3 stunning floral arrangements to instantly brighten up your home

3 Beautiful Floral Arrangements to Brighten Up Your Home

Floral artist and award-winning landscape designer Lucy Hunter celebrates the intricate cycles of the natural world. Here, she shares some artful arrangements from her book, The Flower Hunter.

Taking Time to Appreciate Nature

We live in a busy world, but it never ceases to amaze me how the garden quietly thrives on its own. We need to take the time to look at, marvel, and appreciate the splendor of the natural world. Whether you have a large garden, a small courtyard, a balcony, or even just a window box, there will be a plant that you can sow, nurture, grow, and eventually cut and bring inside to arrange in an urn, vase, or glass jar.

When Lucy isn’t gardening in her North Wales garden or creating eclectic seasonal arrangements in her studio, she paints. “I’ve always found myself drawn to the landscape,” she says. “It keeps me curious and quiets my restless mind.”

An Everlasting Arrangement

For those who don’t fancy attaching dried flowers to the wall, here is an option for a table arrangement using dried flowers and a vintage glass flower frog to hold the stems.

A frog is a glass sphere with a flat bottom and holes in the sides that I push the dried stems into and hold in place, if needed, with floral fix. Using a similar palette to the wall bouquet, I have included Lunaria annua var. albiflora (honesty), larkspur, limonium, Stipa tenuissima ‘Pony Tails’, Lathyrus latifolius (perennial sweet pea), the grey wispy flower heads of Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’, and dried dahlia heads.

Summer Abundance

You don’t need to grow armfuls of flowers to enjoy them inside. Lupins, verbascums, and pale yellow Aquilegia chrysantha will all grow in a container. Coriander has delicate white flowers if allowed to bolt and will live on a windowsill.

Elegantly Slumping

As the energy in the garden slows, my arrangements take on an elegant slump. This one combines Rosa ‘Gentle Hermione’ with Dahlia ‘Wizard of Oz’, Echinacea pallida, some flowering purple basil that smells delicious, thalictrum leaves and Spiraea ‘Arguta’ (bridal wreath) foliage cut from the garden, plus a few leftover ‘Purple Tiger’ and ‘Café Latte’ roses. I arrange the flowers in an old silver bowl using a pin frog and chicken wire held in place with floral tape, allowing the stems to fall naturally as they might do in the garden at this time of year.

Edited extract from The Flower Hunter by Lucy Hunter.