Romantic Dahlia Flower Arrangement

Unabashedly romantic. Hi, welcome to another video. Today, I'm gonna show you how to make this crazy romantic, exuberant bouquet of flowers featuring the Dahlia. So let's get started. Just really wanted to showcase Dahlias today. Now Dahlia is not long lasting, but they are spectacular and they come in so many amazing colors. Look at these that I have today. This is like a watermelon salmon pink Dahlia that is gigantic. Look at each flower, just gorgeous. And then I also have some of the Cafe au lait Dahlias, which have been really popular for weddings the last few years, and that beautiful translucent shell pink. So we're just gonna do a fun, happy arrangement of Dahlias. And with the Dahlias, I'm gonna use some beautiful spray roses and that watermelon pink, as well as apricot. We also have, oh, this is gonna be really fun. We also have white cosmos, white roses, and white stock. The cosmos I thought would be really fun to have it kind of like move and bob above the arrangement. I just wanted a really happy, cheerful palette with the salmon pink, some apricot white, and some pale green. And we're gonna do sort of a cascading arrangement in this rustic, rusty urn. We're gonna green in with a greenery called Naga. Naga is a wonderful greenery that lasts a long, long time that looks a lot like Italian Ruscus, except that each branch is wider, right? Not so skinny like Italian Ruscus, and it's kind of leathery, and it just lasts and lasts and lasts. And we're also gonna use some Plumosis Fern to cascade over our arrangement for like an airy, light feeling. Now, Plumosis Fern is sort of like baby's breath or carnation, you know, it's been kind of out until it's in, right? Everything old is new again. So we're just gonna green in kind of in a horizontal fashion with a Naga. I love the Naga because it's got sort of directional leaves that really lends itself to a more horizontal orientation. That's what we're gonna do. Just gonna green in in a horizontal fashion. Not a lot because we have a lot of floral materials to add into a pretty small space here. I only have like about a third block of floral foam in this small urn. You really don't need your container to be very big. We're gonna get a pretty good size arrangement in here, but our container's pretty small. When you use a smaller container, you just wanna make sure you keep it watered every day. And we're gonna just go ahead and add a little bit of Green Hydrangea. This is just a little piece that broke off from a previous arrangement I made. So I'm just gonna go ahead and add that in there so we don't waste it. And as you guys know, I love that pale fresh green. Then we're gonna go ahead and add the star of our show, the beautiful Dahlias. Okay, let's use this gorgeous tall stem right here. Now I'm not envisioning a very tall arrangement, more of like a horizontal arrangement. So I'm gonna cut this a little shorter. And I love all the side shoots of the Dahlias, so I'm not gonna cut it any more than this. Gonna go ahead and put that in here. Now, when we use Dahlias for event work, we have to keep it refrigerated, and I definitely don't recommend it if you're going to be using it outdoors where it's gonna be hot, because Dahlias are very, very heat intolerant, as I've learned from many weddings where they want cafe au lait Dahlias, and it's outdoors in the summer in California. So that's a no-no. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and use this large stem of cafe au lait Dahlias. Now, I was kind of envisioning this as a two-sided arrangement with a horizontal orientation. Now, since Dahlias are so directional, wanna make sure we put a Dahlia behind the Dahlia we put here. It doesn't have to be on the same level. I'm putting it in in a lower level, but it kind of covers the back of that Dahlia, so nobody kind of sees the back of the Dahlia, if that makes sense. And these little side shoots are wonderful to create depth and interest in your arrangement. So that's what I did, just add the cafe au lait on the other side of this pink Dahlia. Now, all these different Dahlias have different names, and I don't know the names of the Dahlias. There's a poster at one of the Dahlia growers at the San Francisco Flower Market that has the names of all the Dahlias. I should take a picture of it and learn them. I know a few, there's one called Royal, a beautiful dark burgundy. There's an orange one I love, but I don't remember the name. But I don't really grow Dahlias, because, I don't know, I think it's too hot where I am to grow Dahlias properly. So that's what we have on this side. I'm gonna keep turning it so that we don't just fill in one side, right? And have a two-sided arrangement. Just wanted this to be a really happy, cheerful, fun arrangement, in these bright, happy colors. Now, usually, when we add flowers to the ends of the arrangements, we go large to small. But