People love flowers

There’s an old saying: ‘flowers love people’. Actually, though, it’s the other way around. Perhaps without even realizing it themselves, people have a deep affection for flowers. Why is this true, and how can we make good use of this bit of information?

No wonder they’re so appreciated

We usually associate flowers with beauty, but they have a lot more going for them than that. Flowers make us happy; having flowers around unconsciously gives us a more positive impression of others, and flowers lift our spirits and make us feel more relaxed. There’s simply something about flowers that actually makes us feel good. It’s no wonder people love them! So why wait? Get busy with flowers yourself. You’ll enjoy it and feel better at the same time!

Selecting your flowers

How do you start to make your own bouquet? First, visit a good florist where you can buy individual flowers. Choose three or four kinds of flowers that you think are absolutely gorgeous or incredibly special. Flowers may be good for you, but they also have to please the eye. Don’t be afraid that their colors might clash. Unusual combinations are often the prettiest. Summer flowers like dahlias, lilies, gladioli and calla lilies are perfectly suitable for a bouquet with the effect of wild flowers.

Getting started

Once you have your flowers back home is when the fun part starts. Your little rays of sunshine are going to make a splendid bouquet. First of all, use a clean knife to trim the stems at an angle. From each stem, remove any leaves that might fall below the surface of the water in your vase. Your flowers are now ready to bind into a bouquet or simply insert individually in a vase.

Binding together

A fairly simple way of binding flowers yourself is known as the overlapping method.

• Lay the flowers out in front of you.
• Pick up a flower in one hand and then transfer it to your other hand. Do this with three flowers. Make sure that each flower stem is arranged at an angle over the flower stem beneath it.
• Turn the three flowers in your hand a quarter turn.
• Now, add another three flowers, one by one, over the first three.
• Repeat until you have used all your flowers.
• Bind the bouquet with a piece of twine or a rubber band.

As you will see, this method produces a beautiful round bouquet.

Inserting into a vase

But maybe what you want is a bouquet with a more casual look. If so, use the insertion method. This will give the impression of having just picked some wild flowers, and it’s also easy to do.

• Sort the flowers according to size.
• Insert the largest stem into a vase with water.
• Then pick up the largest stem you have left and insert it at an angle next to the first flower so that their stems form an ‘X’.
• Repeat this process by criss-crossing the stems in the vase until you have used all the flowers.