Floral Arrangements for Your Dinner Party

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With each new season, we have a different variety of wonderful blooms to incorporate into our interior floral arrangements and brighten our homes. Whether you have a creative eye or simply love to surround yourself with flowers, a beautiful floral arrangement is one sure-fire way to impress your dinner party guests and add that finishing touch to the dining table. Simple or elaborate, classic or edgy, there’s a style to suit all abilities, tastes and interiors.

Seasonal blooms

Whilst spring seems to be arriving late to the party this year in Scotland, there are still many glorious seasonal blooms popping up in the garden and flowers shops – including bluebells, daffodils, tulips, hellebore, anemone, hyacinth, iris, freesia and ranunculus.

You will find these flowers almost everywhere, even in the supermarkets, so there are plenty of options to stunning floral arrangements for your dinner party, bringing an array of soft pastel or bright, bold colours to the dining table. Use nature as a guide and you can’t go wrong!

Mix and match

A vase featuring just one type of bloom is always a fail-safe way for anyone to bring flowers into the home, but it’s also fun to experiment by mixing and matching different types of blooms. Whether you ask a florist to use their expertise to create an elaborate floral arrangement for your dining room, pick a selection of wild flowers from your own garden, or incorporate supermarket flowers with a select few stems from a specialist shop, simply bear in mind the space and colour scheme where the flowers will be placed.

You may wish to create a monochromatic arrangement with different types of blooms, or a variety of flowers in different shades of the same colour, or even different types and colours of flowers all mixed together. For a classic look, choose colours of flowers that compliment one another – like white blooms mixed with soft pink, pale blue and lilac stems. Or go bold and contemporary with a rainbow of vibrant colours to create a real statement arrangement.

Get creative

Typically, larger and taller flowers should be positioned in the centre of your vase, with smaller flowers and stems around the perimeter. This will allow you to create a beautiful, symmetrical, balanced shape and flower arrangement. However, this rule is not set in stone – feel free to just go wild and experiment! If you want to get really creative, why not consider the ancient Japanese tradition of Ikebana for a unique and eye-catching flower arrangement for your dining room?

Ikebana is a complex practice that originated in the seventh century. Unlike the symmetrical tradition of flower arranging that we are more familiar with, ikebana creates balance and beautiful forms through asymmetry and minimalism. The process is somewhat meditative, bringing harmony into the home through elegant contours and flowers that blend seamlessly with their surroundings. The result is really quite wonderful.

Basic flower arranging techniques

When it comes to professional flower arranging, there are certain techniques and rules that one usually follows – but for your home, it’s all about what make you happy. However, it is important to prepare your flowers carefully to get the most from your arrangement.

  • Choose your vase to determine the appropriate height for each stem.
  • Ensure the vase is thoroughly clean to avoid the transference and growth of bacteria.
  • Cut the stems at a 45-degree angle.
  • If you’re including woodier stems, gently smash the end of the stems to allow them to absorb water.
  • Remove any leaves that will be immersed below the water line within the vase – this will prevent the leaves from rotting and keep the water clear for longer.
  • Use odd numbers of blooms, where possible, to create balance.
  • Depending on the vase, you may benefit from gently securing the arrangement with floral tape or a rubber band around the stems
  • Remove dead or wilting leaves and blooms to channel energy to the healthy blooms and emerging buds.

To keep your floral arrangement fresh for as long as possible, add flower preserve to the water. Try to keep your arrangement out of direct sunlight and away from heat sources that could wilt the flowers. Check the water daily and change it if it becomes murky, removing any leaves of petals that may have fallen into the vase. You may also wish to trim the stems every few days to allow the flowers to better absorb water and nutrients.

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