I'm gonna play with scale and proportion a little today, and we're gonna go ahead and add the big flowers on the sides, too. Because I'm gonna use Cosmos, and you'll see, Cosmos is another whimsical, beautiful little flower to use. And sometimes it's fun to break the rules a little bit, right, do something a little different. Now, there's a lot of these little side buds and smaller Dahlias on the stem, so I'm just cutting them to use individually. Okay, that's what we have on this side. I'm just gonna keep turning it so you can see what we're doing on each side. I wish you all could be here to see what we're doing in real life, but you can't, so this is the best I can do. Okay. Then we're gonna add in some other flowers. I don't know, I just picked up a bunch of these spray roses just because I can't resist this color. I hope it shows it's not really hot pink, it's not really salmon, it's kind of in between. I just love this color. I think we're gonna go ahead and add some of this in here. And I love spray roses, especially when you have such large flowers to begin with, the spray roses are great to add in. Love this bright mix of colors. A lot of white accents. I'm not sure I'm gonna add it in or not because I was thinking the white would be good with the white cosmos, but maybe we don't need it. I love how colorful this is. Look at that. Isn't that gorgeous? Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Okay. Then we're gonna add in our cosmos. Cosmos is kind of a new floral material for me. It's been around forever. Every child's first garden flower is the cosmos. I remember planting cosmos seeds and there's just kind of a garden staple, but they've been gaining popularity lately because of the whimsical arrangement that's been in style where you've got stems coming here and there. You don't have these tightly mounded arrangements. You've got a stem coming out. So I'm gonna play with the cosmos today and let the cosmos elongate our lines. You're trying to do things in a more playful way and unlearn all the old rules of flower design. Play with proportion and having random things stick out in an artistic way, of course. So things like butterfly, ranunculus, cosmos have been very popular floral materials. And so now they're becoming available at the flower market. And another thing that I've been seeing is clematis, non-climbing clematis used as a cut flower. I bought some to grow this year, so I'll let you guys know how they do. They're beautiful. I would love to use them in flower arrangements. They're not always available, but I would love to use some in these flower arrangements. Just kind of having these light and airy flowers kind of float above your arrangement. That's sort of like the style I'm going for. So you don't need a lot of the cosmos to get that whimsical feeling. I don't want to overdo it. And just a few stems really just, really conveys that playfulness. You know, I always think design is really just a shorthand for feelings or emotions. Like often, you know, I don't know why I use something, but it just, that interplay of different colors or materials just really evokes a feeling. And that's sort of what I try to do in my designs. See how pretty that is, the cosmos? And see how I'm resisting adding one on the top here, right? Just kind of letting it have like a horizontal orientation. Although that might be kind of cute if it's like really out of whack and tall. I've been seeing that, like just having something really out of scale, right? No, I think that's kind of wacky looking. Sometimes you have to play with your materials a little bit. Like I haven't used cosmos much in design because, you know, until recently, it's not really a staple of the cut flower industry, but they last really well and they are so cute. And I'm gonna turn it around to see how it looks. I have white mums too, whoops. See, do we need another flower here? I feel like it's missing something here. Let me see if the white mums will look nice in here. I bought some white mums just because I wanted some white and I thought the white mums kind of echo the look of dahlias. Not a big mum person, as you guys know, but it might be kind of pretty, that daisy looking flower. The pom-pom is like too big, so I'm cutting a few stems off, setting it deep in the foam to create some depth. Yeah, I like the mums in here. I think it's kind of cute. What do you guys think? It's kind of cute, right? The pomosis keeps getting tangled. I'm gonna push it further out. Since I added white mums there, I'm gonna add a stem on this side as well. This side is fuller because we have the hydrangea, okay? Then I have some feverfew. I'm sticking with a lot of like daisy-like little flowers just to echo our cosmos, and even the dahlias have that look almost like a mum or a daisy, right? That style. See just a little sprig of the feverfew? Really cute. Feverfew's such a happy, cheerful little