Surprise Mom With an Elegant DIY Bouquet

For a pretty Mother’s Day gift you can make yourself, head to your local market (or your backyard) for floral favorites like peonies, ranunculuses and hydrangeas. Then follow along as Los Angeles florist Guillermo Del Pero of G Fiori Floral Design shows us how to create a traditional bouquet that’s perfect for a brunch table centerpiece.

Bouquets of peonies and hydrangeas like this are among Del Pero’s most popular requests. To make one yourself, he recommends buying flowers the day before and picking the freshest open blooms. “Always make a fresh cut on the stems when you come home and put them in water immediately for quick hydration. If open blooms are not available, put closed blooms in warm water for a day to open up,” he says.

Tools and Materials

One 8-inch-diameter glass bubble vase
Three curly willow branches (available at farmers markets or upscale grocery stores). “You can also substitute with any soft, bendable vine or branch from your yard as well,” Del Pero says.
Small, sharp knife or garden shears
Four hydrangea stems in light pink or white
Three viburnum stems in light green
Five peony stems in soft pink
Ten ranunculus stems in pink

1. Fill the vase halfway with fresh water.

Wrap the first willow branch around your hand as many times as possible to form a circular band.Tip: Avoid traditional green floral foam, which is toxic when inhaled and not biodegradable and therefore also harmful to the environment. “Instead, use bendable branches like curly willow to create a structure for holding your flowers in place,” Del Pero says.

2. Place the band horizontally in the vase and allow it to expand to fit against the sides.

3. Wrap the second willow branch in the same fashion and put it vertically in the vase. Repeat this step with the third branch to create a structure with pockets and divisions to hold the flowers.

4. Add more water, filling about three-quarters of the vase.

5. “As a rule of thumb, create your bouquets starting with the largest blooms and ending with the smallest,” Del Pero says. Trim the first hydrangea stem so that the bloom will just cover the top of the vase when resting diagonally inside it.

Tip: Del Pero prefers to use a small, sharp knife to create a deep-slanted cut on the stem but says regular garden shears are easier for nonprofessionals.

6. Continue trimming and placing the three remaining hydrangea stems, ensuring that all are completely submerged in water.

7. Rotate the vase to ensure that you have an even round arrangement. Adjust as necessary.

8. Trim and divide the viburnum stems into two or three smaller stems with two or three blooms per stem.

“It’s best to use groupings of two or three blooms” of the same flower variety, Del Pero says. Avoid arrangements where every other bloom is a different kind of flower.

9. Fill open spaces between the hydrangea stems with the viburnum.

10. Trim the peonies and put them among the viburnum and hydrangea stems in a casual, somewhat random pattern.

11. Rotate the vase again to ensure that the arrangement is round and even. Adjust as necessary.

12. Trim the ranunculus stems and place them throughout the bouquet.

13. Remember to keep blooms of the same flower type in groupings of two or three.

Extending the Bouquet’s Life

For longer-lasting blooms, Del Pero recommends changing the water every other day.

Put the vase in your kitchen sink.
Carefully create a small opening in the bouquet and let water from the faucet gently run into the opening. This fresh water will displace the water inside the vase.
Allow the water to flow over the sides until the vase is filled with fresh water.
Remove and dry the vase.

Photo Credit to the author.

By Carolyn Reyes

Source: www.houzz.com