I’m excited! The tide is definitely turning – more and more florists and flower arrangers are ditching the floral foam and reverting to tried and tested methods for arranging flowers. I’ve recently been on two courses to learn how to arrange flowers using chicken wire as a base and it is amazing what can be achieved. The design pictured was made on the ‘Abundant Urn’ course at The Sussex Flower School packed with colour, texture and form and made entirely from British flowers and foliage! By placing a small piece of chicken wire inside the urn it is easy to arrange the stems so that they are supported by the wire and I am sure you will agree the design looks so much more natural.
The second course I went on was in London with renowned Royal florist Shane Connolly. First he demonstrated how to make a design without even using chicken wire – just crossing the stems to form a strong base to support the lighter materials. Then we each had an opportunity to make our own huge arrangement using a large glass urn bursting with Autumnal colour and texture and all made using British foliage – we didn’t even need to add flowers it was so colourful! It really was inspirational to watch Shane at work whilst he created such beautiful and impressive designs using really quite a simple base structure that is accessible to anyone wanting to arrange flowers without floral foam. With the march against plastics gaining momentum now is the time for foam to be given up once and for all – it is completely unnecessary and now that we know how harmful it is to the environment there can be no excuse to keep using it. For more information and to see some fabulous images you can follow @nofloralfoam on Instagram – and if you look very carefully you will find a post featuring one of Chez Fleur’s foam free designs!! Enjoy x
