Peachy Keen

It's the middle of winter here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I needed some color in my life. So this arrangement is dedicated to spring and the hope that it will return soon.

The flowers I ended up using were some orange garden roses, orange ranunculus, peach stock, curly willow, and a touch of olive branch.

For my grid in this arrangement I wanted to use a trick that I learned from a flower shop I used to work at. Shout out to my former boss and mentor Jim at House of Flowers in Oshkosh, WI!!

All you have to do is bundle a few branches of curly willow so you have some nice loops at the base and some fun whimsical bits of willow branching up at the top. Then you take a zip tie to secure your bundle. Make sure that when your creating the bottom loops that they are an appropriate size for your container.

Once you have your grid in place you can fill up your container and start designing.

As you may or may not know I always like to start with my highest point in the design. It's so easy to cut too much off your stems and wind up with a stumpy design. To help prevent this I hold up my stem to the container so I know about where I need to cut to get the desired height. Remember, you can always trim your stem again if it's too long but you can't make it longer if you accidentally cut it too short.

While arranging my flowers I tried to keep in mind the V shape that I wanted to create. This style design is another very popular trend in the floral world right now. Its relatively easy to create but keep in mind that it doesn't have to be a perfect V. It's important to create some depth and dimension by varying the height of your stems within this style arrangement.

Once I created my V shape with the roses I moved on to adding in some peach stock. I only added in about five stems to help strengthen the shape and fill in a few gaps.

The last type of flower I added were my ranunculus. I tend to add these last because the stems are so delicate and I wanted to make sure I had a solid grid to support them. I took the ones that seemed to have the strongest stems and kept them longer and then used the remaining ranunculus to anchor the design.

In the end I took a step back and realized the arrangement was still missing something so I added in some olive branch to break it all up and add a little texture.

I used to start with my greens to create my grid but I recently realized that I was using this method as a crutch and as a result all of my designs ended up looking way too heavy with greenery.

One thing all aspiring designers should remember is not to be afraid to try other methods for arranging. Continue learning and continue to sharpen your skills.