Every week when I go to the market to buy groceries, I browse through the flower bouquet section to see if my favorite seasonal flowers are in stock. For spring, I like to look for tulips, daffodils, and lilacs. During the early summer months, I look for peonies, ranunculus, poppies, hydrangeas, and garden roses. There’s so many to choose from for every season! Buying flowers at a grocery store and then arranging them is a cost-effective way to get beautiful floral arrangements. It’s so nice to have fresh flowers at home, and it’s one of the few things in life that brings so much joy. Read on to find out how to arrange a stunning floral centerpiece for your home with grocery store flowers.
Materials:
I love making grocery store flower bouquets. Before I learned a few simple flower-arranging tips, though, I used to buy pre-made bouquets from grocery stores, trim the ends, and dunk them into a vase as is. It looked decent and there’s nothing wrong with doing that, of course! But learning how to arrange flowers properly helped make a simple flower arrangement look like a professionally made bouquet.
Buying a beautiful floral arrangement usually costs an arm and a leg. You can make a beautiful bouquet of your own with a fraction of that cost with flowers from a grocery store! Follow the step-by-step tutorial below to learn the tips and tricks.
Make Your Own Grocery Store Flower Bouquet
When you’re buying flowers for a bouquet, consider a color scheme that you want to design around and look for a variety of shapes and textures.
There are four basic categories to look for when making a bouquet. First choose larger blooms that will be focal points (like hydrangeas, roses, peonies, zinnias, tulips etc.). Second, line flowers (like goldenrod, calla lilies, or other flowers that form a strong visual line) or accent flowers (spray roses, carnations, eryngium, etc.). Third, get filler flowers (like chamomile, wax flower, or baby’s breath). Fourth and finally, choose greenery or foliage for your bouquet.
Choosing a vase for your arrangement is too-often overlooked. Whether you want something colorful or subdued, putting some thought into your vessel will elevate your bouquet. I put together a list of some of my current favorite vases here, or DIY a paper mâché or recycled egg carton vase with these tutorials!
Instructions
- Prepare all your flowers and foliage by trimming off the ends with a sharp, clean knife or some clean flower pruners. Take all the leaves off the bottom of the stems. You don’t want leaves to sit in the water, because then they’ll rot!
- Your flowers should have come with a little packet of flower food. Pour this, along with some water, into a vase.
- First place your foliage in the vase. Think about the ways that foliage can frame flowers or provide a more neutral backdrop for them. I’m arranging with willow eucalyptus, which has long, elegant leaves, so I’m also considering how they drape. Hold a few branches back to add in at the end.
- Next place your line flowers or accent flowers. I used spray roses here.
- Arrange the focal flowers in the vase. The stems from your foliage and accent flowers will form a sort of lattice that makes it easier to get your focal flowers right where you want them.
- When you arrange your focal flowers, think about how tall you want them and what direction you want them to face. If they’re too long, trim the stems a little bit at a time, because you can all ways take away more stem but you can’t make them grow taller!
- Arrange your fill flowers around the focal and line/accent flowers.
- Add in any foliage you held back.
- Place your bouquet somewhere in your home that you’ll see it often so that you really enjoy it! To keep it fresh for as long as possible, pick the flowers up and trim an inch off the stems every few days. When you do this, make sure there’s plenty of water and it’s clean.
Arranging flowers is a skill that comes in handy all the time, especially if you love having fresh flowers around as much as I do! I would love to see your bouquets at #LarsFlowerMonth
