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How to Create Sunny Arrangements that Welcome Summer

June brings us summer.  Is there anyone who doesn’t love a beautiful sunny day?  Sunshine is well known to uplift moods.  Even when the sky is dotted with puffy white clouds, it’s fun to visualize different “cloud characters” and watch them change into new characters as they slowly drift by.

Just thinking about the arrival of summer makes me want to create sunny yellow flower arrangements…and find a way to sprinkle them with white clouds!  The obvious answer is yellow flowers with just a sprinkling of white flowers.

Lucky me!  I have just enough flowers to create two sunny arrangements.  My choice of flowers will be yellow daisy chrysanthemums, yellow roses, and just a sprinkle of white dogwood blossoms.  Non floral materials include Oasis, clear tape, floral tape, knife, a pair of sharp floral clippers and a plastic container to hold Oasis for one of the chosen containers.

However, the very first and most important design step is to cut the ends of the flower stems under water with a pair of sharp clippers.  Warm water is preferred because it moves up the stems to the blossoms faster.  It is still important to let the stems sit in the warm water for a minimum of 30 minutes to fully hydrate before starting a floral design.

For containers, I have chosen a low scalloped pewter dish with 3 legs and a yellow ceramic gravy boat.  The pewter dish has a diameter of 9.5” and a height of 2.5”.  It requires a liner for the Oasis because metallic containers give off ions that cause flowers to deteriorate faster.  The yellow ceramic gravy boat is 8.25” long and has a height of 5.5”.  It will not need to be lined.

So the flowers are now fully hydrated and we are ready to create sunny flower arrangements!  Let’s start with the pewter dish.  First, place the plastic liner with Oasis in the dish.  It’s a good idea to start by first placing the flowers that will define the “outer limits” of the finished design i.e. the top and the sides.  In this case, it is the white dogwood blossoms. Even an “all-around” arrangement has a focal point.  I created a focal point in the front of the arrangement by closely clustering 5 yellow roses.  The yellow daisy mums can be used to fill below the roses and around the sides.  The finished pewter dish sunny arrangement is 16” in width and 8” in height.

So the yellow ceramic gravy boat is on the runway waiting to be appropriately filled with sunny flowers.  It will not need a liner because the dish has a glazed finished.  The dish will need slightly less than ¼ of a block of Oasis.  It is requires fewer flowers, which includes 3 yellow roses, 2 stems of daisy mums, and 3-4 white dogwood blossoms.  The finished gravy boat arrangement is about 7” in height and the flowers spill a little bit over the front, but do not overlap the ends. I did not want to lose the gravy boat character.

I hope that both of these flower arrangements are reminiscent of sunny summer skies with fluffy white clouds, and that you have many wonderful, summer experiences.

by Evelyn Kinville, Behnke’s Garden Blogger

Stephanie Fleming was raised at Behnke’s Nurseries in Beltsville. Her Mom, Sonja, was one of Albert & Rose Behnke’s four children. She was weeding from the moment she could walk and hiding as soon as she was old enough to run, so many weeds, so little time. Although she quickly learned how to pull out a perennial and get taken off of weed pulling duty.

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