I have written and rewritten this blog post trying to find the best way to explain this topic. To address it in the way that runs through my mind while designing everything from a simple bouquet to an elegant arbor piece. To explain it in a way that is relatable, easy to understand and perhaps even from a different perspective that will inspire rather than overwhelm.

Choosing which varieties of flowers to grow is a more complex process than flipping through a catalog and choosing what you, as the grower, likes. Sure, we should grow flowers we are drawn to but in the business of flower farming you also need to grow what you can sell, what is in demand. During the exercise of choosing which varieties to grow you also should understand the different roles those flowers can play in a bouquet or design.

Looking at the different varieties as components in a design is an area, aside from color palettes and the actual designing with flowers, where creativity comes into play for the flower farmer. It is also the first part of creativity before you have those stems of flowers in hand to actually design with. I love the growing side, the business plotting side but I also love the challenge of the designing side. Most of us who decide to take the leap into flower farming most likely don’t have set skills for flower arranging outside of our raw natural talent. Some flower farmers attempt to avoid flower arranging like it is the plague: too overwhelming, too nerve-wracking or simply it does not float their boat so to speak. That is okay, we don’t all have to incorporate being the florist and the farmer.

Actually, there could be a lot of freedom in not playing both roles on top of all the admin work of running your own small business. On the other hand, a lot of flower farmers are also creatives. Many of us were drawn to flower farming for the aspect of design as well. To be able to design with the flowers we worked so hard to grow. Floral design can be another outlet for the creative side of the flower farmer and bonus: can give a bigger return per stem for the grower, especially a small scale grower.

Even if designing with flowers is not of interest to you, you should understand the basic roles (components) of the different variety of crops you are growing can play. This will allow you to be able to better educate your clients, up-sell your product or even problem solve for those DIY brides you’re selling a bulk bucket to. Locally grown flowers are a whole other game than designing with the imported or more common crops used in floral design. As the farmer, we need to be able to help our customers be able to enjoy and use the amazing, sometimes rather unusual, crops we have to offer. If we are looking to sell mixed bouquets and flower arrangements, we also need to be able to use the various ingredients in a way to escalate our own offerings, to make them unusual, sought after and professional.

Let’s get started into breaking down some of the basic components that the different varieties are! Side note: these are guidelines to get you started and not rules! There is always room for creative freedom and discretion!

When you are deciding which flowers and varieties of those flowers to grow, you are in fact beginning to design. Especially if you have decided to sell mixed bouquets or be a farmer-florist and provide florals for events, choosing which varieties to grow is the beginning steps of this process. Unless you have a florist handing you a list to grow for them, most likely you will have to begin selecting the varieties to grow yourself.

Your mixed bouquet/design work should be more intricate than the vegetable farmer selling a big handful of zinnias for three bucks, especially if you want to ask fifteen for them! Your end product should look professionally put together instead of looking like a home owner’s arrangement who clipped random ingredients from their garden because if your product looks like that, it will devalue your product. You need to have an elevated product, and to accomplish this you need to know the different roles each flower can play, how to utilize them and ratios of these components to create an aesthetically pleasing end product.

When I am choosing which flowers to grow for my end products I like to think of the flowers as if they are in a theatrical performance. We have the stage (the background), we have the story line with highs and lows, we have the main character, supporting characters and the little details that bring interest and fun to the performance.

Think about a play missing parts of those vital details. A play without a background to aide in the story telling or at the very least a background that makes the characters stand out.

Think of a plot that is flat all the way through. We all tend to fall for the hero’s journey which typically come with highs and lows.

What if there were no supporting characters for the main characters to play off of?

Also, the little drops of jokes or perhaps even a some smoke from a machine add to the play, though a small detail, it captures your attention more and may be the part that left the biggest impression, that “wow” factor.

Thinking of the different components in this way works for my brain and helps it to relax, experiment and better plan my crops. I personally like the idea that the flowers we select, lovingly grow then hand over to our amazing diverse customers, gives a performance of their lifetime. The song and dance of their life and ultimately ending in their death.