flower. I'm gonna remove the pomosis because it keeps getting tangled in my arrangement. Just a few sprigs of this feverfew. So cute and cheerful. There we go. I have a few stems of pink hypericum berries I think would be pretty in here. Gonna go ahead and add that in too. I think that's a fun texture and echoes the salmony pinks. Let's see. Do we want some of that apricot-y colored rose? Maybe. More feverfew here. That's really cute. Here's some of the beautiful little apricot roses. Oh, I love it. It's like pink on the outside and sort of a peachy orange on the inside. I love these luminous colors. Here we go. I added a little sprig of that on this side. I'm gonna add another sprig on this side. That apricot rose. There's so many different varieties of spray roses. When I go to market, it's really hard to keep myself from buying everything. Okay. So that's what we have so far. I think I'm gonna stop with the flowers and I'm gonna add in some accents. A few more sprigs of the feverfew. I think I'll just go ahead, add it in since what am I gonna do with three stems of feverfew, right? Add it on the end here. Then I have one of my favorite green filler flowers. This green dragon is so frilly and fun. Wondering if I should add some in here. Don't want it to have too much of that lacy texture because I'm gonna add in the plumosis fern. But I think a little bit of this might be kind of fun. Maybe I'll hold off. I'm gonna do the plumosis first. We've got these beautiful long cascades of plumosis fern. And I was gonna find a really long one to cascade kind of over the arrangement. Kind of a long slender stem. Now I grow plumosis fern. It grows really slowly in my garden. So I'm not gonna try to grow it to use. It's just so easy to buy it from the flower market. Now this is an old kind of old fashioned greenery. If you watch movies from the 30s and 40s, you know the bouquets were huge sprays of plumosis fern. The wedding bouquets. You would have wired roses with just giant mounds of plumosis fern. And it's been kind of out of favor until it's now back in favor. I kind of love using it because it's so airy and light. And just nothing quite like it. So I'm kind of embracing the resurgence of plumosis fern. Just trying to detangle it. They tangle all together. Here's a beautiful one that is really long and wispy. It can cascade over arrangement. This is what I mean. Kind of like a veiled arrangement almost. To make it look interesting. So I'm gonna go ahead and put the stem in the foam so it has water. For the rest of the arrangement, I just want this to cascade over it. That's how I wanna use the plumosis fern. Like a veiled arrangement. Then I'm gonna go ahead and add some of the plumosis fern to the ends of the arrangement so that we have like a cascade. Love all these happy colors. And be careful when you work with plumosis. It's got little thorns. So we're gonna add another stem on this side to kind of cascade over this part of the arrangement and elongate that horizontal line. There we go. And I'm gonna add a stem that I cut off over here. Then we're just gonna artfully place this skinny stem of plumosis over our arrangement for kind of a veiled look. Now I'm gonna take all this greenery away, step back, assess my arrangement, see if I need to add anything else in here. I think it's pretty much done. I'm glad I didn't add the green dragon because I think it might interfere with the line of the plumosis we just added. Now I may add a few leaves, a few more sprigs of the naga because I think it needs something in the front. Just a little bit of this greenery. So you can see a little bit of it peeking out. Should we add a few sprigs of the green dragon? Maybe, I think that would be very pretty. Just very little. Guys, don't let me overdo it. It's a beautiful texture. That lime green that I love. Just adding a little sprig here, right here. Added some of the green dragon. I'll do a little bit on this side as well. What do you guys think? Do we need a few more sprigs of the cosmos? Don't want to add it too tall because we have this beautiful arching branch of fern. So I'm going to add it to the ends. I think we are done. You guys have to stop me. Okay, I think this is gorgeous. These are my favorite colors. I love these pinks and apricots. I especially love them together in this cheerful, fun palette. And it's a very airy and light arrangement, even though we've got these heavy, larger elements of hydrangeas and giant dahlias. That's why I decided to use all this cascading greenery and these little wispy cosmos, just to lend this aura of airiness around a very full and heavy arrangement. So this is an unabashedly romantic arrangement featuring the dahlia. I hope you enjoyed watching me make this arrangement and learn something today. As always, please like and subscribe. Send me a comment to let me know what you're doing this week. And I will see you in my next video.