Handling a bouquet that disintegrates in your hands

For the new learner, nothing is more discouraging than a flower arrangement that was just fine in your hands a moment before, but now that you look down on it, the structure is gone and you have a pile of stems and no arrangement. The one flower falls out, the leaves turn and the shape of the bouquet is lost; it looks impossible. The most common reason is that the stems were not set up correctly in the beginning. New learners concentrate too much on the types of flowers for an arrangement and not enough on how the individual stems meet and interlock. Bouquets that are hand-tied are supported by an internal structure. When you understand how that works, your arrangements become much easier to manage and put together.

The first point to pay attention to is how the stems come together in your hand. One of the most common mistakes is to take the new stem to the arrangement from varying points and angles and add it so the stems form some sort of loose stack. This creates extra size, bulk, pressure and a lack of stability. Rather, rotate your arrangement in the same direction, and add each stem so that they enter at about the same angle, creating a natural spiral. You should feel the stems coming together at a point in your grip. If the arrangement starts to feel loose and wobbly, stop adding and see if the point of your grip needs to be tightened by turning your hand slightly. Take out the last stem added that you think might be off, and insert it again at a better angle. Often an arrangement falls apart simply because the stems are not set up the same for each one.

Another problem for a new learner is creating an unbalanced bouquet. One thing many new learners do is to add their biggest flowers into the arrangement first and then add the smaller flowers in between. Because the flowers are clustered in the same area, they become unbalanced. The outer edge of the bouquet feels light, while the center feels too heavy. Rather than focusing on where to add the flowers to fill in the arrangement, start with a shape. Add in a few of the more airy or leafy greens so you create a shape outline first and then add the blooms to fit in that shape. When you place the focal flowers and greens, add them in to the arrangement by turning the arrangement in your hand, adding a few here, a few there. This helps you see how the weight is distributed. When you notice one side looks heavy in comparison to the other, turn your arrangement so you add the focal flowers to the less populated side, balancing the visual weight with lighter elements and not heavier ones, if your arrangement allows.

The next step when you feel like your bouquet is not working is to break the problem down. Try taking seven or nine of your stems and creating a very small bouquet. Select one focal, one filler, one textural element and the greenery. Try to make your small hand-tied bouquet, so that the overall shape is round with a gap in the center and not a very solid ball of green. Hold your grip so you are able to turn the individual pieces and change the angle, yet the overall shape is maintained. Once you are done, bind the whole thing loosely so that it holds, but not tight. Remove it from your hand and look at the overall silhouette. If it looks too flat, then it was probably because the angles were not different enough. If it looks messy, then it was because you did not have enough stems to create the structure. It’s better to practice with a small set of elements than it is to try to fix your bouquet once it has already fallen apart.

A simple 15-minute practice will do a lot to steady your hand. Take the first few minutes of your practice to sort through your stems so that you are selecting them quickly while you are building your arrangement. Use the middle minutes to create a small arrangement and focus on how you are adding the stems to build the spiral and how you are holding the grip in your hand. In the last minutes, take the bouquet that you created, release the binder, and recreate the arrangement with the same elements but correcting where you went wrong with the previous attempt. This is a good reminder to see if you were successful or if it was by accident. With repeated practice, you will begin to recognize what your hand should feel like, the angle at which each stem should be added, and when to know that an arrangement doesn’t need more flowers to support itself. That is when you will know that creating hand-tied arrangements is calm and controlled.