Create a Stunning Late Summer Flower Arrangement | Step-by-Step Floristry Tutorial

Hello and welcome to today's late summer pot arrangement tutorial. I haven't done a video for a while so welcome back for those of you that follow me and if you don't follow me already then you can subscribe to my channel later. Today we're going to be showing you how to do a pot arrangement. I've got a lovely ceramic pot here using a flower frog and I like to do a grid as well on the top just to make sure everything stays in place. I've got a plethora of flowers that I had left over from my job that I did so some of these are from our cutting patch as well but we've got some lovely hydrangeas, there's some sedums, snapdragons, we've got some little blackberries, there's mint, there's sage, there's some cosmos, some amaranthus, so loads in there and I just thought it would be nice to spend 10 minutes putting together a lovely flower arrangement and hopefully inspiring you to do the same at home. So first things first we use these little flower frogs, they're little pins, you can get them in various sizes, this is actually quite a small one but what I do find is that it helps secure the stems in the bottom of the vase. So I've just got a little tape on the bottom here, this is a waterproof tape which just makes it a bit sticky and we just place that in the vase like so. I've a bit of oasis tape here and I just like to create a grid on top of the vase or pot so just by creating a few vertical lines and then we do a few horizontal lines as well and what I find is that this helps keep the stems in place, it gives some support to some of the larger stems and it's a really easy way to arrange flowers at home. So we just go along, I'm doing three lines each way, I'm not worrying if there's that even, you could get your tape measure out if you want but I'm just eyeballing it and hoping that they're reasonably, reasonably even and I just squeeze the tape together on those cross hatches and you can see the grid there. Don't forget to top up with water at this stage which is the stage I always forget, so just some clean tap water just in the bottom and then we're ready to start arranging. So normally when I'm doing arrangements like this I like to start off with my foliage but I've got these amazing, I call them candle hydrangeas, amazing hydrangeas and I think actually I'm going to start off with those in first. I'm actually going to only use one of these but it's so big I want to actually build my foliage around this so I'm going to roughly work out how high I want it by holding it up to the pot then cut the stem and with the hydrangeas I always recommend cutting up the stem and it just helps give that a little bit more moisture so cut up the stem, you can crush it as well if you want to but I find cutting makes sure that the capillaries in the actual hydrangea are kept open and then I'm going to place this in our vase but I'm also going to try and make sure it's secured in that flower fog so in those pins at the bottom because it's such a heavy head if you just had it on the grid it would probably flop about a little bit so I'm going to have it just kind of coming out the side I think and now I'm going to build around that with some foliage so from the cutting patch I've got some sage and got some sage and some mint and I'm just going to go around and place that through my grid and I might secure a few of those stems onto that flower fog and when I'm saying securing the stems you can just literally just push them on push the push the stems into the pins and you'll feel the pins grab them and if you just go around oh this sage smells incredible incredible incredible I'll probably need a higher bit in the middle slightly there lovely and then I've got this flowering mint um which is a bit wayward it's kind of a little bit over actually I still really love it when it's kind of a bit the flowers are kind of just fading so I'm going to use some of this as well this is a branched piece so I'm getting lots of lovely bits on here and I'm doing an all-around arrangement so I'm putting some in the front there and I'm also going to be building around each side as well rather than just a one-sided some of the pieces I'm going to keep quite long and wayward and keep those maybe coming through the middle I haven't practiced this in advance so I have no idea what it's going to turn out like I'm just using some flowers that I really love at the moment oh there's a ladybird we've got little friend let's rescue her um that I really love at the moment and that I think really kind of reflect the season that late summer kind of transitioning to early autumn season so there we go and then next I think we need something to kind of balance out this humongous head here so I love sedum I think it's a really underrated plant in the garden um and really underrated for flower arrangements but can you see the similarity actually between the sedum and the hydrangea they're beautiful together so I'm going to use some sedum and the sedum will balance out the shape of that hydrangea you can see at the moment a bit kind of like one moment over there but what by popping in something bigger like the sedum the rounder heads will just help give a little bit more balance to the arrangement hopefully I'm just going around this side so I'm just using two actually I know we try and say odd numbers and twos and three threes and fives and sevens but actually sometimes it's okay to break the rules right okay right next in I'm going to put my dahlias oh my gosh these are amazing I've actually stripped the cutting patch so these ones were from a lovely flower