How to Select and Extend the Life of Your Floral Bouquet

Natural flowers are the best way to bring the outside in and the only thing that can give you gorgeous blooms and wonderful fragrance. The longer you can get your bouquet to last the better and picking the right bouquet can really set the mood for a room or dress up a table. The following are some tips for choosing a bouquet, making arrangements, and prolonging the life of your bouquet.

The most interesting bouquets are those with flowers in a variety of sizes and color. I like to look for brilliant color blooms especially blooms in contrasting color to make the bouquets more interesting. Try pairing up some large bright colored dahlias that are huge and very fragrant with some elegant tulips or cala lillies in a muted version of the same color. In the fall I like to pair large blooms like chrysanthemums and asters with spiky salvia blooms which add height to a bouquet.

Choosing a container to display your bouquet is just as important as choosing the flowers you want in it. The container you choose can make a bouquet look awkward or really make it pop. If you are going to be making a bouquet from garden flowers choose a container that is either a wide ceramic or enamel, glass vases do not work best with these bouquets becuase garden flowers tend to be more bushy than long stems. If you have a compact bouquet of flowers like tulips try going with a vase that is geometrically shaped like a rectangle or a squareso that it reinforces the impact and continues the lines of the flowers. Rose and bouquets with round flowers look best when in graceful curved vases with narrow necks

Now for making sure your blooms last as long as they possibly can. Whenever I pick up fresh cut flowers from the market I always ask for one of those little water tubes so that at no time will my flowers have to be out of water, As soon as you get home place your qouquet into water whether it just be a half filled sink , a bucket or the first vase you can find. Once you have the container you will ultimately be using you can arrange your flowers starting with the height ofeach one. I like to begin with the larget flowers and work down in size from there. To give your bouquet a full look cut down the long stems so that the flowers hit right above the lip of your vase. Always cut the stems gradually because you can always make them shorter but once the length is gone you cannot get it back. When cutting the stems of your flowers cut them at an angle so that it allows for more surface area available for water intake. Even if your bouquet is the perfect length be sure to trim the stems. Fill your vase halfway with lukewarm water so you do not shock the flowers. For flowers that are more bushy or to give roses a cleaner look I like to strip the stems of all leaves. If you forgot to grab some plant food or pulled the flowers out of your own garden feed your flowers a mixture of a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of bleach to every gallon of water. Also be sure to change the water in the vase and recut the stems every couple of days.

Some more tips from the pros. For bouquets of roses intertwine the stems and work from the outside in. Add to the showiness of tulip and hyacinth blooms by twisting the stems of the bouquet together and secure the stemswith a tie. When they are cut down to length and displayed in a glass bowl they look really neat both above and below the lip of the vase. Some flowers such as poppies last longer when the stems areseared, simply hold a match to the ends of the stems for a couple of seconds.