The Art of Floral Arranging, Garden-Style

Sustainable Mechanics

“Floral foam is to contemporary floristry what asbestos is to home building— dated and dangerous”

Once upon a time, the Martha Stewart ‘roundy-moundy’ arrangement was all the rage. The very deliberate, hyper-vigilant style was thanks, in large part, to floral foam (aka Oasis). Every possible angle was achievable, and the design was under perfect command from start to finish. It was also stiff, fussy & formal.

Today, we find a certain romance in looser lines. There’s a femininity to a design that reaches, or spills, or curves  There’s a movement and naturalness apparent in the best of today’s arrangements that recalls the garden itself. For this reason, many call it “garden-style” arranging. For me, it’s simply an aesthetic of seasonality.

Useful Tools:

• Chicken wire

• Pin frogs (metal or glass)

• Floral putty

• Natural armature (made from bendable sticks & twigs)

• Foral wire

• Snips

• Waterproof floral tape

• Turntable

Flower Shapes & Texture

Generally speaking, we want to use a mix of flower shapes. This will lend the feeling of texture & depth to an arrangement. There are lots of ways to quantify shape, but my favorite categories are:

-focal (ex: lisianthus, rose, dahlia, sunflower, ranunculus, anemone, or specialty such as      sweetpea when positioned right)

-airy (ex: laceflower, nigella, orlaya, buplueurm, grasses)

-spike (ex: stock, snaps, larkspur, delphinium)

-supporting (ex: statice, feverfew, calendula, amaranthus)

-foliage (including vines & branches)

Movement & Gesture

Because I approach design as a gardener first, I am always looking for a “dancer”- maybe a branch that can reach diagonally out of the vase and create negative space in its wake- or a flower that has curved around its neighbor in the garden as it reached for the sun and is sure to create beautiful movement in the vase.

We always want to find flowers or foliage to engage the eye and gesture to the viewer. Garden flowers do this best of all- as they haven’t been genetically modified to play nice in the greenhouse. They aren’t ‘good little soldiers’- straight & strong.  Garden flowers still evoke the feeling of life- and with it a certain unruliness.  This translates beautifully in the vase.

Cohesion

While gesture is a ‘dancer’ having her turn in the spotlight, cohesion makes sure all the dancers (ie flowers) are on the same stage. Without cohesion we have visual cacophony.  One of the most direct ways to achieve cohesion is through the thoughtful use of color. The correct use of color ensures all the flowers will talk with one another. A helpful tool? The color wheel!

Complementary colors creates harmony. In additional to arranging with complementary colors, we can also arrange according to:

Analogous colors- those on either side of a chosen color on the color wheel (basically any quarter segment of the wheel).

Monochromatic colors- choosing one special focal flower, and finding all supporting ingredients in the same hue.

Form & Proportion

• Vase to flowers: this is an easy proportion to visualize. The rule of thumb is to aim for a flower height that is two-thirds higher than your vessel. This loosely follows the proportions of the Golden Ratio- da Vinci’s 16th century theory on divine proportion, expressed mathematically as 1:1.618.

• Number: Aim to work in odd numbers. Nature rarely presents herself in a matching set.  Working with 3, 5 or 7 of a certain flower mimics the spontaneity found in nature.

• Line: create movement for the viewer’s eye through arranging flowers in a slightly (or severely) draping line. This is best used with a compote vessel.

• Shape:

• Asymmetry: if your arrangement reaches high on the left, try letting it trail on the right. This will create drama, movement and balance.

• Negative Space: alternatively, you can create a place for the eye to rest in the center of an arrangement using negative space. To do this, think of an upside-down scalene triangle (3 unequal sides)- with the longest side across the top of the arrangement. The form will have two peaks of slightly unequal height on either side of the arrangement- usually achieved with a focal flower- with a drop in center and the low placement of a third focal here. This area between the peak is called negative space.