grower that I sometimes use and I just thought this is just they're just obviously it's not there you can't beat a dahlia um fantastic to grow if you do grow them as well uh mine have been a bit late flowering this year so far but we're starting and I had an amazing like bronze cornell I think they're called um amazing bronze one which was just yummy so the dahlia these ones are actually great because they have uh quite long flower stems uh but they've also got the buddy bit so I love using the buds so what I'm going to do is cut the flower head out we're going to use him as well let's pop him in first I'm just going to kind of go in maybe here with him I want to try and get him in the flower pin as well flower frog if I can there we go and then I'm going to use the buds as well because I think you'll agree hopefully that it gives a little bit more dimension to the arrangement otherwise it can make a little bit flat and not not that garden-y and go in here with this one lovely and I've got another another guy here I'm going to pop him in the side and this one here as well all right yumma right and again if you've got any left over little buddy bits they can go inside I'm just going to pop him in the top there give him a look oh I like that as it is actually uh but we're going to do a bit more because um well I've got a bit more to to use in there I've got some amaranthus uh this is called I'll show you on camera this is called hot biscuit uh really beautiful amaranthus uh this is we grew this this year uh from seed um these are the smaller bits we use the tall spikes in some amazing urns we did at the weekend which had like a toffee kind of vibe going on um but these little side shoots will just be perfect for an arrangement like this and actually I love it that just brings the autumn that's like your pumpkin spice latte coming through so I'm just going to thread some of these through our arrangement and oh my goodness I love that yes some through the top I'm going to keep the leaves on um sometimes the leaves on amaranthus can go over a bit quickly so if they do for any reason you can just go around your arrangement and just kind of swipe them off but if we can leave them on I love them because you can see here I'm going to go like a bit bronzy at the edges I'm just going to start leaning down a little bit into my arrangement so I can see where some of the holes are because I'm mainly doing it looking down it's nice to always just occasionally lean down see what's happening a bit lower and then we're going to use a bit of cosmos again this is cosmos that we've grown um we were a bit put late putting this in this year so we haven't got loads we normally have like a whole bed of cosmos but this variety is really really pretty can't remember the name lost the label um but really really beautiful to just kind of dangle through and actually what it does is it provides an interim colour because at the moment the only white thing in the arrangement you can see when you take them away is the dahlia so by adding in a cosmos that's a smaller flower a bit more delicate we're just creating an extra dimension they're going to go around round round like this oh yeah look at that dance as well and it moves and then finally I think finally we're going to use some of the blackberry because you know what I love them I think they're really really beautiful and you can see the kind of colour that they bring to the arrangement which I think would just be fantastic so I'm going to thread a couple of these I'm starting on the side that I'm looking at first and then I'll swing it around just want to make sure it's kind of in actually I'm just going to prop it up I've got a little sweet pea tendril here so my sweet peas have almost finished but I love using these little kind of tendril bits in the flower arrangements because it just gives that nice gardeny oh yeah lovely gardening texture to the arrangement as well and then I'm going to pop a few more of the little blackberries through I might use some of the lower bits here because some of these have come on really long stems these don't have these are actually commercially produced blackberries so they're not they have not got spikes all the way up because my hands would be in tatters if they did but they have got this lovely spike free stem and little clusters all the way up so I'm going to try and utilize those as much as possible there we go and then that one coming out there lovely a bit of sweet pea stem and let's clear the decks down and you can then see if we need to add anything else in so I've got just a little hole here you see um so I think I will probably pop something in there on the whole I'm pretty happy with that late summer flower arrangement I've got a little bit of clematis this is a little bit old but you can see we've stripped the vines here so these are all the vines that have the leaves on them made them into a wreath but I've got a little bit left so what I might just do is pop it's in there wasn't but a little bit of this clematis vine through to just give it a bit more I think I could do a little bit here as well it's a bit flat so these are the little tweaks that we always make um it's one of the most important parts of flower arranging is just having a bit of a look using your eyes making sure everything is balanced and then giving it a bit of a tweak if it needs it so there we have it there is our quick and easy well hopefully quick and easy late summer bars uh pot arrangement really um celebrating the seasons with hydrangea, blackberries, dahlias, amaranthus, cosmos, sedum, sweet pea tendrils and clematis and I hope you enjoy it