I’m beginning to love creating this style of compote arrangement, but I still can’t stop thinking about fruit compotes! I’ll go through some simple step by steps on how to create this design below.
Step 1: Materials
The materials you will need
I’ve used plastic covered chicken wire, a low metal footed bowl/urn and a pair of florist’s scissors. Cut yourself a square of chicken wire, roughly A5 size and then push it into the bowl. The nice thing about Chicken wire is you can reuse it again and again. It’s helpful to dome the top of the wire and then scrunch bits underneath. Having a double layer of the wire helps keep flowers/foliage stable.
Flowers you will need
I’ll put the list of flower names at the end of the blog for you to make a note of. But at least this gives you an idea of amounts to use.
Step 2: Foliage
Placement of foliage
Putting in foliage first helps you create the shape of the arrangement, I’d cut some forget-me-knots from my garden yesterday to give them a drink before using them today. I added in eucalyptus, trailing variegated ivy and a small amount of thlaspi.
The shape you are aiming to achieve with the foliage.
This is certainly a lower style arrangement, you want foliage to drape over the edge and are aiming to have a diamond shape to it as you can see hopefully from the picture above. If your cutting greenery from the garden, use different shapes. Some delicate, some larger leafed and some trailing. This helps create movement.
Step 3: Main focal flowers
Adding in the focal flowers
This is your next step, think of focal flowers as the super duper lovely ones. They are the ones that you want to take centre stage, so they need to be seen. I’ve used dahlia, peony, stocks and calla as mine. You don’t want flowers in lines in this arrangement, as that can make it look too structured. Keep some high and tuck some low down in the bowl, if you have softer stemmed flowers like callas. Use them to drape over the edge on opposites sides of the bowl. That will help keep a flowing feel to the design.
Remember to smaller headed flowers in at different heights.
Then begin to fill in with the smaller headed flowers such as spray rose and lisianthus. Keep some of the spray rose really low, tuck into edges of design or tuck into middle. It’s lovely for the eye to be able to wonder through the arrangement and enjoy all the heights and texture.
Finished article
To finish off, you might want to add in extra delicate flowers like the thlaspi and forget-me-knots for movement over the top. Make sure you can’t see any of the chicken wire, tuck in extra bits of foliage if needed and enjoy your finished work of art!
If you want to come learn more about flowers, why not check out our workshop page or check out our other floral how-to blogposts.
Grace x
Ps: Check out my flower list below…
3 stems of flame peony
1 stem of black pearl lisianthus
3 vermeer calla
3 stems of large leaf eucalyptus
2 stems of pink fiction spray rose
3 stems of vintage brown stocks
1 stem of thlaspi
3 stems of franz Kafka dahlia