"Floral Design Tutorial - Flowers from the Garden".

As promised, ~delicious decor~ has invited guest blogger Tina Riddell to write a post all about  creating a fabulous floral arrangement...

Hello Delicious Decor readers! I'm Tina from Living Fresh, a creative studio in downtown Kitchener that offers bespoke floral design, flower classes and interior decorating. We just love summer over here and we wanted to inspire you to enjoy some of the wonders your gardens may have to offer at this time of the year.

So we invite you to join us in the garden, with your secateurs in hand of course, to do a little flower snipping for an arrangement we will create for your home. Before I start snipping away I always wander through the garden to see what is in bloom. This gives me time to plan a colour scheme for the arrangement, what flowers I want to work with and how many to snip.

For today's floral arranging tutorial I selected the following flowers from my garden:

• Rose of Sharon - Hibiscus syriacus "Red Heart"
• Porcelain Berry Vine - Ampelopsis brevipedunculata "Elegans"
• Purple Coneflower - Echinacea purpurea
• Thai Basil - Ocimum basilicum "Horapha"
• Pink Bachelor Button - Centaurea cyanus
• Hosta foliage - Hosta "Undulata Albomarginata"
• Dusty Miller foliage - Senecio cineraria
• White Calla Lilly - Zantedeschia aethiopica
• Curly Willow - Salix matsudana
• Pink Hydrangea - Hydrangea arborescens "Invincibelle® Spirit"
• Karl Foerster Reed Grass - Calamagrostis x acutiflora "Karl Foerster"

The first things first: Before snipping flowers fill a bucket, vase or some kind of container with water. Carry this water vessel with you while wandering through your garden. This will keep things well hydrated so you can work with them right away or leave them for a few hours.

Fill your vase of choice with water. For this arrangement I used a round milk glass vase that is 6" high and 5" in diameter. Place a handful of rock in the bottom of the container. The rocks will help give the stems support and stop things from sliding around on you. If you prefer you can create a grid at the top of the vase with tape instead.

It is easiest to get the shape and size of the arrangement by placing your greenery in the vase first. Try to think of creating a triangle when arranging the greenery. You do not have to use all the greenery at this point, just enough so the shape starts to appear. You can add more greenery later.

Time to add the largest flowers. For this piece I added the hydrangea first, grouping three of the larger blooms together to create a focal area. Then I added one off to the right to balance the grouping. Once the hydrangeas were in place I added the Rose of Sharon. These were placed in a triangular form. See Step Four photo.

Once large flowers are in place it is time to fill in the open spaces around them with the smaller blooms and accents. Do not cut everything the same length, keep a few stems short to add depth to the arrangement but have other stems extend out of the centre giving the piece height and dimension.

Place some like blooms in groupings of 3 or 5, while others can be placed throughout. Don't forget to add a bit more greenery to fill in holes, I added the curly willow at the base to help balance the height of the coneflowers.

Here is the completed arrangement!



Big thanks to Claire for asking me to share a flower tutorial with you today! I hope I have inspired you to try floral arranging with flowers from your own garden!
                                                                                                                                         Tina Riddell

Cheers Tina!  What a beautiful arrangement, I only hope I can create one half as pretty as yours!  

I have been following Tina's blog for nearly a year now and I thoroughly enjoy reading her posts. Here are some of my favourites you might like to see too:

52 objects, number nineteen

Wedding Flowers, Romantic Garden

Wednesdays Flowers - Gladiolus Flowers