How to make a flower arrangement at home

A homemade bouquet looks homemade for two specific and very fixable reasons: the stems cross in every direction and all the flowers are the same height. One technique and one rule fix it.

What you need

• Pruning shears or a very sharp knife. Don't use paper scissors: they crush the stem and close off its vessels.
• A vase or a base with floral foam.
• Flowers in three categories, which is the key to the design.

The three categories

1. Focal flower (30%). The star, the largest one: roses, lilies, sunflowers, hydrangeas. Use three, five or seven: an odd number reads better.
2. Secondary flower (40%). Medium-sized filler with presence: carnations, alstroemeria, small gerberas, lisianthus.
3. Texture and foliage (30%). What keeps it from looking like a bunch: eucalyptus, ruscus, baby's breath, statice, fern.

This is the proportion people get wrong most often at home: they buy only large flowers, and the result is crammed and airless.

The spiral technique

It is what makes the difference between a bouquet and a bunch:

1. Clean the stems: remove all the leaves from the lower half.
2. Start with one focal flower in your hand, held between your thumb and index finger.
3. Add each following stem diagonally, always in the same direction, crossing it in front of the previous one.
4. Turn the bouquet slightly after each stem, always the same way.
5. All the stems end up forming a spiral. The bouquet stands on its own on the table and opens into a dome.

It feels counterintuitive at first, and by the tenth stem it clicks. It is literally the technique taught on the first day of any floristry course.

The proportion rule

The floral part should be roughly one and a half to two times the height of the vase. Taller looks unbalanced; shorter looks squat. It is the rule that fixes most homemade arrangements in a single adjustment.

The height trick

Don't cut all the stems the same. Leave three different heights: that creates depth, and it is what visually separates a professional arrangement from a flat one. A bouquet where everything ends on the same horizontal line looks like a hedge.

If you use floral foam

1. Let it float on its own in water until it sinks under its own weight. Don't push it down: if you force it, dry air pockets stay inside and the flowers in that area droop.
2. Cut it to the size of the base, sticking out a couple of centimeters (about an inch).
3. Insert the foliage first to build the outline, then the focal flowers, and fill in last.
4. Add water every two days.

To make it last

Always cut at an angle and under water, remove submerged leaves and change the water every two days. The full details are in how long flowers last.