Father’s Day Flower Ideas

by Kit Wertz

Here are two plant and flower design ideas for you to give to the spe­cial dad in your life. We know from our sur­vey last year, that men like to receive flow­ers that they can plant in the gar­den, so this first idea is a mini gar­den that will flower eventually.

How to Make a Succulent Garden

You can design your own mini suc­cu­lent gar­den, buy a kit to make one or buy one for about $20 all put togeth­er from your local gar­den cen­ter. If you do decide to go for it your­self, here is a suc­cu­lent gar­den recipe for you to cre­ate. Start with some­thing tall in the cen­ter and sur­round with short­er types of suc­cu­lents and then put cas­cad­ing type plants around the out­er edges like bur­ro’s tail.

Tall suc­cu­lents: Jade, Kalan­choe, Aeo­ni­um, Cra­su­la Ova­ta or Giant Green Coral (some­times called “Shrek Ears”)

Low suc­cu­lents plants: Echev­e­ria, Sem­per­vivem (Chicks and Hens)

Trail­ing suc­cu­lents: Bur­ro’s Tail, Sedum

Here is a great site that shows all types of suc­cu­lents with their names so you can rec­og­nize the plants when you get to the nursery.

About Containers & Soil

One would think that a low con­tain­er would be best for these drought-tol­er­ant plants, but in my expe­ri­ence, I pre­fer the look of a tall con­tain­er. You can use ter­ra­cot­ta, ceram­ic, met­al, or plas­tic con­tain­ers, but make sure that it has a drainage hole. Before you add soil to the con­tain­er, be sure to cov­er the hole with some type of screen so that the soil won’t spill out eas­i­ly. A cheap way to do this is to buy some scrub­bers at the gro­cery store (near the kitchen sponges) and just plop it into the bot­tom of your pot over the hole.


Plant with well-drain­ing soil or pur­chase a spe­cial cac­tus mix for this project. A good choice is Cac­tus & Suc­cu­lent Soil Mix. If you want to order the plants online, too, here is a suc­cu­lent col­lec­tion you can order to make lots of pots. Check out this
mixed suc­cu­lent col­lec­tion.
Or you can pur­chase a pot­ted suc­cu­lent gar­den all done for you.

NOTE: If you live out­side the desert zone of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia or oth­er places were cac­tus sur­vives out­side all year round, you’ll want to keep this in a pot so you can bring it inside dur­ing the win­ter months.

A Lawn He Never Has to Mow

If the “dad” of the house is the main dish wash­er, here is a great lit­tle gift with a bit of whim­sy thrown in. You can pur­chase this cute lit­tle dish drain­er that looks like a mini lawn.
The Boon Inc. Grass Coun­ter­top Dry­ing Rack is great for dry­ing glass­es. We use it for baby bot­tles right now (our twins are almost 7‑months-old).

To make this into a fun flower design, fill the bot­tom with water and cut some stems of dif­fer­ent flow­ers in man­ly col­ors like blue, red, dark pur­ple or bright yel­low. (Think of your guy’s favorite sports team col­ors.) Arrange the stems in the spikey green grass that acts like a huge flo­ral frog. Make sure the stems reach the bot­tom where the water is sitting.

Place it on the counter so when the dad in the house wakes up in the morn­ing to make cof­fee, he will be greet­ed with his own lit­tle Hap­py Father’s Day Flower Arrange­ment. After the flow­ers have fad­ed, be sure to give this a good wash with some white dis­tilled vine­gar or in your auto­mat­ic dishwasher.

Hope­ful­ly, this will be a gift that gives back to you and encour­ages dad to do the dish­es more often!

Tips for Arranging Flowers with Citrus

by Kit Wertz

Have you seen those love­ly cheer­ful flower designs with cut cit­rus slices in the vase water and won­dered how it was done? While there are many ways to accom­plish this look, we have found that the best way is to use a lit­tle heavy-duty cel­lo­phane com­bined with Oasis Rain­bow Foam to help hold stems in place. The cel­lo­phane keeps the foam from get­ting mixed into the water with the cit­rus and look­ing slop­py. Also, using this method, you will not see any stems behind the cit­rus slices. Low cube vas­es or round cylin­der vas­es seem to be the best choice for this design.

