Tutorial: Styling With Fresh + Dried Flowers

Styling with Spray Roses, Chrysanthemums, Heather, and Snapdragons

It’s flower time, and this week's Botany Bundle has a sweet pastel mix of pink commercial mums, lavender spray roses, snapdragons, heather, and palm leaves. We're going to mix the ingredients of this week's Botany Bundle and style these stems with dried elements. Consider creating a mixed arrangement of dried and preserved flowers that you could add fresh flowers to weekly.

Flower Profiles

Lavender Spray Roses
These blooms are perfect or as a complimentary flower. Spray roses generally have the same physical characteristics as traditional roses, but they are smaller in size and have multiple blooms per stem. The lavender rose is often a sign of enchantment and love at first sight. Those who have been enraptured by feelings of love and adoration have used lavender roses to express their romantic feelings and intentions.

Pink Chrysanthemums
The beautiful chrysanthemum hold various meanings across different time periods and cultures, both positive and negative. Victorians used chrysanthemums to show friendship and well-wishing. Buddhists use the chrysanthemum as offerings due to their powerful Yang energy. In China, the chrysanthemum is traditionally offered to the elderly as they symbolize long life as well as good luck in the home. In Australia, chrysanthemums are the official flower for Mother’s Day due to their nickname “mums.”

Heather
The heather flower is an evergreen flowering shrub with hundreds of bell shaped flowers up and down it’s spike like stems. Originally from Europe and some parts of Asia, this is an ancient flower with most associations closely held in Scotland but also grows wild in Mexico. Heather is found under the l genus calluna under the ericaceae family. This dainty filler flower represents admiration, beauty and good luck, and it can also be associated with solitude and protection.

Snapdragons
Also known as "Dragon Flowers" because of its resemblance to the face of a dragon that opens and closes its mouth when laterally squeezed. They are native to rocky areas of Europe, the United States, and North Africa. Legend has it that concealing a Snapdragon makes a person appear fascinating and cordial, and in the Language of Flowers, Snapdragons are said to represent both deception (perhaps tied to the notion of concealment) and graciousness.

Here’s what you’ll need:

2x stems of Spray Roses
2x stems of large Chrysanthemums
2x stems of Heather
2x stems of Snapdragons
2x stems mixed Foliage
Various dried grasses, dried tropical leaves, etc.
1x clean glass or ceramic vase
string
sharp scissors or flower shears

Instructions

Fill your clean vase with water and set aside. Lay your first pieces of greenery down as the base. Next group and lay your taller fresh and dried stems, making sure to angle each bundle in different directions.

Next, group and angle the medium length fresh and dried stems.

Group and angle the shorter length fresh and dried stems. Making sure each set of flowers have their own space. Finish by placing your last piece of greenery on top, at the base of your bunch of stacked flowers.

Hold your bunch firmly and tie a string at the base. Make sure to not bind to tightly or the stems will stand too upright and close together. Trim all the stems in an even cut and place the bunch in your vase. Make sure there are no leaves touching or emerged under water.

Tip: When stacking flowers, make sure to cross the stems back and forth and that each set of flowers have their own space to shine!

You're done - Enjoy!