Home and Garden

You do not need to buy expensive roses from a specialized florist to enjoy a beautifully designed vase of fresh roses. You can easily arrange a dozen roses yourself by buying them at the supermarket and taking the time to carefully arrange them yourself at home.

1. Fill your vase 3/4 full with tepid water. To improve the longevity of the roses, mix an additive for cut flowers into the water. The warmer the water, the faster the roses will open. Colored roses open much faster than red roses, which have been treated to open more slowly.

2. Arrange the greens by holding your one tall green in middle of your hand and work around the edges building a hand held look with your greens. Trim off bottom of greens and place in vase. The greens should be resting on edge of vase with a secure feeling; if the greens are loose your arrangement will not work. If you need to add a few more pieces of green to this mixture to fill in do so at this time. This should take about a half bunch of leather-leaf fern for an arrangement of a dozen roses.

3. Pick your tallest, straightest, tightest closed rose for your first placement. It should be 1 to 1 1/2 times again as tall as your vase. This will set the height and width of your arrangement, so keep that in mind. Submerge the stem in tepid water and then snip the stem at an angle, to bring the rose to the perfect height, and place it in the very center hole of your grid.

4. Select your next 5 roses based on tightness of head, height, and straightness of stem. Remove any large thorns before inserting roses into greens. Hold the roses up to the vase until the top of the heads of these 5 roses reach the bottom of the head of the first rose you placed in the vase. Snip all 5 the same length, at an angle, where they will be high enough to stand at the measured height. Place them in aiming towards the center rose making sure they are an equal space apart.

5. Measure the 6 remaining roses to be about 4 to 6 inches shorter than your tallest rose, so that they will land the same distance from the bottom of the top rose and the top of the vase, cut all the same length, at an angle.

6. Fill in between the 5 roses aiming towards the bottom of the vase, so that roses will be seen from every angle around the vase, once the arrangement is complete. Each rose may not stay in the exact place you want it at this point; that, too, is okay.

7. Pick the prettiest, fullest, most open rose to be the center of the front of your arrangement. Even though it will be arranged "all around", you will have a front. You can even snip this rose a little shorter and put it back in, if you wish, as it will be your focal point, and should be the lowest rose toward the vase.

8. Fill in the holes with the filler flowers. Divide your filler and make sure you fill in all around the vase pretty much equally. You don't want filler in every spot, this will make it too round and full. You want air space there, too, you just want to make sure the color is somewhat evenly distributed. Pay extra attention to your focal flower that you placed lower in the front. The filler flower will frame and accentuate your other flowers, and should always be lower and deeper in your arrangement than your main flower, the rose.

9. Move away from the arrangement and squint your eyes to make sure you don't see any "holes" that need a little color. Look at your arrangement from the level which it will be placed. If it is going on a 3' tall table, look at it from that view, you will see more of the top than the bottom, so your focus should be that way. If you will be seated around it, look at it from a seated position, from every angle, if it will be up high, make sure it looks good from the bottom.

10. Fill in with extra greenery to make sure no mechanics (tape, rose stems, etc) are showing, making sure to leave air holes.