Garden Inspired Romance — Liaisons De Fleurs

Let's be honest, the whole "Red Roses say I love you" has gotten a little old. I'm not saying that red roses aren't beautiful, some varieties are down right breathtaking, but they have become the somewhat expected and almost thoughtless/effortless go to present.

Every time an anniversary comes and yes every Valentine's day the long stem dozen red rose vase arrangement is the first thing to come to mind to most of our customers probably because its symbolism has become so obvious it automatically seems screaming "I Love You".....

But there is more, more gorgeous flowers to be discovered, perhaps a more personal way to get those three words out there,and even a way of taking something expected into the unexpected.

Last year some of my customers came up with some pretty amazing ideas to make their arrangements even more personal.

1- Recreate her bridal Bouquet into a valentine's day arrangement...This Is super popular this year for anniversaries as well.

2- Have one of your favorite photo printed on a vase and bring that vase into the shop to get it filled to add a touch of everlasting magic to the arrangement.

3- Gift the experience of flowers by adding a Floral Design class voucher to your flower order.

I know the options may seem endless when it comes to flowers so I thought I would dedicate the next few posts to narrowing down these possibilities by showing you a few alternatives.

In this Blog entry we are going to focus on the Romantic and garden inspired and ever popular compote vase designs .

These arrangements are lush and elegant and draw inspiration from European gardens and are very textural and somewhat free flowing. I like these designs in both pastel tones and deeper jewel tones so I included an example of both here today.

The first design I chose was created in a vintage milk white compote container and I focused on peach and light pink tones....ranunculus are coming back into season and I was at the trade center in Carlsbad and fell in love with the peach ones I found at a local grower.

I then found a rose that I really liked and never came across before called "Trust", I liked the delicate frills of its petals and the delicate warmth in the color, it seemed effect paired with the ranunculus.

I wanted to create extra layers of color to the design so I picked up some Lisianthus which is butter color with peach hints , I also picked up a few pale pink peonies, Tiffany roses and some light coral spray roses that resembled the color of the darker ranunculus and some blush anemones.

One thing I believe is the most important part of floral arranging is never to skimp on greens and fillers. They are the foundation of your design, they are responsible for the shape of the arrangement, a big part of the texture and of course the color depth.

In this case I splurged and picked up some:

Scented Geraniums, Gunny Eucalyptus, Willow Eucalyptus, Gardenia Greens , Bertzilia Berries and my favorite, Dusty Miller.

Here is the final product, like all of our arrangements it is available in three different sizes, we show the "Standard" size here.. but there's nothing standard about this design.

Here is a similar style arrangement that played with the contrast of peach and burgundy and deep fuchsia but still maintain a delicate and luxurious presentation, played with lots of textures and depth of tones.

For this elegant design we chose a golden mercury compote container to add a touch of warmth to the palette.

The greens are Italian Ruscus that gave the cascade, gunny eucalyptus to add the muted grayish tone, boxwood to fully cover the mechanics of the design.

My focus flowers were Cafe au' lait dahlias and the deep toned "Tess" garden Roses and the elegant and classy deep burgundy mini calla lilies . We added an extra textural fun element with the red bertzilia berries and filled in the design with Quicksand roses and a combination of pale peach and deep burgundy spray roses.