Let's Look At - A Tulip Example . . .

An example of tulips illustrating Flower Arranging vs. Floral design!!

It has been a while since I have posted. My posting in the past have been about flower arrangement ideas and how to care for fresh flowers. COVID caught up with us! It made me slow down. I am able to collect my thoughts and present an updated program for Techniques4Flowers.

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I want to move on to floral design. I’m not going to create classes for this, I am going to start by showing the different techniques I have used in the past to assist in floral design. I have started meeting with old friends in the floral business. They have given me the ideas I want to present to you. I will present them in the coming months. We are still working on that!

For this post to illustrate my argument, I want to present tulips. They are one of my favorite flowers! It also my way to demonstrate the difference between flower arranging and floral design.

In my opinion, flower arranging is placing floral blooms in a vase. If one loves flowers, a vase of blooms is always gorgeous. They will be delightful as long as they are healthy. A vase of tulip blooms, as in the left illustration above, is eye catching and always lovely. Once they begin to wilt, the enjoyment of the arrangement is lost. 

Wikipedia defines floral design as “the art of using plant materials and flowers to create an eye-catching and balanced composition or display”. A floral design of tulips, as in the illustration on the right, is more controlled. The placement of each tulip is conceived to complete the picture designed by the circumstance. This example was a table centerpiece. Another example to use tulips may be in a hand bouquet. Those methods would be different to control the blooms. 

There are many techniques used to produce an arrangement that make the work look effortless to produce.  I see that constantly in the work of other floral designers, many amaze me.