how to make a bouquet from the garden

Summer so far in the garden this year has been full of hot pink, magenta and purples. The snap dragons and scabiosa have all grown from seed from last year so every time I walk past them I feel like I’ve lucked out and they’ve been placed in my garden as a freebie. It’s amazing when you get to cut flowers from the garden and think about how many air miles and £’s you’re saving. Growing a cut flower patch at home is a benefit to pollinators and your purse.

Among the flowers there are also some beautifully shaped leaves on the jasmine, and the eucalyptus we were given as a gift has grown some beautiful stems, perfect to go in a vase. Greenery and leaves can add just as much to a bouquet as the flowers, they bring the texture and green backdrop for the florals to pop against.

Come along with me as I cut a selection of flowers from the back garden and arrange them in a handtie in a vase for the living room…

When it comes to cut flowers in the garden, I don’t have a specific patch where I’m growing them in a grid like you would on a flower farm. The flowers are here there and everywhere across the garden so I want to make sure that I’m still leaving some to enjoy and for the pollinators too. When you cut the flowers, leave younger flowers and buds on the plant so they get the chance to flower later.

I’m cutting the flowers so the stems are long enough to arrange in a vase. Any leaves on the stems can be taken off later when we’re prepping them for arranging. As soon as the flowers are cut outside in the garden, they’re going straight into water in a bucket of you could reuse something like a clean yogurt tub.

Choose a mixture of flower shapes, we’ve got the pointed snap dragons, roundness of the scabiosa, and the bold focal shape of the hydrangea. Then in this case, the foliage fills in the gaps between the flowers. The technique below is great for flower table centres at your wedding or for your weekly treat of flowers at home in a vase on the kitchen table.

Now let’s take everything inside to arrange. I’m preparing everything on the table in front of me before I start arranging to make life easier when I start placing the flowers together. I’ve filled my glass vase with water in advance, my scissors are here too and the pre-cut piece of twine is at the ready.

To prepare the flowers, I’m taking off any leaves that will be below the water line. This prep makes it easier in the next stage when we’re placing the flowers in our hand to make a handtie bouquet.

One at a time, the flowers go in my hand and I build up the design making sure I’m getting a mix of all the flower shapes and foliage textures. Don’t you find the more you over think something the more fussy it becomes, I find this is the case with flower arranging too.

Keep adding your flowers and foliage to your hand, stem by stem.

Let’s tie the bouquet with the pre-cut piece of twine and cut the flower stems at an angle, placing the flowers straight into the vase of water.

Time to enjoy. Change the water in the vase every couple of days and keep the flowers away from heat and direct sunlight. My cat Leo is very into investigating flowers so I will have to display this bouquet in vases high up away from him.