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Do-it-yourself floral design

It’s amazing what things you see watching television on a Friday night after 10 o’clock! The warnings before the shows start are amazing and can really paint a picture of what’s to come: nudity, violence, coarse language, etc. Things are getting so extreme! Anyway, after doing all the appropriate “research” needed, I am ready to write this article. I stayed up late many nights! Go get your glasses, pour yourself a drink, and get ready… I’m going to talk about floral S&M!

Yes, the floral world is full of scenes of violence (we use knives all the time), nudity (I strip each stem of its leaves as I work with it!) and as for coarse language, well; I AM from Nova Scotia, so try and define “coarse”! Also, the sex is fun, fast and furious: there’s pollen everywhere, seeds as results of passionate embraces and brief encounters, and also many scents to lure and entice!

One thing that caught my eye on some TV shows was the way and the use of materials that the people used to tie (each other) with, and I thought of how I use these “techniques” in my floral design work every day. Binding, banding and baling are the three ways we hold floral materials (as well as other things) together, and are wonderful to do…in the right circumstances!

Now, dig your mind out of the bedroom, and pay attention. What is to follow can be a little confusing what with all the terms and techniques, and you may have to re-read this again and again before things become clear as mud. Even writing this is getting me all mixed up, but you will be so much better off after absorbing all this wisdom. Baling can be used on a floral design, one that is a tight cluster, for example, to give it a more sheltered and compact look. This is more often done as a decorative accent to a design, rather than a function, and materials used can include decorative wire, string, twine, ribbons and yarns.

Get a low dish and fill it with warm, fortified water (this is water that has floral preservative added to it). Add to this a tight bunch of lovely summer roses, peonies, or other “bunchy” flowers. Then, as a pretty accent to your floral design, loosely wrap a complementing thin organza ribbon or soft yarn all around and over it. Don’t get too fussy about making sure each swoop of the ribbon is perfectly spaced, as the looser and haphazard you create the look, the better it will be.

Place this beautiful design on a table as a centerpiece, and wait for the comments! You can also create complementing taller side pieces by binding, then baling together, bunches of greenery like iris or cattail foliage, and setting them in vases that are banded (this would be SO cool!) with materials that match the colours in your centerpiece. But wait now; don’t run off just yet…read on so you can know what I mean by binding and banding…

Binding is one of the more well-known, and most used, floral techniques. Every time flowers are tied for a bouquet, the stems are bound together. Although used as a decoration sometimes, binding’s primary use is that of function: holding the materials together! One thing to remember though is not to bind the stems too tight or too loose. Let me explain this as delicately as I can…you know when you have to hold onto your child so they don’t get away from you? You hold on tight enough that they can’t squirm out of your grip, but not so tight as to cut off circulation or cause a bruise! That is how tight you need to bind stems of flowers.

I like to bind together dead branches from the garden and lay them on a table for a fast centerpiece, adding faux stems of flowers throughout for colour and interest. This is easy to do, and since the stems are all still piled up out back where I left them this spring, it not only makes use of them, but it puts a stop to the “when are you going to get rid of all that mess?” (See, things are left for a reason, although we don’t always know the reason at the time.) After that, I will band the stems (if I didn’t use a nice binding material in the first place) and sometimes also bale the whole thing with pretty beaded wire.

“Now, won’t you look good this summer,
when you’re out in the garden, showing off
to the relatives from Ontario...you’ll be knotting,
bunching and twisting, while the cameras
flash and the videos whirl!”

Confused yet? It’ll take awhile, but soon you’ll understand. When I work with flowers that are a bit top heavy, like peonies, roses and gerbera daisies, I often bind (and then band) the stems to hold them in place better. Think about this: when you gather stems from your garden and tie them with an elastic band, you are really binding them! Who knew you were actually a floral artist at work when you were bunching onions or rhubarb?

Banding is pretty much the exact same thing as binding, except this is mainly for a decoration, and not so much as a means of holding stems in place. Sometimes we like to add a pretty ribbon to a stem-cut bouquet, wrapping the stems that we bound together with tape or string. Wrap a plain vase with raffia, and tuck in a pretty feather here and there, or some “bling” and a plain ol’ boring vase has been transformed into a wonderful piece, worthy of your glorious stems! You might think of using a ginger jar type of vase, and wrap it with beaded wire (or strand of beads from your Mardi Gras days), maybe in blue or purple shades, and then add those fabulous lupines that we have all over the place! Remember to cut your flowers the day before you need them, or at least in the morning before the sun dries them too much (so you can let them drink well), and also to let the “inhabitants” on them find new homes, too!

Banding, binding, and baling—three tools of the trade that we use a lot not only in the floral world, but also in every day life! Now, won’t you look good this summer, when you’re out doing your thing in the garden, showing off to the relatives from Ontario…you’ll be knotting, bunching and twisting, while the cameras flash and the videos whirl! They will be so impressed at your floral and design knowledge that they’ll forget to complain about the crappy road conditions, the black flies, and lack of Starbucks in the country!

Have a great time, and remember that happiness is holding flowers in both hands!

Neville works in his store,My Mother’s Bloomers,in Halifax and is a designer, writer, speaker and floral judge, traveling North America. He’s been pushing petals for over 25 years, and lives just out of the city with his partner, David, three cats, and an overgrown garden.