Your CartSunflowers are the symbol of happiness, adoration, loyalty, and longevity. They bring in the sun! Lighten up chez vous with happiness, hope and smiling flower faces this month. To help you make the most of these happy beauties, I’m sharing some sunflower arranging tips – How to Arrange Sunflowers with Style – so that you can bring some of summer’s favorite flowers home to brighten your days.
Welcome to Monday Morning Blooms! If you came via Mary, Pam, or Sarah, it’s so nice to meet you, I hope you will become one of our circle of friends at FrenchGardenHouse and join me often here on the blog.
Mary, Pam and I are thrilled to have our friend Sarah from Hyacinths for the Soul join us today. You are in for a great flowery kind of day, I’ll share their links at the bottom of this post because you will want to see every single petal of every single summer flower.
For happy summer flower inspiration, we’re all celebrating the sunflower this Monday. Sunflowers are magical flowers in so many ways. Not only can they follow the sun during the day by turning around to face the warmth and brightness, they can grow really, really tall! The height will vary between varieties, but some sunflowers have grown over 30 feet high!
Not happy with being just ONE flower, each sunflower bloom contains hundreds of individual flowers.The middle of the bloom is composed of really tiny flowers called disc flowers. Those things we all call petals are actually ray flowers.
Sunflower Varieties
It’s mind boggling to think that there are over 70 species of sunflowers and hundreds of variations. Sunflowers come in all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes. Some of the newer varieties include maroon, pink and red petals, or really shaggy petals that almost look like fringe.
For this month’s Monday Morning Blooms, I made a monochromatic arrangement for a graduation party using all yellow sunflowers and other yellow flowers. Our girl graduated from Middle School, and while the family was visiting us for summer, we had a casual BBQ party in the garden to celebrate her. {Especially important since we were not able to celebrate any kind of thing when she graduated from Elementary school during the pandemic.} It was a little late – but this is the time all the family could fly in so we celebrated her in August!
The sunflower theme was perfect for her, she is a sunny girl!
HOW TO ARRANGE SUNFLOWERS WITH STYLE
First here are some of my best tips for arranging sunflowers, they’re not fussy, really.
Buying the Right Sunflowers
There are many beautiful bouquets of sunflowers to buy. I suggest you try to buy the flowers that are the tightest, still in a bud shape if possible. That way they will last the longest at home, you’ll be able to watch them open up.
Unwrapping Your Sunflower Bouquet
After you get your sunflowers home from the market, the farmer’s market or the grower, unwrap them. Since sunflower stems are fuzzy, some people’s hands are irritated by the little bristles. If that is you, just wear gloves when cleaning and arranging your sunflowers.
Sunflower Care
Sunflowers are very thirsty flowers! Once you get them home, give them a good drink of room temperature water asap. I usually put all the flowers I buy or cut from the garden in an antique zinc flower bucket, but any kind of container that you can fill with plenty of water works. Once you begin arranging, cut their stem with a sharp knife so they can hydrate themselves as much as possible, this will give them a longer life.
In your arrangement, you’ll want to check the water level in your container every day since sunflowers are such drinkers. Changing the water to clean water help prevent the buildup of harmful bacteria, and keeps your water smelling fresh. I add a tiny bit of household bleach to the water to keep the water clear, too.
To Go Solo or Combine with Others
Sunflowers are big, bright and take center stage. They look amazing in a vase all by themselves, but pair well with roses, daisies, asters, and chrysanthemums. You can add contrasting colors, or go for a mono-chromatic look like I did for this arrangement. Other flowers won’t eclipse the grand sunflower, they are just meant to shine!
Choose the Right Container
Sunflowers are really heavy flowers, so be sure to choose a vase that can take the weight. The last thing you want to do is work at making a stunning arrangement, putting it on your French hutch and then it falls over.
Vases that are tall, with a smaller top work great. The wider the opening of your vase is, the more difficult it might be to arrange the flowers. {Unless you buy a huge amount of flowers and put them close together and cut their stems very short.} For this arrangement, I used a short but heavy glass vase which is my favorite, it looks great in ‘real life’ but not as pretty in photos.
Create a Sunny Arrangement
Now that you’ve taken your flowers out of the packaging, and prepared a vase for them, it’s time to design a pretty summery arrangement! Be sure to use your sharp knife or flower shears to cut each stem at a 45º angle. For the buffet table for the graduation party, this sunflower arrangement was perfect.
If you are only using sunflowers, simply put each stem in your vase or container. Once you have looked at your arrangement, you can move blooms around. You can cut stems to different heights, although my personal preference is to have all of the flowers almost the same height. Remove a few flowers and trim them a little and put them back in your vase. This will help your sunflower bouquet look big and showy.
For a mixed arrangement, start with your filler flowers, then add the other flowers. I began this arrangement by putting in the seeded eucalyptus, then the alstroemeria, then the sunflowers. Those cute yellow ball craspedia flowersI were popped in, and the wild chamomile last. Make sure to spread the showy sunflowers throughout your bouquet so that every view point has some sunshine! The celebratory paper banners added fun.
Sunflowers
Alstroemeria Lemonade
Craspedia {Drumstick Flower}
Seeded Eucalyptus
Wild Chamomile
For my table I used a favorite blue and yellow tablecloth as a base for my sunny sunflower arrangement. The antique ironstone French plates have just arrived to the shop from France – they are gorgeous aren’t they?!
My daughter’s friend made these beautiful cookies – they added so much to our desserts table.
DREAM BIG!
You and you alone are the only person who can live the life that writes the story that you were meant to tell.
It was a blessed family party celebrating our girl! The weather outside was perfect, we grilled, we ate, we toasted our glasses to her! Her mom said a beautiful prayer before the meal began, we all held hands and said a blessing over her for her new adventure into high school. {yikes!! She was just a baby yesterday it seems like.}
I printed this graduation saying on our printer at home and added the little graphic graduation cap, then inserted in a black wooden frame behind glass to put on the food buffet. Such a simple inexpensive touch that adds so much to a buffet table!
It’s been a busy summer at FrenchGardenHouse with several milestone parties, family dinners, get-togethers, beach days and more. {loved every minute of it, now sitting in the garden with a glass of lemonade and a good book sounds good!}
I hope you go and buy yourself a big bunch of sunflowers and enjoy all the beauty this sunny bloom has to offer. Party not needed, they will warm up your home during ‘regular’ days, too.
Please be sure to join my friends today for their sunny posts! I’m sharing their links below….see you there! xo
Sarah at Hyacinths for the Soul
and me, Lidy at FrenchGardenHouse
Add Your Two Cents:
How do you arrange sunflowers at home? Do you love them all by themselves, or do you have a favorite combination of flowers that support the diva sunflower?
A BIENTOT
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