How to Build Your V-Day Bouquet

Ohio City’s Lush & Lovely Floristry has a handful of build-a-bouquet workshops every month. But in case you can’t get to this month’s Valentine’s Day-themed workshops Feb. 13 & 14, sisters and co-owners Brooke Witt and Brianna Jones step us through how to make the perfect personal floral bouquet.

Pick your poison: Start by picking your green foliage, such as broadleafed silver dollar eucalyptus or the tightly packed leaves of Israeli rucus, and filler flowers such as the tiny clustered limonium. Three stems of each should do. Then find a focal flower such as dahlias, which look like blossoming suns, poofy China mums or roselike peonies, and use two stems of those. It doesn’t have to be an expensive flower — it just needs to be eye-catching. “When you think of a bouquet, anything where your eye immediately goes to are the focal flowers,” says Witt.

Harmonious arrangement: To form the bouquet, strip all the leaves off the bottom halves of each stem. In one hand, hold the first stem of foliage at a slight angle. Add in your first filler flower at an angle so that the stems cross. Repeat with the rest of the foliage and filler flowers so that the stems form a skinny teepee shape. Finish with your focal flowers also at an angle. “People usually read left to right,” says Jones. “I do my focal flowers one on the left and then down and to the right.”

Little touches: Use brown twine to add a hand-tied touch to the bouquet. “It’s not like the Boy Scouts,” Jones says. “You don’t have to be really good at it.” Wrap the twine around the stems where they all cross a few times and tie a bow. Snip the ends of all the stems at a 45-degree angle so they are all the same length. Cover the base of the bouquet in kraft paper or burlap for a just-out-of-the-garden look.