The Background aka Filler component

The background on stage accounts for most space of everything, stretching across behind the entirety of the stage. Your foliage and filler, are very similar to this in your mixed bouquets and designs. Foliage and filler will make up the majority of your mixed bouquets, as well as some design works, depending on your style.

There truly is never enough foliage in my opinion. Especially if you are not at the point of having adequate perennials, finding enough foliage is one of those tricky tasks especially in spring through early summer. Having enough however, is worth the hassle. It will keep your designs from looking over stuffed and from you overstuffing your bouquets. Bonus, foliage tends to outlast a majority of most flowers which gives longer vase life. Basically we are looking at filler as the bulk of the bouquet while also highlighting our other ingredients. Foliage does great for that.

Green is a great color to use as a background but the background doesn’t have to be filled only by foliage. This is the great part of being the grower and the designer! Filler flowers can be used in place of foliage or in conjunction with the foliage. Many of the filler flowers can also cross over into fulfilling different roles in the bouquet depending on your design. For example, using ammi is both a supporting character and could even play as a main character in a wildflower style design or as background as a filler flower. Depending on what you are designing, the size of the ammi, etc. These components are flexible and can be switched up. Growing flowers that have a multitude of uses is like having bonus fries at the bottom of the bag (or bonus blooms?). Especially when I’m running a little low on foliage that’s when using statice and feverfew help to fill a bouquet to make it look more lush. The layering of the different filler flowers also adds to the interest of the end product. Even using bachelor buttons as an early spring flower, cutting the foliage is a great way to save some time tediously harvesting single blooms of bachelor buttons while also getting an early season filler!

Filler examples: dusty miller, feverfew, eucalyptus, statice, seeded cress

The Story line aka the Spike component

In a play, if the plot or story line didn’t go anywhere it would get fairly boring quick, right? Much like the story line in a play we want our bouquets and designs to keep our customers’s attention. Though each component in a play aides in the story, ya need the story. The story line in a design would be considered the spikes. In a wrapped bouquet they are the first flowers that may draw a potential customer in they also keep your eyes moving over the bouquet/design. The highs, the lows it breaks up the design and keeps you visually engaged by guiding you to look at all the details throughout the design.

As a bonus, a lot of the various spike flowers also tend to be fragrant: lemon mint bee balm, stock, snapdragons and flowering tobacco are just a few example that not only tantalize the eyes but the sense of smell as well! Don’t forget the amazing advantage of scrumptious scents that locally grown flowers have over some of the more commonly imported flowers.

Spike Examples: Stock, snapdragons, larkspur, bells of Ireland, clarkia, salvia

The Supporting Characters aka Disk component

In a play, the main character cannot shine alone. In fact, the supporting character tends to draw the best or sometimes the worst out of the main character. It allows the main character to stand out and become a multi-faced character that is more appealing, relatable and intriguing.

Disk components have a similar role to the supporting character in this sense. They can support by holding up the head of a focal flower to make it stand out more or be more protected. The disks are typically the bridge to other components in colors or designs to better tie the bouquet together. For example a queen lime orange zinnia can be the bridge color between yellow sunflowers and sherbet pom dahlias in a bouquet.

Disks can also different design pieces. For example, a strawflower can unite a bridal bouquet to the groom’s boutonniere. Disks can add interest and scent. The disks alone maybe lack luster, smaller in flower size and the focal flowers alone may take a lot more than you want to incorporate to make an impact or are too overwhelming but together disks and focal can play off each other. The disk components can make those larger focal flowers shine brighter.

Disk Examples: zinnia, cosmos, dianthus, calendula, strawflower, marigolds

The little details aka Airy Component

Right here, this little part is really what sets us flower farmers apart from those who use primarily imported goods. It comes down to the little details that our customers really come to enjoy. Airy components brings attention and movement, in a little different way than spikes. Where spikes demand your eyes to scan the entirety of a design or bouquet, airy elements demand customers to take a second or third look at the design. A slight breeze and the elegant movement of frosted explosion grass, or seeing a tiny tomato in the arrangement makes a customer stop and often engage in a conversation, are they seeing what they are seeing? It’s so unusual! Airy components also break up the bouquet/arrangement giving the different components a chance to “breathe” by providing a little space. I also like to think of the airy components as “bouquet glitter.” Airy components make the bouquet shimmer and memorable.

