Frugal Flower Arranging

by Kit Wertz

How to Save on Floral Supplies

You might think that the cheap­est place to find flo­ral sup­plies would be the whole­sale flo­ral sup­pli­er. But, this isn’t always the case as we have found over the past 12 years since start­ing Flower Duet. This month, we cov­er where to find deals and bar­gains on some com­mon flo­ral supplies.

Bargain Craft Supply Stores

The Dol­lar Tree is a nation­al chain which has a flo­ral sup­ply sec­tion that includes flo­ral foam, wire, flo­ral tape, vas­es, mar­bles and dried flo­ral sup­plies. We have found a great deal on cylin­der vas­es you can order online. Check out these bar­gain vase deals from The Dol­lar Tree. Anoth­er sup­pli­er exclu­sive­ly online is Sav-On Crafts. Not only are there a lot of great deals on this site, there is a pletho­ra of “how-to” arti­cles on flower design.

Traditional Suppliers Still Offer the Best Selection

The next time you are shop­ping for light­ing or pil­lows at IKEA, don’t for­get to look at the vase and con­tain­er sec­tion. We have found some great con­tain­ers and vas­es at our near­by IKEA. For selec­tion of flo­ral sup­plies, you can­not beat a tra­di­tion­al whole­sale flo­ral sup­ply com­pa­ny. We often order all types of sup­plies from the many whole­salers based at the Los Ange­les Flo­ral Dis­trict, but it is impor­tant to shop around. Prices do vary at each sup­pli­er so it pays to take the time and price shop first. And we can­not for­get to men­tion Liz and Jim at San Diego Flo­ral Sup­ply in Tor­rance. Great deals are to be had with­out the dri­ve downtown.

Buy Gently Used Vases

I can remem­ber buy­ing a love­ly vase at a garage sale and have seen hun­dreds of won­der­ful vas­es and con­tain­ers at thrift stores like Good­will and The Sal­va­tion Army. So, take a few moments the next time you drop off some dona­tions and stop in to check out the vases.

Explore Overstock Stores

There are many stores that also car­ry design­er home dec­o­ra­tions that you can use in your flo­ral design to make one-of-a-kind arrange­ments. Don’t over­look vase and con­tain­er ideas at stores such as Home Goods, Tues­day Morn­ing and even Big Lots!

What to Avoid

When you are try­ing to save a few dol­lars on flo­ral sup­plies, keep this impor­tant tip in mind. Nev­er reuse flo­ral foam. Once it’s used, it con­tains bac­te­ria from the stems that have bro­ken down in the foam. Also, your pre­vi­ous design will have left many holes in the foam and it would not hold the new design well. The dried pow­der that the foam gives off is not healthy either, so once your arrange­ment is fin­ished, throw the used foam in the trash. Flo­ral foam can­not be recy­cled or composted.

How to Create a Luxurious Floral Design for a Bargain Price

by Kit Wertz

It’s easy to cre­ate a flower design that looks pricey, but did­n’t cost a lot. Fol­low­ing our advice on how to save on flo­ral sup­plies, now we tell you how to make a flower design that looks expen­sive, but is afford­able to make.

Flower Bar­gain Idea 1: One way is to use flow­ers in the same col­or fam­i­ly. Get two or three kinds of red flow­ers in all dif­fer­ent tex­tures and put them togeth­er in a design (pic­tured at left).

Flower Bar­gain Idea 2: Buy inex­pen­sive flow­ers like car­na­tions in a deep, rich col­or like dark pur­ple. Shown here are dark pur­ple lisianthus.


Flower Bar­gain Idea 3: Use a few stems of a big-head­ed flower that is tra­di­tion­al­ly expen­sive like hydrangea. Just a few stems of a large flower fill up a vase easily.

Flower Bar­gain Idea 4: Buy flow­ers when they are in sea­son in your area and are grown local­ly. Be edu­cat­ed on what grows in your area by explor­ing your local farm­ers’ market.

Flower Bar­gain Idea 5: When work­ing with ros­es in a bou­quet, fill out the design using spray ros­es in the same col­or. You won’t need as many large-head­ed ros­es and the spray ros­es will open up nice­ly inside the bou­quet to round it out.

Flower Bar­gain Idea 6: Use an heir­loom vase or a vase that just looks expen­sive and put a few choice flow­er­ing branch­es in it. You can also get a dra­mat­ic look with just branch­es of tree leaves or oth­er green­ery. Just plac­ing a sin­gle large philo­den­dron or mon­stera leaf in a vase can make a bold statement.

BUYING FLOWERS TIP: Remem­ber when pric­ing bunch­es of flow­ers by the stem to keep in mind how much room each stem will take up in the design. For exam­ple, get­ting five sun­flow­ers at $3.99 seems more expen­sive than 10 mini ger­ber daisies for $5.99, but the sun­flower heads are so big, they end up being the bargain.

