Scaring up Easy Autumn Floral Arrangements

Autumn is the best time for easy flower arrangements... even for those with the least amount of gardening experience. If you have a tree or a shrub near by, you most likely have a floral arrangement moments away. Sine floral arrangements do have have to be flowers, you can use leaves, bare branches, berries, and grasses.

The one- two- three of floral arrangements-

ONE~ choose your tallest spiky pieces for the center- no more that twice the height of the vase should extend beyond the vase.

TWO~ pick something from the outdoors that drapes in order to cascade over the edge of the vase

THREE~ Place a medium length branch (no more than one times the height of the vase should extend beyond the vase) , at a 60 degree angle to your work table. This piece is your "fill line" and your guide for the foliage extention area.


So your one- two- three formula will look like this to the left!



Now... what to choose!  Here are my picks for leave, berries and grasses! *Please know that none of the images below are my images and I do not have any claim on them as my own. They are used as illustration on for educational purposes.

Leaves-

7-bark hydrangea ( also known as oak leaf hydrangeas)- great reds to purples

maple- yellows, oranges and reds

junipers- adds lacy greenery and sometimes they have an ashy-blue berry


Berries-
Oak- if your acorns fall off before the leaves turn the color you want, you can glue them back in or wire them to the branch... discreetly!

Beautyberry- fantastic purple berries. If you grow them yourself, please leave some berry branches from your local birds to have some variety in their winter diet.

Nandina- if you do not have pets of small children (the berries can fall off and make very sick tummies)

Grasses

Cattails- once dried will keep for years!


Red fountain grass- great purple color

Easy floral arrangements

Here are some photos of my recent easy floral arrangements from yesterday's photo shoot.

This photo of white roses was a easy grouping of palest peach to cream. Pretty roses made prettier with a few photo stylist tricks.

1. Start my trimming the end of the roses about a 1/2" and place in warm water. This will begin to open the roses.
2. Grab the hair dryer and turn it on, to the coolest of slightly warm setting, to blow the rose petals open. The warmth will aid the wind in opening the petals.
3. Re-cut the stems so that the base of the flower is and 2-3 inches above the vase. The larger the vase the longer the stem- this vase was about 5-6 inches tall.
4. add greenery from the yard- whatever is the greenest without and brown marks or holes.

easy rose arrangement

Contemporary arrangement-
I like a bold color combo in my contemporary arrangements. I also see inspiration from the Japanese Ikebana tradition of simplicity and scale. In this arrangement below, I used purple, fuchsia and lime green. Here's the steps-

1. Choose your color inspiration and consider the two colors close together on the color wheel and one that is opposite.
2. In your "clean lines" vase, group the colors together and look at scale.
3. place your largest color flower, or group of flowers in the vase, then the second color and lastly the third.
4. to keep the lines clean and visually uncluttered, I wrapped the stems of the gompherna in a host leaf, since they looked messy. Messy tends to not work in a contemporary arrangement.
For this arrangement the purple hydrangea is the dominate, followed by the hosta leaves then the gompherna. I also looked at the pattern story that this tells- mass of lightly patterned purple, smooth lines of the green and dots of the fuchsia.

The third arrangement was just greenery from the yard- cheap and easy! It included, boxwood, ivy, juniper, and ligusterum. Because easy plant has a markedly different texture, I  grouped them for their textures- like a landscape of trees. Boxwood in the center, ligusterum and ivy for height and juniper is the filler.