How To Make A Beautiful Winter Flower Arrangement – And One For Spring Too

A few weeks ago, I published a post about our holiday dinner tablescape, and it included a winter flower arrangement. Actually four of them! One of our fellow readers asked for a closer look at the vases, and a tutorial on how to put the arrangements together.

I always figure, if one person asks a question, probably other people have the same question, so here’s a little step by step for a winter flower arrangement.

I also happened to do a more springtime arrangement around that same time, using the same technique. So we’ll get a spring arrangement too, just for variety!

The First Step to A Beautiful Winter Flower Arrangement

As I mentioned in the original post, you can start your arrangement a couple different ways. I usually choose the flowers first, then find the right vase for them. Especially if you’re heading out to the yard to gather some greenery and/or flowers, you’d probably want to do it that way.

But if you have a particular vase you want to use, you can decide on that first, then find the right flowers and greenery to go in it. That’s what I did here.

I bought these pedestal vases for my Milestone Birthday Party. I got them at the wholesale florist though, and I wasn’t able to find them for the longest time. But Yaay!! I finally found something very close! Click this link or go to the shopping section below.

In any case, I chose the vases, bought a dozen white roses at the store, then went out into the yard to gather up some greenery for a winter flower arrangement.

The Greenery that Makes a Winter Flower Arrangement

The thing that really makes this flower arrangement a “Winter” one, is the greenery. I chose some evergreen and some holly-like Oregon Grape leaves. I also got some ivy, so I had that Holly and the Ivy thing going on.

The greenery can really set the tone for whatever season or theme you have in mind. You’ll see in the spring arrangement below, that I left out the evergreen and pointed leaves, so that takes out the winter element completely.

And oops – I just realized that when I did this tutorial arrangement, I forgot to include the evergreen with the cones on it! Sorry about that! But here’s a closeup from the original table arrangement so you can see how it fit in.

Gather Your Supplies

For most arrangements, you’ll need some flowers, possibly some greenery, something to cut them with, and something to put them in. Although I didn’t use them here, you might also want some flower food and some flower spray to protect your arrangments and help them last longer.

I like to gather up everything I’m going to need before I start. It just makes it easier and more fun.

Depending on what you decide to put your flowers in, you might need other things – like something to hold the stems in place. There are various supplies for this, like flower frogs, chicken wire, or vase toppers, but in our case, we’re going to use clear tape.

Prepare Your Winter Flower Arrangement Vase

So now that we have our materials and supplies all ready, we’re going to prepare the vase. Because this one is so shallow, the stems have a tendency to pop out. So the tape method works well.

Basically, you’re going to make a grid of tape over the top of your vase. My best tip here is to make sure your vase is completely dry before you start taping. I’ve had bad luck in the past, trying to tape over a wet edge.

Your grid doesn’t have to be precise or fancy – just slap the tape on there. See? I have all kinds of tape hanging over the edge of the vase and you can barely see it unless the light is just right and you’re looking really hard!

Add the Water

There are different schools of thought about when to add the water to your arrangements, but I usually like to add most of it at this stage, and top up when the arrangement is in place.

l put it in now because the stems often change their position with the addition of the water, and I want to know exactly how it’s going to behave before I put it on the table. You can play around with this and see which way suits you best. This is the time to put in your flower food if you’re going to use it.

Stick in the Hanging Stems

With an arrangement like this, I only want a couple hanging pieces, so I stick them in first. I didn’t want it to be too symetrical, so I just put some at about 1:00, 3:00, 7:00, 9:00, and 11:00-ish. If you have thinner or fuller greenery, you can play around with what looks best for your winter flower arrangement.

The stems are mostly just lying almost flat across the edge of the vase, with the bottoms in the water. The tape basically holds them in.

Here’s how it looks in process from the side. In the original arrangement, I put the evergreens in at this stage too.

Add the Filler Greenery

Then put in your filler greens. In this case, it’s the Oregon grape, which is bushy and pretty flat. It sticks right in the top and reaches just past the edge of the vase without really hanging.

