Sophie Witham: Top Tips for creating a Floral Centrepiece

Our wonderful house florist Sophie, hosts an array of floral workshop throughout the year at Thyme, sharing her expert knowledge and inspiring creativity. Ahead of her next set of workshops throughout this year, Sophie shares some of her top tips and floral wisdom for creating abundant centrepieces at home.

Choosing your vessel:

Any container that holds water works well as a vessel for flowers. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a vase - ceramic & glass jugs, zinc buckets, vintage bottles & glasses are all great alternatives to the classic vase. Your choice of vessel will depend on the size of the arrangement you want to create. Whatever you pick, make sure the vessel is squeaky clean to help prolong vase life of the flowers.

Position of arrangement:

Before you begin to create your display it’s a good idea to think about where it will sit in your home, as this will impact your overall shape and design. If you are making an arrangement for your kitchen table then the flowers will be displayed in the round. If however it’s for a mantelpiece, the back of your arrangement will be mainly foliage and flatter in shape as you focus the flowers and details to the front of the arrangement where they will be seen.

Start with foliage:

Having added clean cold water to your vessel, choose a lovely mix of different types of foliage giving you texture and tone. At Thyme, we love to include a wide range of herbs and pieces foraged from the hedgerows to give extra detail and fragrance to our displays. Layer the different foliages into your vessel making sure that all the stems below the rim of the vase have been stripped giving you clean stems. This will extend the vase life of your flowers. 

Adding the main flowers:

Start with placing the bigger flowers in the vessel first. You can cut the stems to different heights, so some of these flowers sit at the rim of the vase and others sit higher in the arrangement. This will ensure that the arrangement works in the round, giving interest throughout.

Adding the filler flowers:

These flowers are the smaller, sometimes tiny little flowers and grasses, that can often be overlooked and therefore not included in arrangements. The filler flowers however, are really important as they give detail, interest, movement and texture that you cannot often replicate with the bigger flowers. Add these smaller pieces to the vase dotting them throughout the arrangement. Again, these can be cut to different lengths, helping you create a display that has a just- picked -from -the -garden look. 

Keep your water clean:

It really helps the longevity of flowers for the water in the vase to be changed regularly- every other day if possible. This keeps the water clean which in turn stops the flowers turning so quickly. Also, be mindful to not place your display in either direct sunlight or near a radiator.