A Florist’s Guide to Arranging Flowers at Home | Botany Florist (2024)

Creating floral arrangements at home is a wonderful and often therapeutic way to infuse your living spaces with colour while enjoying the process of creating an arrangement reflective of your space and personality.

Environmentally conscious, we are dedicated to using sustainable floristry practices, in as many aspects of our business as we can. From sourcing locally grown and using flowers when they are in season, to eliminating plastics and floral foam from our arrangements, our commitment to environmentally friendly approaches ensures that the beauty of the arrangements goes hand in hand with a sense of responsibility towards the planet.If you feel you need something to stabilise your flowers as you arrange, consider using flexible twigs balled up in your container or a kenzan as an alternative instead of floral foam. In a pinch, you can also make something similar to a kenzan, using a ball of chicken wire at the bottom of your vessel to provide better stability.

Being strategic about your vessel choice can also help. If you’re new to creating floral arrangements, it’s a good idea to use a vase with a smaller neck to start with, like a tulip, teardrop or concave vase. This way your flowers and stems are easily supported and stay upright, and you won’t need a lot of flowers to make for a beautiful display.

To start your floral arranging journey, you’ll need the right tools and materials. Take inspiration from our approach and say no to items such as floral foam and unnecessary single-use plastics, which harm the environment. It’s possible and easy to create a gorgeous arrangement without them.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how.

Tools we recommend for flower arranging at home

You’ll need the right tools and techniques for the job. Items such as garden shears or secateurs and a reusable vase, your focal flowers as well as filler flowers or smaller flowers and a bit of greenery. Again, local green foliage is best.We can’t get enough of Toyama Hamono secateurs for their longevity and quality. It’s what we use in-house.

Choosing your vase.

Consider the size of the vase in terms of the size of the arrangement. You want your flowers to complement the container without overwhelming it. Smaller, delicate flowers can get lost in a giant, heavy vase. Conversely, large weighty flowers like sunflowers can topple over a small vase.

While you’re prepping, get inspired by some of Botany’s vintage vases including glass and clay vases, candle holders, kenzans, and so much more.

Choosing flower colours.

Flowers inject colour into any space. Choosing the right flowers, especially the right colours is a major part of arranging, but not always easy to do.

Consider using only locally-grown and seasonal flowers over out-of-season, overseas-grown and flown-in flowers. Doing so has a huge range of environmental benefits as well as supporting local growers. Read more about the benefits of using local, seasonal flowers and which flowers are in season throughout the year.

Our #1 tip is to choose similar colours. Monochromatic colour schemes are a beautiful way of showcasing different hues of the same colour. Alternatively, try choosing colours that complement each other like orange, yellow and peach, or dark pink, light pink and burgundy. This is the easiest way to choose colours and guarantees that they will work together harmoniously.

Seek out flowers that vary in texture, colour, shape and size to add visual interest and balance. Using an odd number of each type of flower helps to prevent visual lines or squares from forming in your arrangement.

Prepare your flowers.

Once you have your flowers, don’t let your excitement take over. To ensure the longest lifespan of your blooms, it’s important to prep them before arranging them. First, remove extra leaves, unwanted buds or damaged petals from stems. There should be no leaves sitting below the water line. When the stems are cleaned up, make a diagonal cut at the bottom of the stems and put them into water to keep them fresh until you’re ready to arrange them.

Creating shape and a base for your floral arrangement

Create a base for your flowers by using greenery. Native foliage looks amazing and is an eco-friendlier option. In your vase, place your greenery in an inverted triangle shape to create a background of sorts for your flowers.

Placing your flower stems in a criss-cross is best for arranging them into vases, as it creates a stable base quickly that will help to hold the flower stems in place. You might also need to recut your stems to create varying heights between the blooms. Your larger flowers are usually your visual focal points within the arrangement. So having them distanced apart and at varying heights offers a more balanced arrangement.

From there, your smaller filler flowers are used to balance out the space in-between. Spread these out between the focal flowers and don’t just clump them around the sides or in big clusters between the bigger blooms.

For bouquets, we use a technique called spiralling stems which creates a better shape and makes adjusting individual stems easier.

To spiral a hand bouquet takes a bit of practice. Essentially, begin with a single stem of your feature flower and hold it in your non-dominant hand. This will be your centre flower and all additional flowers will sit around it.

Slowly add in each flower or piece of greenery. Using your index finger and thumb secure each stem into place, adding the new stem at roughly a 45-degree angle so it lies next to the previous stem at the same angle, creating a spiral of stems at the point where they are bound together.

Turn your bouquet after every few stems. To do this, take your non-dominant hand and grip stems below where your dominant hand is holding the bouquet. Turn the bouquet and replace your dominant hand back where it was – roughly half-way down the stems.

How to get a longer lifespan from your flowers.

When you choose locally sourced flowers, you’ll typically get a longer lifespan, as the blooms won’t have travelled so far. Fresh water changes go a long way to keeping them looking great. Likewise, naturally-dried flowers will offer a significantly longer lifespan and need no maintenance at all.

For more tips and inspiration.

Following these basic, yet important components, will lay the foundation for your floral creations.Want more ideas? Head to our journal or explore Botany’s range of ready-to-go eco-friendly arrangements, and a wide variety of giftware or get in touch to find the perfect collection of loose dried flowers to arrange yourself.

You can be confident that when you purchase through Botany, you’re choosing an ethically driven and sustainable florist.