Keep adding your other greenery until you’re happy with the fullness and coverage of the tape grid.

Besides the Oregon grape, I had some bay sprigs that I used to fill in any bare spots. It also gave some contrasting texture and extra interest to our winter flower arrangement.

Look at it From All Angles

At this point, step back and look at your arrangement from all sides. Especially if it’s going in the middle of a table, you’ll want it to look nice from everyone’s seats. Make sure every dinner guest can see some drape and some of each type of greens.

You also want to check to make sure the arrangement looks balanced. Here, I knew I was going to put some trailing ivy in later, so I was ok with more drape on the right. If I hadn’t been going to add that in, I would have done more drape on the left.

The Feature of the Winter Flower Arrangement

Then put in your feature flowers – mine were the white roses. As you can see, I only needed three to make this arrangement interesting. I cut the stems to about 3 inches, and put them straight down into the grid. The greenery held them in place.

Make sure you don’t cut the stems too short right off the bat. You want to make sure you have enough length to put them low in the water. You can always adjust and clip a little more off if you need to.

I like to set a grouping like this a little off to one side. I think that makes it look more artistic and interesting.I chose the side of the arrangement that was opposite to the heavier drape and fill, so it would balance out better.

Add the Final Trailing Plant

The ivy gives our winter flower arrangement the final touch. I like the gracefulness of the flowy shape, and it also fills in the space between arrangements on the table.

Just tuck it up under one side of the arrangement, and double check to make sure it’s really in the water. Ivy is easy to do this with. If you have more substantial trailing pieces, you can add them at the earlier stage if you want.

Adjust the trailing piece until you’re happy with how it looks.

Put the Winter Flower Arrangement in Place

Then VERY CAREFULLY move the arrangement to its final display place! I usually try to make sure I can see the water level, as I’m particularly prone to tipping them as I go.

Equally as carefully, fill the vase the rest of the way with water. The trick here is not to let the water run off the leaves and onto the table. I usually use a watering can with a very thin spout that can reach down between the greenery without disturbing it too much.

Then fluff it back up a bit if you need to, and you’re set!

Fast and Easy

There! I think it’s taken me twice as long to tell you about it, than it takes to actually make this arrangement! Once you get the hang of it, it’s really fast and easy. And fun too!

The Springtime Version of the Winter Flower Arrangement

Then just to show you a slightly different version, here – very quickly – are the same steps with some spring flowers.

Gather up your materials and supplies,

and put the tape grid on your shallow vases.

Prepare Your Flowers

If your roses have those wonky outside petals, go ahead and pull them gently off at this stage.

In this case, the “base” wasn’t the greenery, but the roses. I cut the stems short again, and put them basically straight down into the vase. The tape holds them up – mostly – until the rest go in to steady them. (I did cut them a little shorter after I took this picture. As you can see, they’re still leaning a bit too much.)

I had a couple different colors, so I put all of the peachy ones in the middle.

Then put the pink roses on either side of your center peach ones.

Fill in with the Other Flowers

I don’t bother to unwrap all the packaging if I’m just going to trim the stems short. Cut the plastic so you can get to the stems.

Then cut the whole bunch right off, just a little longer than you think you want. Tulips are easy to cut with regular kitchen scissors, but you can use your clippers if the stems are more substantial.

Fill in the spaces with your tulips. Feel free to move things around a bit, if that makes it prettier.

Add the Greenery

Then add your trailing greenery. I like to put it mostly at the ends for the same reason as above – to fill out the table a bit.

And That’s It!

There we go! I hope you enjoyed our little tutorial for a winter flower arrangement, and a spring one too. You can see how the basic “taped vase” idea works with different flowers. Let me know in the Comments if you have questions, or you want to add to the conversation. I’d love to hear how you do your flowers!

Thanks so much for joining me, and Happy Arranging!

Click on the pictures below for links to the pieces I mentioned in this post. If something’s not available, I chose a similar replacement.

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Pin the Winter Flower Arrangement for Later

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