Focus on Greenery — Croton

by Kit Wertz

Greenery Saves Money in Floral Design

This is the third in a series we are writ­ing on green­ery for flo­ral designs. Use green­ery as a col­lar “frame” for bou­quets, to fill holes in designs, as archi­tec­ture in a vase or to hide stems under­wa­ter in a clear glass vase.

Green­ery Type: Croton

Expense Fac­tor: $5–8 per bunch wholesale

Vase Life: 8–14 days

Cro­ton is a trop­i­cal plant that can be grown indoors as a house­plant. Its var­ie­gat­ed leaves are green, yel­low, orange and red.

Cro­ton leaves come in a vari­ety of shapes and look right at home in a trop­i­cal arrange­ment. It’s also fun to incor­po­rate these leaves into tra­di­tion­al designs as well. We’ve even used these leaves inside a vase to accent the water and hide the stems (see pho­to at left). These leaves do break down under water faster than a ti leaf would, but the design won’t suf­fer too much and would look great for an event.

See, Touch, and Smell the Flowers

Come to our design class this month as we fea­ture fall mums at our Hunt­ing­ton work­shop and cap­ture late sum­mer casu­al at our design stu­dio class. Then, enjoy check­ing out flow­ers at some new places in the Los Ange­les area. Check them out below.

All About Mums Flower Classes for Adults and Children at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens — September 10, 2011

Tip Toe through the Mums

Explore the Gardens of the World — Thousand Oaks — Tuesdays to Sundays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Explore gar­dens rep­re­sent­ing Eng­land, France, Italy, Japan and the Cal­i­for­nia Mis­sions. FREE. Gar­dens of the World

Restoration Hardware’s “The Gallery” Beverly Boulevard — West Hollywood — Open Daily

Explore the new­ly opened flag­ship store in West Hol­ly­wood which fea­tures a Fresh Flo­ral Bou­tique by top LA flo­ral design­er, a Euro­pean Gar­den, a Design Bib­lio­theque and an Organ­ic Tea Atelier.
Flo­ral Bou­tique at Restora­tion Hard­ware’s The Gallery in West Hollywood

Rolling Greens Nursery — The Arrangement Bar — Hollywood or Culver City — Open Daily

Make your own long last­ing arrange­ment in the form of a col­lec­tion of love­ly liv­ing plants at Rolling Greens Nurs­ery in Cul­ver City or Hol­ly­wood. You can choose suc­cu­lents, ferns or some oth­er exot­ic plants includ­ing orchids! Com­bine your choice of plant with a pret­ty con­tain­er and some pol­ished glass or stone for a fin­ish­ing touch.
Rolling Greens Nursery

Flower Duet Flower Arranging Workshop — Working with late summer flowers in a loose shabby chic style — September 24, 2011

Flower Duet Flower Arrang­ing Class at its Design Stu­dio in Torrance

Book Reviews

The Lan­guage of Flow­ers by Vanes­sa Diffenbaugh

We heard a great inter­view with the author of a new nov­el, The Lan­guage of Flow­ers on NPR’s Week­end Edi­tion with Scott Simon and can­not wait to read this book. It fol­lows the life of Vic­to­ria Jones, a child of the fos­ter care sys­tem, who dis­cov­ers her tal­ent for flo­ral design. She dis­cov­ers that flow­ers help her com­mu­ni­cate with a world that did not always make sense to her. Accord­ing to the author, a fos­ter par­ent her­self, the book con­cen­trates on issues that fos­ter chil­dren and fos­ter par­ents face every day, but she uses flow­ers to help tell Vic­to­ri­a’s sto­ry. We are sure there is no coin­ci­dence that the name of the main char­ac­ter is Vic­to­ria. Dur­ing Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s long reign, the pub­lish­ing of flower dic­tio­nar­ies and the study of flo­ri­og­ra­phy was immense­ly popular.

Floral Tool — Wall Containers

Now for some fun on the walls! There is a trend right now for dis­play­ing plants on the walls and there are many ways to accom­plish this. The eas­i­est way is to buy con­tain­ers that are made for this pur­pose. Here are a few that caught our eye. Enjoy!

Per­fect for dis­play­ing a sin­gle suc­cu­lent plant or a few lit­tle ones, this wall art from artmatters.com offers clean lines and easy upkeep (shown above). Jamie Durie, a land­scape archi­tect with a show on HGTV, shows how to cre­ate wall con­tain­ers on the dig­i­tal ver­sion of Bet­ter Homes and Gar­dens mag­a­zine. Archi­tec­tur­al Pot­tery offers DL Wall Planters (shown below) that accent any wall with a bril­liant splash of color.