Tip 1: Try to use lemons, limes or oranges with thick skin and few seeds.

Tip 2: Cut the cit­rus in thick ¼‑inch slices so they will be easy to insert into the vase between the cel­lo­phane and glass.

Tip 3: Shape the foam so that it fits inside the vase, but leave enough room for you to slide in your cit­rus slices.

Tip 4: After you’ve soaked your foam, place it on top of a large sheet of thick cel­lo­phane and place the foam cov­ered in the cel­lo­phane into the vase. Cut the extra cel­lo­phane so it’s just a lit­tle bit taller than the top of the vase.

Tip 5: Slide in the cit­rus slices care­ful­ly cre­at­ing a pat­tern that is pleas­ing to the eye. Arrange your cho­sen flow­ers in the foam on top and be sure to make sure flow­ers hang over the lip of the vase to hide any cel­lo­phane. Keep the foam watered.

If you want to know how to get entire limes or lemons to help hold your stems in a vase, Pot­tery Barn has a quick how-to on this. Check out how to design with whole cit­rus fruits in the vase water.

We’ll be teach­ing many ways to incor­po­rate cit­rus into flo­ral designs, includ­ing how to keep cut slices look­ing fresh in an arrange­ment, dur­ing our June 11th work­shop at The Hunt­ing­ton in San Mari­no, California.

Essential Tools for the Floral Designer

by Flower Duet Editors

If you are just get­ting start­ed in flo­ral design and think you need a cup­board full of vas­es, foam, glue, rib­bon and flo­ral design books, think again. There are real­ly few­er than ten items you need to get started.

Floral Design Books:

We have about 30 design books in our library and a pletho­ra of mag­a­zines to refer to for our clients and when we need a lit­tle inspi­ra­tion. But, before we start­ed fill­ing our book­shelves, we spent a lot of time at our local library and scour­ing the Inter­net for ideas.

Top Vases for Floral Designers:

The best vase for your design is one that the client pays for! But, if you are look­ing for a few basic vas­es to have in your home for design, we sug­gest a low opaque water­tight con­tain­er, one short and one tall glass cylin­der vase, a pedestal com­pote or urn and of course one or two dif­fer­ent sized bud vas­es for those small cut­tings you always should have left over when you design.

Good Cutters or a Floral Knife:

If you are just start­ing to arrange flow­ers, it’s best to use some safe sharp cut­ters like the ones we sell (see low­er right on this page). We’ve used these in our work­shops for over 10 years. Keep them clean and only use them for flow­ers. Use wire cut­ters when you cut wire so you don’t dull the blades. Move onto using a florist knife when you are com­fort­able han­dling all types of stems.

Floral Food:

This is an essen­tial tool for keep­ing flow­ers fresh a long time.
When the cut flow­ers have the chance to drink up this mix­ture of flower food and water, the stems “hard­en” and firm up in order to hold up those heavy heads. Every few days, you should change the water in your arrange­ments, but be sure to include the Cut Flower Food and water mix­ture so that the flow­ers last longer. Read more about this tool in our July 2010 newslet­ter and keep a ready sup­ply on hand.

Floral Wire:

This tool comes in many dif­fer­ent thick­ness­es called gauges and is the key to cre­at­ing bou­ton­nières and cor­sages, as well as incor­po­rat­ing stem-less blooms like orchids into a bou­quet or taller design. Flo­ral Wire can also used to secure green­ery to wreath forms or gar­lands — and will be handy for fall and win­ter designs.

Flo­ral wire is not used on its own to secure blooms to for a vari­ety of design pur­pos­es, but is teamed up with stretchy and sticky flo­ral tape to cre­ate a secure and wor­ry free com­bi­na­tion. Read more about it in our Octo­ber 2010 newsletter.

