Let’s Look At – Floral Foam

These are bricks of dry and wet foam.

In the shop, we used floral foam. The light green foam is dry foam. This is a harder brick and is used for artificial and dried flowers. The darker brick is wet foam.  When I was learning floral design over 50 years ago, nearly 85% of fresh flower arrangements were created using wet floral foam. We bought the wet foam by the case. Each case held 48 bricks. I could pick up the box with two fingers when the bricks were dry. Dad warned us - “You can pick that up with two fingers, dry, but you get that box totally wet, and a forklift can’t lift it!”. We did not try that experiment.

Wet foam was a by-product from another industry in the early 1900’s. The wet floral foam, the spongy phenolic foam used for real flower arranging was developed by V.L. Smithers. It soaks up water like a sponge and acts both as a preservative to prolong the life of the flowers and a support to hold them in place. The foam's structure is similar to that of plants and has capillary action to move water to the surface and up the stem.

But environmentalists are calling for wet foam to be banned. It is non-biodegradable. Wet foam does not dissolve, it breaks into smaller and smaller pieces.  A 2019 study showed that floral foam harms aquatic organisms.

Wet foam has been called magical, remarkable and a great product of convenience. It can be cut and molded to desired shapes. It can hold up to 50 times its weight in water. Wet foam holds a flower stem in a stable position and allows water to be carried through the stem.  Plus, it is inexpensive.