How to Arrange Spring Flowers in a Bowl: Using Chicken Wire + Floristry Techniques

1. Spring Bowl Intro from Alex at Webb and Farrer: Hello and welcome to this workshop where I'm going to show you how to make a bowl of seasonal spring flowers. My name's Alex, and I'm the founder of Webb and Farrer. I've been a florist since 2014. And I'm based in Brighton here in UK. And I love teaching flower workshops online and in-person in Brighton. We're using a bowl in this arrangement. And you're also going to be using chicken wire. You're going to learn how to condition your flowers before you arrange them. How to put the chicken wire into the bowl so you can use it to help you put your flowers into the bowl so they don't just flop against the side of your vase. I've used Spring flowers including ranunculus, hellebores, narcissi, you could also use flowers like tulips or hyacinths. And I've also used foliage and birch twigs. I've used a little bowl and quite a few flowers and foliage to create a lovely asymmetrical and relaxed look. 2. Conditioning Flowers and Preparing the Bowl: Hello and welcome to this spring flowers workshop where I'm going to show you how to make spring seasonal flowers in a bowl. You will need a little bowl. I got this one from a charity shop for an absolute bargain, will also need a little bit of chicken wire. Make sure to use a chicken wire with holes that are big enough for your flower stems to go through some scissors, flowers and foliage. I'm going for ranunculus. narcissi, hellebores. Then some birch twigs. And then we've got pittosporum, sarcococca, and eucalyptus, some thin pieces of gaffer tape or floristry pot tape. You'll also need some vases or buckets to condition your flowers into. I'm just using some large jars that I've recycled from the kitchen. And then a few random vases I've got lying around the house. If you're foraging, make sure that you follow your local foraging guidelines and always leave the place looking like you haven't been there. And it's also important to think about birds and wildlife when you're foraging as well. All the flowers and foliage I'm using have been grown in England. I've actually cut the eucalyptus, the sarcococca, and the hellebores from the garden. And then I've got the other flowers from English growers. So the first thing we're gonna do is condition the flowers. To do the foliage. I just took off the lowest leaves from the stems. We cut the stems at an angle and then put the stems into the water, drinking happily. And then we're going to condition the ranunculus by taking off any lower leaves. I'm going to leave that on. And to take off the leaves. So you just pull downwards. And then we cut each stem at an angle. Then we put the stems into water. Actually changed vases for the foliage and the ranunculus. this vase is taller and it will help support the stems of the ranunculus a bit better. You may want to condition your flowers and leave them overnight. So that's why I've swapped over. So we've got a taller vase to support the stems of the ranunculus. So narcissi and daffodils, they release a sap that can sometimes harm other flowers in the vase. If you're gonna be using these with your other Spring flowers, here's what's due to avoid that sap situation. You cut the stems at an angle, then place them into your water and just let that sap seep out. Wait a few minutes, about 15 min. So I've poured the old daffodil water down the drain, and I'm just going to recondition them one more time for luck to get rid of any more sap. So we're gonna do the same again. We're going to cut the stems, put those straight into the water. And then whilst we're doing the next stages, the sap that's leftover can continue coming out the ends of the stems. Your class project is to condition the flowers and foliage that you've got to remember to take off the lower leaves. We don't want any leaves in the water. And we cut the stems at an angle, putting them straight into the freshwater. And we'll leave them overnight ideally, but a few hours would really help them before we start arranging with them. Now we've conditioned our flowers and foliage and they're drinking water. And they are in the right height vase to support the stems. I'm going to leave the birch twigs because they're fine as they are out of water. They will go in the water in the bowl, but they're happy as they are on the desk. It's now time to put the chicken wire into our bowl. And the chicken wire is going to act as a support for the stems when they're in here. When you're working with chicken wire, you can wear gardening gloves if you want to, because the edges can be a bit spiky. And also, I've got this from, a charity shop. So I'm happy to put chicken wire in here and it might scratch the inside, maybe use a bowl that you don't mind having chicken wire in and not something that's like a family heirloom or something. To start off, we're going to make our chicken wire into a cylinder shape. And to do that, we roll it up a bit like a Swiss roll like that. And then push the ends of the chicken wire into the shape that you've made to help secure itself in place. And then if you'd like, you can also push the ends of the cylinder in the spikes all going inwards. Your chicken wire into