Making a bright summer arrangement

Summer is the perfect season for enjoying the beauty of nature. The ideal way of celebrating the season is by welcoming nature into your home or office with a fine fresh flower bouquet. You will find a wide selection of blooms at your local and online florist. If you have never created your own flower arrangement, here is what you will need and how to arrange these blooms to perfection.

You need:

• 5 gerbera daisies (orange)

• 5 to 7 blue irises

• 8 roses (red)

• 3 – 5 bunches of yellow lilliums

• 2 – 3 types of foliage like ferns

• Scissors

• Elastic band

• Decorative ribbon

• Tissue paper (optional)

Instructions:

• When you choose your flowers, it’s important to select both warm and contrasting cooler colours. If you like, you can alternate the colours. For example, you could use red gerberas and orange roses.

• Start with one of your irises in the middle and add liliums to either side.

• Add roses on the remaining opposite sides of the centre of the arrangement.

• Follow this by adding gerberas and a touch of foliage around the central flowers. Continue by adding more irises, roses, lilliums, gerberas, and splashes of foliage to complete the bouquet.

• Fern leaves look particularly lovely around the outer edge of the bouquet.

• Now use an elastic band to secure the stems together.

• Use the ribbon to conceal the elastic band.

• To keep your flowers fresh, make sure that you keep them in water until you plan on delivering them.

• If you want to enjoy these flowers yourself, you can simply arrange them directly in a vase without the elastic band and ribbon. If you want to present the flowers as a gift, you can also wrap them in some decorative paper.