Arrange Flowers in a Vase

Whether you’re trying to make a small vase floral arrangements near me or an expansive piece of flower wall art, the basic steps remain the same. With a few basic principles, you can make any flower arrangement look polished and pulled-together.

The first step is selecting a suitable vessel. It should be the right size to accommodate all of your blooms and allow for plenty of room between each one. It should also fit well on the surface where you plan to display it, so you can get a feel for how it will look when finished.

If you’re working with a tall, cylinder-shaped vase, consider starting with a greenery base. This will give your arrangement a solid foundation to build off of and help it stand out from the rest of the decor. Some of the best go-tos include eucalyptus, ivy and fern fronds. For a more textural base, try sea oats or seeded eucalyptus.

How to Arrange Flowers in a Vase

After establishing the greenery, it’s time to start adding your flowers. Gang likes to begin with a few “mass flowers,” or large, full-head blossoms that serve as the centerpiece of the arrangement. She might choose hydrangeas, roses or dahlias. She also adds in smaller flowers such as ranunculus or scabiosa, also known as pincushion flowers. These will help fill in any gaps and provide a nice complement to the focal flowers.

Then, she likes to incorporate a few “line flowers,” or stems with florets that continue along the length of the stem, such as delphiniums, larkspurs, gladioli or snapdragons. She suggests adding these in groups of three or five to create clustering, which mimics the way flowers grow in nature. Finally, she adds in other textural flowers and greenery to round out the overall shape of the arrangement.

For a round dome-shaped design, the flowers going in the central gap should be a little bit taller than those closer to the top of the vase. This helps to create the curved shape of the design and makes it more visually interesting. Finally, she likes to add in smaller accent flowers and greenery for additional texture.

When assembling a flower arrangement, don’t forget to criss-cross the stems. This will not only keep them from falling out of the vase but will also give the overall arrangement a more rounded, fuller appearance. It’s important to be careful not to overfill the vase, though, as too many flowers will weigh down the base and potentially cause the entire piece to fall apart.

If you have any trouble keeping the flowers in place, a little tip that works like magic is creating a grid of tape over the mouth of the vase and sticking the stems through the holes of the design. You can also purchase a floral frog ($7 at Michael’s), a type of vase insert with pins for stems to stick into, or simply use a strip of chicken wire bent into a square.