Video: How to Build a Bouquet

Hi my name is Hillary Alger and I'm the Flowers Product Manager here at Johnny's Selected Seeds. Today we're going to build a simple bouquet.

Basic Supplies

To get started we're going to need a few basic supplies:

• Rubber bands
• Twine
• Something to trim the stems—either a sharp knife or clippers (I prefer to use clippers).

Focal, Filler, & Accent Flowers

It's easiest to create a dynamic looking bouquet if you start with flowers in a variety of shapes, sizes, and textures. Here we have lisianthus which is a nice focal flower and snapdragons for a spike to give us some height. For filler flowers, we have statice as well as some accent flowers.

The Process

We are going to start with a sturdy filler flower that's well branched to give us some initial structure. We're going take this first stem and angle each stem around. I'm going to turn it 1/3 to 1/2 a turn. I'm going to keep adding accent flowers for a while, turning as I go.

Now that we have a good base started I'm going to start adding some focal flowers. You're going to add one and turn about a third to a half the way around; this gives a good distribution of each type of flower. Add, and turn. After I complete about one rotation, I'm going to switch to another type of focal flower. I'm trying to keep my hand loose to maintain these angles.

It's getting pretty full now. It's good to check see. I've got a space with a lot of statice here, I probably should add in something to make that space more interesting. I'm going to feed in a little bit of snapdragon. Even when you're feeding in these stems from the top you can also you can keep them at an angle, this keeps it neat and easy to work with.

Now maybe a few little accent flowers like this nice 'Zinderella' zinnia. Accent flowers are in-between your focal and your filler in terms of size.

I'm getting a lot of long stems here so I can go ahead and cut some of those off make it a little bit easier to work with.

I can get a better look at my bouquet from the top. We've almost completed this bouquet. To finish it up, we're going to add a layer of strong stems around the exterior to protect it—statice. I'm going to turn and add. Some of this sorghum sudangrass to give it a wildflower look. That looks pretty good. We will just cut our stems.

I'm going to put a few rubber bands on here. I placed a couple on my wrist to make it a little bit easier.

I'm going to fluff it out a little.

Here we have this nearly complete bouquet and we're going to use our twine and just dress it up a little; we're going to cover our rubber bands with twine. There're all kinds of beautiful ways to wrap these. I'm going to use a really simple slip-knot and that twine. Wrap around, cover that first rubber band, continue wrapping. A little more to cover the second one.

And there you have it.