Foam-Free Dahlia Arrangement
Dahlias are the big Vegas showgirls of summer, saying "look at me!" Combine them with an assortment of your other favorite seasonal blooms, including some wonderful foraged items, and you have a showstopper! In this Flower School How-To Video Leanne creates a stunning foam-free design with dahlias, cosmos, dusty miller and more that's sure to garner applause. Enjoy!
Video Transcription
Summer flowers, the absolute favorite. Designing foam-free and eco-choice. Foraging for your favorite vines makes it even more fun. Let me show you how it's done.
The mechanics, a simple taped grid, so I've done cross-hatching across, but before I did that, I tucked in aspidistra leaves. To get them to curl just take off that backbone, give it a cut, and then set it down inside. Then tape across, and then you're ready to add fresh water pre-mixed with flower food.
You can start by adding a small bit of foliage, maybe some Dusty Miller, cutting it down, and then weaving it in and repeating, maybe a little bit of ruscus, and then for fun, going to the late summer garden Wisteria vine. So fabulous. Oftentimes the leaves don't hold as well. Go ahead and remove those because what you're looking for is just this beautiful grace of the vine. Sometimes you divide it and then you can set it in and actually weave it through your tape, just feeding it underneath and pulling it back out, letting it drape, and then repeating, bit more foliage and quite a bit more vine.
When you work with dahlias, there are so many different ones that are fabulous and at the same time that dahlias reach their peak, chrysanthemums are fabulous and they give you a nice base. If you want to get little bit of substance at the very bottom, going in first with a few chrysanthemums and tucking them very low to draw the eye in, and then coming back with the beautiful dahlias over the top. Little color creates wonderful depth in the arrangement.
With the body of the design done, it's time to add fun. Maybe a little bit of Veronica, adding a line to the design, getting some contrast in form, repeating, bringing in cosmos for a very light touch over the top, letting them soar a little bit taller. And then a tiny bit of statice to add some softness and bring in that lovely purple.
The recipe, I started with that base that had three Aspidistra Leaves, one bunch of Dusty Miller and 10 stems of Israeli Ruscus. Then I wove in the Wisteria Vine, about seven branches of that. It just kind of goes wild, so whatever you can harvest. Then flower wise we started with the Chrysanthemums, I used seven stems, and then went to the Dahlias. Seven assorted dahlias, seven of the Veronica, five of the Statice, and then 10 of the Cosmos.
The exuberance of the summer garden. What could be better than the late summer flowers? You'll find so much more creative inspiration on the website, flowerschool.com. If you have questions, you can reach us through there. Now it's your turn. Go out, gather the fabulous flowers. Do a bit of foraging and create. Be sure to take a picture, post it on social media and #FloralDesignInstitute. That way we all can see what you do as you do something you love.