Airy Examples: grasses, nigella, soapwort, German chamomile, scabiosa

The Main Characters aka the Focal component

The main character, the hero in their journey, the character where the play is designed to get us to buy that seat ticket and get emotionally invested in. Focal flowers play a similar role in that all the other components are there to point to the focal flower. The focal flower should be the flower that captures your attention and the reason you come back for more. The focal The main character, the hero in their journey, the character where the play is designed to get us to buy that seat ticket and get emotionally invested in. Focal flowers play a similar role in that all the other components are there to point to the focal flower. The focal flower should be the flower that captures your attention and the reason you come back for more. The focal flower will typically dictate the design’s style, color palette, flow, shape, etc. Everything else in the bouquet is there to help out that focal flower, to keep you invested in that flower. Early spring tulips twirl like ballerinas in their vase amongst twisted curly willow branches where ranunculus and anemones come together with stock, cress and bachelor buttons to the summer loving sunflowers and dahlias being tucked amongst the flowering tobacco amidst scented geraniums and zinnias.

Our first year of flower farming, Graham was a little confused as to why so much variety? Couldn’t you just have a full bouquet of dahlias? You absolutely can! At the same time, focal flowers tend to be pricier flowers. Pricier to invest in, grow and demanding, they are stunners but there is an invested and tired grower behind those blooms! It can be difficult to sell a straight bunch of dahlias for the value they are worth and make the bouquet look visibly filled to value. By tucking in some grass or foliage, even with the same amount of dahlias all of sudden the perceived value of the bouquet increases, which makes it easier to demand a higher value. Also, layering in different varieties of flowers will also provide a range of vase lives which could extend the vase life of your product.

A side note…

A focal flower doesn’t have to be the “typical” focal flower. The focal flower is the flower you decide is the star of the show. Something that is large and attention demanding. These are usually ball or dinner plate dahlias, single stemmed sunflowers, ranunculus, etc. As mentioned in the background section, depending on your design the focal could even be a big ammi!

Focal Examples: ball dahlias, ranunculus, anemone, tulip, large zinnias, sunflowers

When you bring all these different components together, they begin to tell a story that your customers will be enchanted by. The layering of different colors, textures, components, vase life and fragrances bring your mixed bouquets/designs to a professional level. It takes practice learning how to utilize each one but with a little bit of time and practice it will become second nature!

Recipe for our Standard Mixed Bouquet

Though it is hard to give exact numbers on our bouquets, because it truly depends on the season, for example if it’s early spring our bouquet will be mainly tulips with some flowering branches but in summer it becomes more fluffy with sunflowers being surrounded by cheerful blooms and lush greenery. With that said, here is loosely our recipe, in time you will get a feel of the correct size in your hand and visually. Early spring bouquets are going to be smaller than later on bouquets, the flowers are more sparse and higher value blooms. It is a balancing act between giving a product that is visually filled to value and filled to the correct value.

Focals: 1-5

Disks: 5-15

Spikes: 3-9

Airy: 3-9

Foliage:3-9

Remember: have fun with it!

It’s important that while you are designing with the flowers to also have fun with it!

Last summer we had some guests come to the farm, harvest their own flowers then design with them. Each individual, with the same instruction and access to flowers had such unique designs! Just like flower farming, design is not one size fits all. Create what you love and your designs will attract your ideal customer!

Hopefully this post has given you an idea and a jumpstart to help you better crop plan and decide what to grow to ultimately having the confidence to begin assembling mixed bouquets or floral designs!

As always, we are looking forward to helping you hand blooms soon!

Jessica & Graham

SHAMELESS PLUG!

FLOWER FARMING BUSINESS

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The Theatrical Performance of Flowers: aka the breakdown of different design components