Flowers are beautiful. No matter what you do with them, whether you can arrange them tidy and neat or they’ll just go wild and bushy – they are beautiful. Sometimes it’s better to know about colour and composition, but my personal belief is: you can’t really spoil their beauty. Probably the only way to do it is to take away as much natural from flowers as possible. When a bit to much of artificial decoration is used like glitter on petals or paper around each flower or beads it’s difficult to see the grace of flower itself. So the only guideline I follow arranging flowers is – keep it simple and let the power of natural charm shine.

It took me 4 or 5 hours to get ready for the next day market. In a quiet short time I handed more than 200 stems of different flowers all colours and sorts.

That was the first time ever I purchased wholesale flowers and it was a surprise for me to get them in big long boxes like ordinary parcels – and with no water inside. Probably it’s a common method, but as a newbie I expected a dozen of buckets or plastic vases or something that sort… Roses and fresias were good. Though I got some bunches in wrong colour – they were in a good condition. But Hydrangea who literary is named after water because it’s watering demand (latin “hydra” is for “water”) was suffering. I didn’t know what to do. I considered the option of calling to the seller and make a return and refund for that dull and tired flowers. But curiosity won and I wanted to try reanimate them. So I looked through my flower book and some sites in the internet and found some common methods.

Nobody that evening was aloud to take a bath, because hydrangea was soaking and resting there. Now I know for sure it works, as I did it twice and twice the results were evident. You pour cold water into bath about 20 cm deep and add some ice. First you leave hydrangea upside down with the flowers dipped in water and stems sticking up in the air for about 30 minutes. Then you cut 2-3 cm of the stem and put flowers horizontally so the inflorescence and the stem are both in the water. Allow to rest about 2 hours. And that is surprising but they’ll be just like freshly cut!

I used hydrangea in 4 bouquets and left some spare stems. And now, when more than a week passed and flowers are tired and about to fade the hydrangea is still fresh and glowing. Amazing!

Hope this information is useful for you and you’ll use it to make your flowers last longer.