Features: Flower arranging

Take-home ideas

If you wish to decorate the home, perhaps for a dinner or party, there are many ways to do as “Simon Says” and create your own, edible and incredible table decorations:

A strawberry-lined glass bowl is the perfect receptacle for an arrangement of mixed pink shaded roses or fluffy peonies and for a flowery pun, a glass bowl lined with fresh in-the-pod peas is a brilliant setting in which to arrange stems of creamy white sweet peas together with some of their lovely tendrils and foliages.

Ingredients:

• Glass cylinder or drum-shaped vase

• Waterproof liner such as an empty food tub or pot cover that will fit within the glass vase

• Small amount of flower fix putty

• An assortment of summer berries (choose firm, slightly under-ripe ones so they don’t squash) or peas in their pods

• 2in mesh chicken wire

• Reel Wire

• 5 stems of Alchemilla mollis

• 5 variegated hosta leaves

• Mixed pink shaded sweet peas and or roses and spray roses in pastel pink shades.

Step-by-step:

1. First prepare your liner, by securing the scrunched up 2in mesh chickenwire inside it, using either reel wire or pot tape. Having ensured that your vase is clean and dry both inside and outside, use three or small four balls of flower fix to fasten the liner into the middle of your glass vase.

2. Using your berries or pea pods, infill the gap between the liner and the vase, ensuring a thorough layer ensures that your liner is well hidden.

3. Half-fill the liner with clear water

4. Now begin your creating, using an assortment of stems of foliages, working with one type of foliage at a time, to create a framework into which your flowers will sit.

5. Use the hosta or other larger leaves to add focus to the beginning of the decoration and to assist in concealing the chicken-wire mechanics.

6. Add your stems of flowers in little clusters and clumps, giving a fulsome effect and allowing them to protrude over the rim of the vase giving a softening effect, remembering that if you are using woody stemmed roses they need a clean cut and split, with sweet peas just a clean cut is all that is required.

7. The completed decoration should be topped up with water.

Additional Ideas:

A red pepper becomes a vase for a few heads of flowers

Ice-cream cones each containing a single pastel peony head and arranged in tumblers along a table make a wonderful way of giving a fun summery look to a party or dinner!