How to Arrange Flowers - the Thought Behind the Blooms

There is one thing I am super passionate about and its sharing my knowledge and my love of flowers, so over the next few weeks I’m going to be running a series of in depth floral principals I always think about before I grab my stems. If you want to up your floristry game, you’re definitely going to want to tune in each Wednesday to get my pro tips.

When you are arranging flowers there is a certain floral harmony that hits that visual sweet spot and today I’m going to let you in on the secret! It’s all about balance. I’m not about to lay down a whole pile of floristry rules, because lets face it, rules and nature don’t feel like they go hand in hand. But there are a few rules you should be thinking about that will elevate your floral game. I’ve cherry picked the best to share with you over the next few weeks.

This week we’re kicking off with an overview of the 4 shape principals that I always think about when I’m choosing flowers and creating any type of arrangement. Nearly every stem can be sorted into one of these 4 headings, and when you start to think about arranging with flowers, knowing what shapes you are using will make it so much easier to get that display looking all sorts of beautiful.

When I started my floristry career thinking about flowers in this very mechanical way felt so odd – I almost felt like I was trying to make beauty very rigid, but believe me when I say, once you start looking at flowers this way it will amaze you what you start to notice. Before you know it you’ll be categorizing them without even a thought .

FOCAL FLOWERS

When you are creating floral arrangements you need to use focal flowers to give the eye something to look at and encourage it to explore all the other textures in your arrangement. The focal flower to me, are the show offs - they are shouting look at me the loudest. Without them, your arrangement will feel bitty, with nothing to hold all the other flowers and foliage together.
Generally the focal flower is more costly per stem, has one flower head per stem and is the largest item.

FILLER FLOWERS

Filler flowers are so important to creating a loose country garden design, and there are so many to choose from! When you look at flowers the shapes will tell you whether it is a filler, focal or line flower. Filler flowers generally have lots of heads per stem, with smaller delicate flowers . They fill in the gaps between the larger bigger focal flowers and provide all that gorgeous texture which I love so much.

LINE FLOWERS

If you want to get some height into your arrangement and stop it from feeling all a bit round, then your line flowers are about to save the day. These are the taller flowers with multiple heads on long stems. You don’t need many of these in your arrangement, but a few will give it a loose airy country garden feel.

FOLIAGE

You want to think of greenery as the foundation to your whole arrangement. It provides the scaffolding for your flowers, giving them the support to stand tall on their own as well as providing the finishing touches, filling in any gaps and most importantly giving the air of nature! Without greenery, you loose the shape of the individual flowers. I tend to use at least 4 different varieties of greenery within my arrangements to give them that natural feel.