Floral Tape:

There are a few dif­fer­ent types of flo­ral tape that you should have in your tool kit. First, the paper flo­ral tape that gets sticky when you stretch it out is very use­ful when cre­at­ing cor­sages and oth­er wired flow­ers. Next you’ll want to have two types of water­proof tape. One type is clear and is use­ful to cre­ate grids on top of vas­es to help stems stay in place. The oth­er type is Water­proof Green Flo­ral Tape and has the look and feel of duct tape, but is much thin­ner. This is used to secure foam to con­tain­ers or to rein­force wreath foams. Watch our video we cre­at­ed for cre­at­ing a suc­cu­lent bridal bou­quet where we demon­strate how to use wire and flo­ral tape in our Octo­ber 2010 newsletter.

Floral Foam:

In a blog entry in Feb­ru­ary, Casey wrote about the need for a case of Stan­dard Brick Flo­ral Foam. If you are cre­at­ing for clients, it is good to invest in a case because it keeps the cost down per brick of foam. Be sure to store it in a safe place, away from chil­dren and dogs. The dust from the dry foam is not good to breathe.

June Flower Events

Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend in Menlo Park, California — June 4th & 5th

Sun­set Mag­a­zine Celebration

Mackinac Island Lilac Festival in Michigan — June 10–19th

Lilac Fes­ti­val

Flower Duet teaches How to Design with Citrus at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California — June 11th

Cit­rus Flower Arrang­ing Class

World Flower Show in Boston, Massachusetts — The World Association of Flower Arrangers — June 15–19th

This flo­ral expo will fea­ture 600 flower arrange­ments, 12 lec­tures by acclaimed speak­ers, dozens of nation­al and inter­na­tion­al exhi­bi­tions, design demon­stra­tions, a gala ban­quet, open­ing and clos­ing cel­e­bra­tions, an awards cer­e­mo­ny, and more.

The Genzano Infiorata Flower Festival near Rome, Italy — June 18–20th

A tra­di­tion that is over 200 years old con­tin­ues when flo­ral arti­sans cov­er an entire street with flow­ers in beau­ti­ful images on a theme.
Infio­ra­ta Flower Festival

Lompoc Valley Flower Festival in Lompoc, California — June 22–26th

Lom­poc Val­ley Flower Festival

The Newport Flower Show, Rhode Island — June 24–26th

New­port Flower Show

The Ranch Open House at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California — June 25th

Open hous­es on the Ranch will be offered on the fourth Sat­ur­day of every month from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Ranch Open House

Book Reviews

This month we are fea­tur­ing two books on cit­rus in hon­or of our cit­rus flower arrang­ing tip, sum­mer­time and our class at The Hunt­ing­ton on June 11th. The first book, The Great Cit­rus Book is all about cit­rus and has won­der­ful recipes. So if you have fruit trees and have run out of ideas of what to do with all that fruit, this is a great resource for you.

The Great Cit­rus Book: A Guide with Recipes (Great Series) by Allen Susser

The sec­ond book we rec­om­mend this month is, Cit­rus: A His­to­ry doc­u­ments where cit­rus came from, some of its folk­lore and how it became a gold­en crop in Flori­da and Cal­i­for­nia. If you love food his­to­ry, this is a good read.

Cit­rus: A His­to­ry by Pierre Laszlo

Floral Tool — Cellophane

Cel­lo­phane is sold in large rolls. It does not stretch and can come in a vari­ety of weights. Many florists use this to wrap flower bou­quets or as a mobile vase for a hand-tied bou­quet. We have used it to line con­tain­ers that are not water­tight and to accent the water of a tall cylin­der vase to add an inter­est­ing tex­ture to the design.

This month, since we are fea­tur­ing how to design with cit­rus, we’ve out­lined a way for you to use cel­lo­phane to keep slices of lemons or limes sep­a­rate from the flo­ral foam in a vase. Check out our arti­cle on design­ing with cit­rus in this newslet­ter for more details. Order from Amazon.com:
Clear Cel­lo­phane Wrap Roll