How to Make a Beautiful Flower Arrangement

Part of the summer décor in our living room includes a vintage picnic basket display on an antique chest.

I made a summer flower arrangement using purple Chrysanthemums and Baby’s Breath to decorate the top of the picnic basket .I used my grandmother’s Ironstone lidded bowl as the container for the floral arrangement.

Supplies

To make a flower arrangement you will need:

• Flowers – Cut from your yard or purchased from a florist or grocery store
• Oasis
• Container
• Floral Pruners

I purchased two bunches of Chrysanthemums ($5 each) and two bunches of Baby’s Breath ($4 each) at Kroger to make my arrangement.

To make your flower arrangement last for the longest time possible, there are a few things to do once you have either purchased flowers or cut them from your flower garden.

For purchased flowers, give each stem a fresh cut. If you cut flowers from your yard to use, as you cut, put each stem in a bucket filled with water. Once you are back inside with the flowers, give each stem a second cut to make sure that the xylem is wide open so that water can be pumped through the stems to the flowers.

Fill a bucket with tepid water and place it in a cool spot that is out of direct sunlight. Let the flowers rest in this spot overnight. This will give the xylem plenty of time to pump lots of water to the flowers.

The next step is to cut floral Oasis to fit the container. I use an old steak knife for this step.

The oasis then needs to be saturated with water. You can do this by soaking it in a bucket of water or in your sink or by turning your faucet so that water is slowly coming out which allows the oasis to be slowly saturated.

I like to make my flower arrangements and also wreaths on an island workbench in our basement where I have plenty of room to work. For this arrangement, I started by cutting a purple Chrysanthemum flower with some stem attached and then pushed the stem into the oasis. I alternated stems of Chrysanthamum with stems of Baby's Breathe. I continued this pattern until was back to the original Chrysanthemum.

I continued to add rows of the flowers watching the placement of Baby’s Breath to make sure it had a pleasing pattern and wasn’t lined up in vertical rows.

Before I knew it, I was finished.