Saturday, Jul. 11, 2009

Tips: A beautiful bouquet on a budget

Make a beautiful bouquet on a budget

By Neil Wertheimer

fresh HOME

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Want to make beautiful floral arrangements but not sure how? Let the flowers do the work for you! The editors of Fresh Home magazine -- the new magazine for people who want to improve and personalize their homes on a budget -- offer these smart tips on creating lovely, inexpensive flower bouquets.

Gather far and wide: Check grocery stores, farmer's markets and your own backyard, both for flowers and greenery.

Snip and bathe: You probably know to snip stems diagonally as soon as you get them home. But also do this trick, if time allows: Plunge the entire stem in water, just to below the flower, for a half-day soak. Once in the vase, add a little soda pop (not diet soda) to the water. Slightly acidic water makes its way up the cut stem to the flower faster than neutral water, and the sugar in the soft drink helps feed it. Add one drop of bleach to the mixture to kill any potential bacterial growth.

Think outside the crystal vase: Mason jars, old teapots, wine bottles can all house bouquets; be as creative with the container as you are with its contents.

Build your bouquet in order: First, add fluffy flowers like baby's breath, Sweet Williams and asters. Add enough to create an airy nest above the vase opening. Next, add straight stems, using the first batch of flowers as support. Next, fill in with textured greenery -- think ferns, ivy, tree and shrub branches, and ornamental grasses. When finished adding, stick your spread-out fingers into the arrangement and lift flowers up a bit to make the bouquet less stiff. The height of the flowers above the vase should be about equal to the height of the vase itself.

Be odd: That is, use odd numbers of straight-stemmed flowers. For some reason, the eye is more comfortable looking at groupings of three or five rather than two, four or six.