Interflora Flower School

Making a Tied Bouquet with Interflora – Easy !!!

I live in central London and I have just a tiny roof terrace.  Some of you may have watched my attempts at growing my own vegetables over the last couple of years and know that the result is a complete lack of flowers (unless they happen to be the precursor to a pea, bean or aubergine).  So, I don’t very often get the chance to play with flowers and I was thrilled to be asked along by Karen Burns Booth of Lavender and Lovage to the Autumn Flower Arranging event at Chandos House in Central London.  But, just a little bit nervous!

We were ushered into a very grand room full of flowers…and greeted by our hosts  David Ragg and David Denyer.  And the fun began.

David explained to us that the tied bouquet was brought over to the UK from Europe and is now more popular than the flat bouquets we used to send.  He also advised us to group flowers by type rather than scattering them through the bouquet, to get maximum impact.

We used midelino sticks to act as a core for the bouquet and for decorative effect.  The next step was to pick the flowers up one by one and place them around the core of midelino sticks at a slight diagonal, but not so the stems criss crossed.   The first addition was ‘something chunky’ – in our case some foliage.   David used the analogy of playing the violin to lay each flower (with the flower as the bow) and then turning the bouquet just a little to add the next flower.  While making the bouquet, hold the stems at the point you plan on tying…and there should be no foliage below the tying point at all.

Essentially the stems almost spiral around the core, so that when you tie the bouquet, they splay out tripod style so the creation can stand up by itself. I was given a little tip to make things easier for me…if you have small hands and you start to find it hard to hold the bouquet, then there is no issue with tying midway and then continuing to add flowers.  We used paper covered wire to tie the flowers, which was very easy to work with.

When all the flowers are in the bouquet, you trim the stems to the same length and to fit into your vase neatly.  Needless to say, it’s better to err on the side of caution when trimming your stems rather than risk cutting too much off.

David floated a few oak leaves in the bottom of the vase for impact.  Bent over the midelino sticks and tucked them in to the binding to make a kind of frame for the flowers.  And that was it.

Simples!

Now, mine doesn’t look quite so good now, but I took it to an African cookery class and then home on the tube.  And, one of the cats seems to believe that eucalyptus leaves are good for cats as well as koalas!

With thanks to the Interflora Flower School  for a fabulous afternoon.  Classes are run on a regular basis in central London and would make a fabulous gift.