Festive Autumn Vase

Video Transcription 

Welcome to the flower School .com video library. I'm Leanne Kessler, director of the Floral Design Institute, and today we're here to look at a festive autumn vase of flowers. We're all celebrating a holiday to come, and this autumn season so let's get started.

 With our second pandemic Thanksgiving and the reality of supply chain disruption, we're going old school and diverse. The color harmony? A full triadic palette so it gives us so many options. The mechanics? A simple vessel filled with water that's premixed with flower food. The base? Simply greens. Of course, each of them has been stripped down to have nice bare stems to work with, removing any damage, getting rid of that so that you just have beautiful foliage to work with. Then for binding? Going old school. Raffia, because you never know what mechanics are going to be available to you. 

I start by creating a nest of woven foliage that will support all my flowers. So, I'm working with salal and some red huckleberry. Giving a little different look, I just gather it all in my hand, pulling it together, turning and adjusting. At this point, it's just making sure that you keep a central binding point, that none of the foliage is below your hand, and that you don't hold it too tight. So, it just weaves together, giving you a nice full nest that you'll work with. And you can see, I cleaned it off on the bottom, so it's just bare stems and it's full and lush on the top. Watching as I work, making sure that I turn it and get varieties of foliage spread out so that it does have balance. Thinking about the form, I want it to be all the way around. Doesn't have to be a perfect circle, but it doesn't need to be lopsided. You want to just kind of watch as you go. Then once you have it all gathered in your hand, give it one last twist, looking for any bare spots. Then using your raffia, tie it right where you're holding. Knot it off, then cut the stems and drop it in the vase.

 When you're working with a triadic color scheme, you want to pick one color to be the primary focus. In this, I've chosen the orange with marigolds, pincushion protea and Crème Brûlée roses. By focusing on one color, that triadic doesn't get too busy, doesn't get fussy. It makes it work. Just weaving that down into the nest that you created. Thinking about radiating out through the central binding point. With the marigolds, if you remove all the foliage, then you won't have that fragrance that sometimes we'll find distracting. You'll find more tips like that in our Tulip Tuesday videos. 

With the base established, with the vibrant orange, coming back in with the rest of the triad, the green and the violet. The green trick dianthus, lush and full, adding in that deep green, lisianthus, the vibrant violet. Dividing it down, letting some come up a little taller. And then the aconitum, a little bit lighter, but still that violet hue, giving it a cut and extending in the design. 

The recipe for this round arrangement? Relatively easy. I started with an entire bunch of salal tips. Yes, I used the entire bunch. Then I added three stems of red huckleberry. For the flowers, nine of the Crème Brûlée roses, five marigolds, five lisianthus, five green trick carnations, and five of the miniature hydrangeas. You can see, focusing on the orange and then accenting with purple, and green gives you a vibrant, celebration, holiday arrangement. 

As we transition from autumn to winter and resume gathering with friends, it is different. You're gathering maybe just two or three people. The big, big gatherings, maybe not quite as common. But flowers? Still so important. And the vibrant, the happy, the celebratory? Necessary. You'll find more creative inspiration on our website, Flower School .com. If you have questions, you can register there or pick up the telephone and give us a call at (503)-223-8089. 

Now it's your turn. What are you going to create for your celebration? Be sure to take a picture, post it on social media and hashtag Flower Design Institute. That way, we all can see what you do as you do something you love.