your bowl. You can squish it around. We've made a cylinder -ish. Now we've got this feels pretty secure, bur to be on the safe side, I'm going to secure this in place with little bit of gaffer tape. You could also use floristry pot tape if you have that. I've cut little pieces of this and I'm just going to tuck them onto my bowl and the chicken wire so that it stays in place. And stick this just around the edge of the plot. And we'll make sure that we're covering that up with a leaf. There we go. I'm going to add one more on here. So our chicken wire is nice and secure. And then our tape is just keeping it in place just to round the edge of the pot. And we'll just make sure that we're going to cover that up with our leaves and flowers when we start arranging. And then now we fill our bowl up with fresh cold water. I actually just taped down over the tape just to make it more secure. So feel free to do that as well if you want to. So we've conditioned our flowers and foliage and our chicken wire into our bowl and fill that with fresh cold water. Your class project is to condition your flowers and then make your chicken wire nice and secure inside your bowl Let me know how you get on in the class project comments. I'd love to see the bowls that you've chosen for the project. In the next chapter, we're going to be arranging our foliage in the bowl. And then the chapter after that, we're gonna be arranging our flowers. 3. Arranging Foliage in the Spring Bowl: In this chapter, we're going to add our foliage and stems of twigs into our bowl. I'm going to start with the birch twigs. They are going to help me create my shape that I'm going to follow for the rest of the design. And the shape I'm going to aim for is kinda like a triangle going up this way and then down that way. You can follow along with this shape in your class project. Or if you want, you can go wild. You can just see how your arrangement take shape, up to you. But I'm going to go for an arrangement that goes a bit like that and we'll see how that turns out. Place your stems in one at a time. And we push them through the chicken wire. So they go all the way to the base of your bowl. And you can see that stays in place because of our chicken wire. And it's held up rather than falling to the side of the bowl. I'm going to add the stems bit by bit. I'm actually cutting the stems, just out of habit. But you may find that some twig branches might grow leaves if they are in water. That used to happen them when I worked in a floristry shop in Bristol. So we'll see what happens. Now. The twigs are quite long and tall compared to the bowl. That's because they are quite lightweight. They add a lovely shape to the design without being too heavy. Everything else that's a bit more juicy and large, I'm going to keep low in the design keeping the center of gravity lower. So the tall pieces of twig won't tip the design over because they're so light. I'm making a front-facing design that's facing you. But when you're working, obviously have your design facing you so you can see how it's going. If you want, you could also do an all round arrangement, but you'd need to put the flowers all the way around the design rather than in one place at the front. So if you're doing an all round design, you might need some more flowers. The twigs will also act in a similar way to the chicken wire, and they'll give us a bit more structure to put our stems into. It's a win-win really with the branches. It's time for the foliage. I'm going to put in the stems again following the shape that we've gone for a triangle, you may need to take off some of the lower leaves from the stems because we don't want any of the leaves going below the chicken wire and into the water. And then remember to cut your stems at an angle because that increases the surface area that the water can travel up into the leaves. I'm just going to pop my foliage in and keeping some low just to cover the tape that I've put in place as well. And even though the arrangement is front-facing, I'm going to put some foliage at the back. Just give it balanced. Like I said before, to stop it from like keeling over forwards. I feel like the tape can still be seen here, so I'm going to put a bit more foliage in. Okay, so we filled our bowl of foliage. I've made sure all the stems are being pushed quite low down into the arrangement so they're all reaching the water. We've now got even more of a network of a structure or stems that's going to help us when we put our flowers in next. So it's always best to do twigs, branches, and foliage first just to give yourself an easier job later. So you've got your arrangement nice and full, and then you add the benefit of the flowers as well. And we're gonna be putting the flowers in the next chapter, your class project now is to fill your bowl with your branches, your twigs and your foliage. And just to give it lots of lovely shape for you to work with. In the next chapter, when we add the flowers. 