Book Recommendation for January:

Flower School: A Practical Guide to the Art of Flower Arranging by Calvert Crary

I love my Kin­dle because it offers instant access into books I want to read! I down­loaded this book onto my Kin­dle and read every page. It offers a com­plete intro­duc­to­ry course to flo­ral design and offers a mul­ti­tude of pro­fes­sion­al tips along the way.

Why Flower Duet Recommends this Book

My favorite sec­tion is when Calvert tells you to have a plan before you even buy your flowers.

  1. Know what you want to make. Are you mak­ing this for a birth­day? For a friend? Does it have a col­or theme like red? Then, make a plant for what you want to make in red. Decide what you are going to make and in what flo­ral style. For exam­ple, you would first decide that you are going to make mod­ern gar­den vase design for a friend’s birth­day in a glass cube vase using white and green flowers.
  2. Make a list of the flow­ers you want to pur­chase so you don’t over buy or get over­whelmed at the Flower Mar­ket, gro­cery store or farm­ers’ mar­ket. You’ll need about 30–35 stems for a medi­um sized design in a 5x5x5 inch cube vase. So plan on 1–3 dif­fer­ent white flow­ers and 1–2 types of green­ery. Most stems come in bunch­es of 10. Some pre­mi­um flow­ers are sold by stem only.
  3. Gath­er your flow­ers. Pur­chase from your list. Get the flow­ers home and con­di­tion the flow­ers — in oth­er words, let them hard­en and rehydrate.
  4. Choose your vase and adjust if nec­es­sary. You may need more than one if the first one does­n’t work out. I love what he says about com­pote vas­es! I total­ly agree. His favorite vase is a tall rec­tan­gu­lar vase and he prefers vas­es that are taller than they are wide (so you can guess where that leaves com­potes on the list).
  5. Make your design by adding 1/4 of your mate­ri­als at time. Keep rotat­ing the vase after each addi­tion. Step away between adding the groups of flow­ers to see how it’s doing. Fin­ish with the focal flower and most del­i­cate flowers.
Flowers ready to arrange

Flow­ers ready to arrange at Flower Duet. Pho­to by Kit Wertz.

From the Publisher About this Book

Cre­ate the flower arrange­ments of your dreams to keep at home, take to the office, or dis­play on any spe­cial occa­sion using the sim­ple tips and tricks and mas­ter­ful tech­niques taught by Exec­u­tive Direc­tor and pro­fes­sor Calvert Crary and the mas­ter florists at Flow­er­School New York.

Flow­er­School New York is one of the world’s pre­miere insti­tutes for flo­ral design and artistry, offer­ing career devel­op­ment cours­es cer­ti­fied by the New York State Board of Edu­ca­tion, and exclu­sive mas­ter class pro­grams taught by cel­e­brat­ed mas­ter florists includ­ing Kiana Under­wood, Rem­co Van Vli­et, Lewis Miller, Emi­ly Thomp­son, and Ingrid Carozzi.

Now, for the first time, Flow­er­School Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Calvert Crary is pub­lish­ing a book that will make it pos­si­ble for even the green­est at-home arrangers to cre­ate gor­geous, Insta­gram wor­thy bou­quets. This hands-on, com­pre­hen­sive guide pro­vides read­ers with step-by-step instruc­tions that cov­er all the most cru­cial aspects of flower arranging.

For All of You “Duet” Yourself Flower Arrangers

Every­thing in this book is spot on from the advice, to the the guid­ance and tips from pro­fes­sion­als based in New York City and Los Ange­les where the Flower School is based.

If I were just start­ing out in flo­ral design and did­n’t have enough cash to go to in per­son class, I would buy this flower arrang­ing book.

Flower Duet receives commissions for purchases made through links in this post.