Spring Whites & Pastels

Video Transcription

The spring whites and pastels makes a beautiful arrangement. Especially coming off the dark days of winter, it's exactly what you need to brighten your days, foam free, fabulous. Let me show you how it's done.

We have so many fabulous flowers to design with. Everything today came from our friends at Florabundance.com. We've got a variety of spring flowers, beautiful white lilacs, white tweedia, scabiosa, both buds and blooms, beautiful heather, then one of my favorites the hellebores, sweet peas a garden rose from Gardenrosesdirect.com, Bessie. So it's in the white family, but leans over a little peachier. Then larkspur for a tad bit of height, and of course, a beautiful blue hydrangea. The container, it's an Oasis EcoEssentials, filled with Floral Netting, put in place with Waterproof Tape, then filled with fresh water that's premixed with flower food. For the foliage, some beautiful deflexus. It's long and drapey, giving it a cut, and then just weaving that into the netting, getting it nice and secure, and then wrapping around, taking the other end, and tucking it back into the netting so that it gives you that full coverage. Then repeating that, one more stem, winding it around, and then tucking it in, using the wire to hold everything in place. Then lastly, taking the hydrangea, giving it a very tight cut. It's going to be like a cloud that hides the mechanics, dipping it in alum, and then sliding that right down in, and then repeat with the second.

To finish filling out the sides, coming in with the hellebores, letting it drape and flow, extending it just a little bit more, repeating, making sure it gets deeply into the wire so it will be secure, bringing some over to the opposite side, and then thinking about the heavier blossoms first. Delicate will end up going across the top. So going to the Bessie Garden Roses, depending on the quality of the foliage, you can leave it or take it off. This is absolutely gorgeous, so I'm going to go ahead and just leave it on, weaving it in, getting that soft peach, bit of the light green. The blushy white with blue gives it so much contrast, repeating, then thinking about adding a little bit of movement upward. The heather can come up, finding a perfect spot for it. And the larkspur will give us a tad bit of height as well. You can divide the buds if you'd like. Give it a cut, place it, and then come back taller with the buds. But place them beside each other so it looks like it's still all one stem.

As you're ready to finish with the extra blooms, I always say one tall, one left over, because I may want to add that at the end to get a little more height. A lot of it is a judgment call. What makes you happy? Some people like it to be all a little more flowing, some like a little more movement upward. You get to decide. But first, I go back and add some nice movement to the sides, the lilacs coming out, this second one, and then the tweedia, so graceful. Maybe you let it come up a little bit by the larkspur, adding some movement in the sweet peas. We could come out to the opposite side, again, adding length to the arrangement, and repeating. Then the scabiosa, letting it come up a little bit taller. Their heads are so graceful, and they just dance over the top, finding a little spot that they can just lean. And gracefully draw the eye upward, filling in again, and then repeat that with a few more stems. And then when you have everything where you wanted, go back and think about it, look at it and decide, do you want even more height?

The recipe, everything from our friends at Florabundance.com. I started with the base. It had two blue Hydrangea, and then two stems of Deflexus. Then I moved on to the flowers. The Bessie Garden Rose, so full and luxurious, six stems. The Hellebores, I used three large stems that I cut apart, because sometimes they have laterals and I spread it around. The Scabiosa, I used three blooms, and then about a half a dozen of the buds to bring in that soft pink. The Lilacs, they're so tiny that I actually use nine stems of lilac. In season with the purples, they're so big you couldn't fit nine in here. But now with the delicate white, they're so grand. The white Tweedia, five stems, Sweet Peas, seven stems, Larkspur, six stems, and then the Heather was three stems, broken apart using the laterals individually.

This type of an arrangement, mixing and matching with all the whites and pastels has so much opportunity. You know that I said you could go shorter or taller? You could see I went a little taller. You could also go wider. You could mix different flowers. It's really all up to you. You'll find more creative inspiration on the website, flowerschool.com. If you have questions, you can reach us through there. But now it's your turn. Find all your favorite blossoms, as many varieties as you can find, and create a beautiful design. 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.