4. Placing Flowers in the Spring Bowl: Welcome to the chapter where we add the flowers. I've got the ranunculus, this hellebores and narcissi. And I'm going to start with the ranunculus because they're going to help us add larger splashes of colour through the design. They're probably a medium-size flower. And it could be called a focal flower because it's going to be our main focus points through the flower arrangement where when you put this the and cut the stems at an angle and feed them into the design. I'm going to start by following the shape I made earlier with the ranunculus. One going this way and one going up. One ranunculus heading off in this direction. And then one is going to be going up here to go up alongside the twigs. You might also find with your spring flowers like ranunculus that you're going to have two little buds coming off them. You can include these two. Just cut the stems and they will go here because they're low and short, they can go at the front of the design, go around the edge. Anything that you want to sit low in the design, cut them a bit shorter. And then gently feed your flower through the chicken wire into the water. Add the focal points through the design. You can move your flowers round once you add more and more in, just to keep yourself going with that shape that you want to create. One of the most important things is that the flowers are drinking the water. If you can, check where you're putting the flowers and then wiggle them through, making sure they're going into the water. So it's time to add the hellebore flowers. These have got quite large stems, so I'm going to be putting them round the edge of the design just to make sure that they actually get into the arrangement and into the water. With anything really short, you can put these right round the edge of the arrangement and that will just let them, the flowers still be seen rather than getting lost inside the foliage. I've grouped these hellebores together at the front. Just to give them a bit more impact. I think they look really nice together and the stems are quite short, so they look better upfront so that they don't get lost within the arrangement. My last hellebore stem in now, and I'm gonna put this one down here to the side. So you can move flowers around each other just to make sure that you can actually see them. Maybe something's hidden behind some foliage. So we can move that away. If you're feeling like it's bunching up quite a lot, just give it a good old shimmy, wiggle things through just to give yourself a bit more shape. Now, I'm going to add in some of these narcissi when you're putting your flowers and just have a look and see where the gaps are still available in your chicken wire. You may have to lift things up a little bit if it's getting quite overcrowded. Chicken wire and water are a lot better for the environment. And it's more of a traditional floristry method, we know we're being better for the environment. Popping this one in here. If you're finding that the stems are going in slightly but not completely, you can always just gently ease them in bit by bit. You can go around your arrangement and just readjust the flowers to make sure that they're facing the way you want them to. Nothing's too tangled up or leaning on something else. So just bring them out a little bit and wiggle them around if you need to. And just make sure some flowers aren't hiding behind leaves, things like that. So your class project is to put your flowers into your arrangement and to make sure that the ends of the stems have reached into the vase so that they're drinking from the water and all the flowers are in different directions, to add some interest. And make sure increase in height with the flowers, but also make sure the center of gravity is quite low in the design, so it's not going to topple over. Make sure that you comment on your class project. I'd love to see your designs and how amazing they've turned out. 5. How to Keep the Flowers Lasting Longer: Once you've placed all your flowers in, you can move things around a bit. If you're feeling like something's a bit too cramped together, you can just gently wiggle things round, use the twigs or the other leaves, just hold things in place and then point the flowers that are facing forwards or at different angles to add some interest. And then make sure your leaves are covering up any of your tape as well. Once you've finished arranging your flowers, you can top up with water if you need to. Then over the next few days, make sure that you're adding water into the vase because the flowers will be drinking water. So we've jumped a whole week into the future. And here's the arrangement. I'm so pleased with how it's lasted. The ranunculus are really opening up beautifully. The narcissi have gone a little bit papery white. But I think that still is looking really pretty and almost like a faded antique. And I've been topping up the bowl of water every every three days because they've been drinking quite a lot. And I'd also say it's been particularly cold this week. So I think that's why these have lasted amazingly well. So keep your flowers away from anything like a hot radiator, a draft, or direct sunlight and that will help your flowers last even longer. This has been the tutorial all about how to arrange seasonal flowers in a Spring ball. I'd love to see your creative projects. So let me know how you get on in the comments. Thanks so much for watching and you can follow me on Instagram @WebbandFarrer.