How to create a beautiful fall arrangement

Here's some ideas from floral and interior designer Rebecca Cole for turning a branch arrangement into a big and beautiful flower arrangement for a buffet or entryway.

• Start by adding the tallest and most dramatic flowers.  Delphiniums are a great choice. First, take off all the leaves on the stem so the water will reach the bud better and keep the flower lasting longer.

• Cut the stem with a paring or pocket knife at a diagonal before placing the flower into the branch arrangement. You want the most beautiful part of the flower to be at eye level, so make sure the flower stem isn't too long.

• Remember that the branches should be the tallest thing in the arrangement, taller than the flowers because that's how they naturally grow outdoors.

• Add a second kind of flower to the arrangement: a less expensive lisianthus is complimentary to the delphinium. Again, remove any leaves on the stem and cut at a diagonal before arranging.

• Next, add a kale to the arrangement. It's actually a vegetable, but opens up like a flower when you open up the head. Remove the leaves from the stem and cut at a diagonal. The kale stem is very thick so a paring knife should be used.

• Finally, a flower with a smaller head creates a nice contrast to the big kale, long delphinium, and lazy lisianthus. The small petals of a carnation will create that extra little pop. 

Hi I'm Rebecca Cole for howdini and I'm going to show you how to make a beautiful branch arrangement turn into a beautiful flower arrangement. We've just finished a really spectacular kind of simple all-branch and a little bit of green arrangement, nice balance, you know, really flowing out everywhere. And that arrangement is going to last you a good three or four weeks just like that. So now let's say the party's starting tomorrow and I want to add some flowers, and the flowers are maybe going to last us about a week so therefore we can add them and still take them out, and still have a nice big branch arrangement if you start this way. 

You want to get some tall dramatic flowers to start with. I chose delphiniums; they're absolutely spectacular. You know big branch arrangement you can't really put on your table, you put it on the buffet behind your table or in the entryway, and so if you save some of the little buds and things from the tall branches you can make little small arrangements that'll fit on your table and match. 

Now I take off all the leaves because the leaves are going to really, um, the water's going to be drawn up from here and go to the leaf, and then it's not going to get up to the bud. So in order to keep these nice, tall branches lasting a long time I take the leaves off. Then you're going to make a nice, little cut, nice sharp angle like that and start placing this in the arrangement. Now I think that's a little tall, um, and a reason I think that's tall is--I'm going to show you the wrong way first--there's a little too much green right here for the bud, and we'd have to fill in an awful lot of flowers in order to make that work. So, I'm going to take that out and cut it down a little bit lower. Our tendency when we make a tall arrangement is to really keep the stem super-duper long, but this is still going to be quite a dramatic arrangement at this height because we're going to count the height of the urn which is, you know, eighteen, twenty inches, and then the height of the stem. We'll still have a five foot arrangement if we stick it on a table, and it'll look more in proportion. You know, it's kind of like hanging a painting. You want the most beautiful part of the flower to be at eye level.

Now a less expensive flower is a lisianthus. That's this flower. It's pretty inexpensive and it comes in clumps where you're going to take off--because we want the height we may not be able to cut off all of this. I want to keep some of these pretty tall. And the branches are going to be the tallest thing in the arrangement, taller than the flowers because that's how it's going to naturally kind of grow outdoors. Now that looks good; see that's still just starting. That bud hasn't even kind of opened up yet. This one is completely done, so we'll take that off. And that one's on its way out, so I wouldn't bother putting that in.

Now here's a really cool flower. This is actually a kale; it's a vegetable. You know it's--we eat it. This is an ornamental one though. Let me show you how big and open we can make this. Take off any of the bad leaves at the bottom and then just force it open and you see now how much bigger. Look at that compared to this and how much more open it becomes. Now on the--the kale has a really thick stem. A lot of flowers have a really thick stem and sometimes when you're getting so full like this it's very difficult to get it in. So you can just take a knife, a little pocketknife or a sharp carving knife, uh, paring knife actually, and just trim the stem a bit at the place where it's going to go in. And then this is much thinner, and keep this thick because you don't want to see that in your arrangement, but you're just making a little point that's easier to stick in.

Now I still want to put some inexpensive things in and I also want to, when I make any kind of arrangement, you want to have some of your things have really big heads. You want to kind of change the, the uh, the um, dimension of the flowers because it gives it much more drama and much more interest.  So we have this big huge kale, we have a very long delphinium, the kind of lazy lisianthus, and then is actually a carnation--really inexpensive flower, but it adds a really nice little pop, the little tiny petal.

I don't know if I could fit another flower in there. I'd say that's done. A big beautiful flower arrangement for your buffet or entryway. I'm Rebecca Cole for howdini.