If you want to know how to arrange flowers like a professional, look no further than the wonderful advice from our Head of Gardens and professional florist, Rachel Bull. She shares her seasonal tips and tricks for making the most of your garden and how to display your homegrown blooms in her Petals & Roots series for Homes & Gardens.
In one of her latest videos, Rachel talks us through how to design a bud vase arrangement that's perfect for your summer table decor ideas.
Plus, she suggests ways to incorporate flowers that you might be growing in your own garden right now, whether you have a dedicated cutting patch or a more wild display.
Watch Rachel's video on designing a bud vase arrangement
'This is a really quick and easy way to bring a dining table to life if you haven't got a huge budget,' says Rachel. Here she shows us how to create a bud vase arrangement using wild flowers that you can cut from your garden in five steps.
1. Start with bolder blooms
Rachel starts her arrangement by choosing some bright and cheerful flowers, including some dramatic pink dahlias from her own cutting patch. 'Place the larger flowers slightly lower down in the vase, so that they've got enough room to show off,' she says.'
Rachel then repeats the process, with soft purple scabious, and delicate white dog roses, placing each dominant bloom in it's own bud vase, and trimming the stems so that the flower heads sit just proud of the rim.
2. Add height
Next, Rachel starts to build height with vibrant green alchemilla mollis. 'It self-seeds so this grows all over my garden,' Rachel says. She trims the stems a little longer than the others, so that they higher than other flowers in the vases.
She also adds some stems of blossomy white meadowsweet. 'This also grows everywhere, really wild, in my garden,' says Rachel, 'but when it flowers it looks super pretty.' She places the stems slightly higher up in the arrangement to add texture and draw the eye upwards.
3. Consider scent
'The thing about garden flowers is that you always get scent,' says Rachel. 'So as soon as you've arranged these and brought them inside, they're going to make your table smell beautiful.'
Opt for flowers like lavender, wild dog roses and sweet peas to add an extra dimension to your display through fragrance.
4. Give each flower space
'Then we've got some lovely nigella, which is just starting to come up in my cutting patch,' continues Rachel. She removes the lower leaves to keep them out of the water, which will cause them to rot and reduce the lifespan of your flowers.
'By giving them a bit of extra space, you are just giving every single flower the chance to show off a little bit,' She adds.
5. Add the finishing touches
Next Rachel adds some purple toadflax and takes a wild vibrant pink dog rose, which she cuts really low so that it fills out almost the entire opening of the vase. Finally, she delicately places some stems of lavender amongst the other flowers.
'You can put more than one stem in a vase, and if I do that, I tend to make one slightly taller than the other,' she adds. 'It's a really elegant and beautiful way to bring a little bit of your garden inside.'
If you're looking for wildflower garden ideas or best cutting garden flowers to grow, you'll find plenty of brilliant advice and inspiration in our Gardens section.
Shop the prettiest bud vases for your arrangements
This pretty set of bud vases in pastel hues and delicate vintage-style designs are in different heights to bring added depth to your display.
These mouth-blown recycled bud vases have fluted openings to help position your flowers in an open and natural display.
Ideal for single stems or a few small ones due to their narrow openings, these pretty mushroom-shaped vases are a close match to these ALDI bud vases, in case you miss them before they sell out.
