Part of the joy of growing your own flowers, is getting to arrange with them! Whether you are a farmer florist, a hobbyist, or just like playing with flowers, I want to help you with some tips when it comes to arranging with the seasons. Have you ever looked at a bouquet and wanted to know what flowers were in it? Or the ideas behind the color palette and placement? If so, you might find my Bouquet Breakdown blog series helpful!
I have to start off by saying 99% of my bouquets are made using the spiral method. Spiraling gives me the most flexibility when designing and makes my bouquets light. I also have small hands and can hold all my bouquets with one hand using this method. I truly think this is the best method to designing bouquets. There's so many tutorials out there on how to do it if you haven't tried it before. I highly recommend giving it a go!
Autumn Inspiration
Fall color palettes can be a little more exciting than burgundys and oranges with deep saturation.
This bouquets kept to warm hues and used very deep saturated colors sparingly. It has a lot of color with out being over colorful or too vibrant.
Color Palette
CORAL
GOLD/BRONZE
BURGUNDY
CREAM
BLUE-GREEN
YELLOW
Color Scheme
Analogous
Season
Autumn
Flowers Availability is Late August to First Frost
The Elements
*clockwise*
Cornel Bronze Dahlia
Cafe Au Lait Dahlia
Sahara Rudbeckia
Queen Lime Orange & Red Zinnias
Pampas Plume Celosia
Hot Biscuits Amaranth
Not pictured is my foliage of Silver Dollar and Mahogany Splendor Hibiscus
The Breakdown
Let's break this bouquet down. So, I usually don't like putting one of something so contrasting in my bouquets. But I only had one Cafe Au Lait dahlia and they always seem to demand being the center of attention. While I ideally would've liked to use more stems of them to round out the bouquet, I placed my light flowers around it so that it wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. The celosia with colors of cream, green, and a hint of gold did a really good job at this. The lighter colors of rudbeckia brought out the yellow colors of the celosia and played nicely with the creamy colors of the Cafe Au Lait dahlia. By mixing in golden amaranth through out the bouquet, they gave it a foundation that wasn't just greenery and added to the overall autumnal warm feeling I was going for.
Clustering the dark cherry rudbeckias together helped to give the smaller flowers more of an impact and avoided the look of dark spots polka dotting throughout the design. Since there was so much variety among the rudbeckia, it was able to use them a good blender flower. Blending colors and flowers from deep red, to rust, to a lighter golden orange in the zinnia.
If you look at the design, you'll see that it is darker in the bottom left corner and lightest is the top right. I usually like to cluster my flowers and my colors. I think it helps your eye move through the piece looking for the next little grouping. When things are so spread out or placed so evenly on all sides, all you have to do is look at it from far away once to see everything. By creating little "moments" here and there, the arrangement is much more interesting, making your eye move throughout the design. Clustering, I think, can also help to show of flowers by creating a large impact.
You'll also notice that I try to tuck my dark flowers closer to the center of bouquet and have the light colors stand out. This is because naturally, dark colors recede and lighter colors come forward. Keep this in mind when layering flowers. Lighter color flowers, on average, will look better sticking up out the of the bouquet than a dark flowers. This is just in general and not a hard and fast rule. But making layers and having flowers be at different heights will really add depth and interest to your designs. Experiment with the height of flowers! Remember, you can always make something shorter. But it's MUCH harder to make something longer.
A final note, I don't usually use a lot of greenery, because honestly I just don't grow a lot. I think greenery can also be a crutch used to just stuff a bouquet so it looks fuller. Something that is smaller but more unique and interesting is better than an over stuffed but plain bouquet. In this design, the greenery helped to extend the lines of my bouquet and therefore helped in preventing a tight design. The greenery served as a structural element, sometimes dangling away from the main portion of the design to stand out. I love the way the hibiscus is dangling in the photo above. Varieties were also chosen for their color. The blue-green eucalyptus stems stand out and add contrast to the warm orange tones.
If you just grow for fun, look at what you have and just get creative. Try layering and clustering flowers for a unique and interesting design.
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