Flowers at the supermarket are hard to resist. Displayed at the front of the store so you see them when you enter and leave, they’re conveniently arranged in bunches for you to just grab and go.
I frequently buy flowers at the supermarket, and I’m hardly alone. According to the 2016 Generations of Flowers Study by the American Floral Endowment and the Society of American Florists, 70 percent of consumers now purchase flowers for themselves at supermarkets.
But once people take their store-bought bouquets home, they are often unsure how to arrange them. If you’ve faced this quandary, I did a little experiment to help you.
Visiting my local Trader Joe’s, I picked up a mixed bouquet for $9.99. (Such a deal!) To show you there’s more you can do with the flowers than just plop them in a vase, here are three ways you can arrange them. Hopefully, you’ll be inspired to give yourselves flowers more often. You deserve them!
1. Market-arranged
The simplest way to display a store-bought bouquet is to keep the arrangement created by the supermarket. Most people opt to use this method, but they skip the most important step — cutting the stems. Hold the bouquet with one hand to keep the arrangement in place and, with the other, snip the stems using floral shears. Fresh cuts that are at an angle will help the blooms drink up more water. And be sure to remove any greenery that will be submerged in the water to help prevent bacteria growth. Place the bouquet in a vase and you’ve added instant beauty to a room.
2. Florist-style dome arrangement
Turn your standard supermarket bouquet into an expensive-looking arrangement that looks as if it came from a florist. Select a vase that is shorter so there will be less visual emphasis on the stems. Then cut the stems short so they sit just above the rim of the vase, with the stems in the middle of the vase a little bit taller, resulting in a dome shape. I also recommend clustering together similar flowers — for example, placing all the Gerber daisies together and all the mums together — instead of mixing them up as the supermarket originally arranged them. This results in a cleaner, more modern arrangement.
3. Deconstructed arrangement
One of my favorite ways to display a supermarket bouquet is to deconstruct it. Take apart the bouquet, and separate it into groupings of the same flowers. Then take out all the mismatched vases you have (or even drinking glasses), and place one grouping of flowers in each vase. Depending on the bouquet you bought, some vases will contain large bunches while others will hold just a single stem. This type of arrangement reminds me of a display you’d see in a flower shop window. I particularly love using deconstructed arrangements as a centerpiece because several smaller vases across a dinner table can make a bigger impact than one larger arrangement. Plus it requires absolutely no artistic ability.
Jonathan Fong is the author of “Walls That Wow,” “Flowers That Wow” and “Parties That Wow,” and host of “Style With a Smile” on YouTube. You can see more of his do-it-yourself projects at jonathanfongstyle.com.
