank you for watching. I hope you've enjoyed today's video. If you'd like to subscribe to keep up to date with all our videos, then click here and see you soon.