There are a few flowers that actually start blooming before spring. Anemones, amaryllis, and ranunculus are all winter flowers, and all three stay vibrant in the spring. Hellebores, an evergreen plant, also blooms during March, and daffodils and poppies both start waking up around this time. 

As we drift later into April and the weather warms up, you’ll start to see some garden favorites! Bleeding hearts, bluebells, and bachelor buttons bring unique touches to arrangements, and they flourish in April. For a very short time this month–only a week or two–lilacs also blossom. And if there’s one flower that symbolizes spring, it’s tulips! April brings a vast variety of tulips to the shop, and each one is uniquely beautiful!

After winter, early spring flowers are truly Mother Nature’s gift to us. Our Spring Designer’s Choice is a perfect way to enjoy this gift!

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Centerpieces

If you’re hosting Easter dinner or brunch, a centerpiece is a great way to liven up the table setting! The most important thing for a centerpiece is to allow your guests to see over it. For a rectangular table, something long and low would look lovely and complement the table shape. Or something low and circular for a round table. Alternatively, a short and compact arrangement in a vase is a great hostess gift because it could work both as a centerpiece and as an accent on a coffee or end table!

Corsages

If you’re in the mood for something a little more traditional, Easter corsages for the ladies in your life may be for you! Fresh flowers are a great addition to any outfit, especially one as fancy as your Sunday best. Whether you’re going to church or having a nice brunch with family, our designers will make sure that your corsages look as beautiful as the woman wearing them!

Easter Flowers

Spring is the season of flowers, and Easter brings some of the prettiest blooms to the table! I’ve written about seasonal spring flowers before, but some of our favorites for Easter specifically include tulips, hyacinths, and the ever-popular peony. Plus, thanks to our partnership with Old Dominion Flower Cooperative, we’ll have more unique flowers like daffodils on a weekly basis! 

Easter Arrangements

This time of year, we get to experiment with fun additions to our regular designs! Baskets are a popular vessel for flowers in spring, and we have all kinds of lovely pastel baskets here at the shop. We also have little plastic eggs in all sorts of spring colors! If you’re looking for a sweet addition to the holiday, one of our favorite arrangements this time of year is the whimsical Jelly Joy!

If you need any Easter flowers, just give us a call!

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Tulips

Photo credit: Travel Photographer on Negativespace

To me, there’s no flower that says “spring” like tulips! These beautiful flowers shine on their own in arrangements like Totally Tulips, but they also work very well mixed in with other spring flowers. One of my favorites is the Tulipris, which pairs pastel colored tulips with vibrant irises!

Hyacinths

Photo credit: Piqsels

If I had to pick a favorite spring flower, I’d pick the hyacinth! This flower offers a unique look to arrangements like the Christine, and it comes in all sorts of beautiful spring colors. My personal favorite is the pink hyacinth pictured above!

Peonies

Photo credit: pixel2013 on Pixnio

Around this time of year, the most requested flower is the popular peony! This flower isn’t in season quite yet, but its time to shine is coming up soon. Peonies are definitely on the more expensive side, but they’re absolutely gorgeous in arrangements like the Penny!

ODFC

This year, we’re extremely excited to once again partner with Old Dominion Flower Cooperative to bring you locally grown seasonal flowers! ODFC always supplies beautiful, unique flower varieties, and it’s always exciting to get their deliveries. In terms of early spring flowers, we’ll soon have access to anemones, daffodils, and hellebore, along with so many others!

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Ranunculus

When people ask me for a budget-friendly flower that is similar to peonies, I always suggest ranunculus. It’s a smaller flower but has the same delicate look that peonies have. Ranunculus comes in lots of fun colors, and each bloom within the bunch will be slightly different. Some blooms will be darker, some lighter, and some will have picotee edging.

Blooming Viburnum

The smell of viburnum flowers is the smell of spring in Virginia for me. When you walk through the woods in early spring, I think viburnum is the predominant scent. They are a lovely, lacey flower that look like a cross between hydrangea and Queen Anne’s lace.

Mini Calla Lilies

I’ve planted these around my yard. They come back each spring and change in color as they mature. In arrangements, they had great texture and provide fun focal points.

Tulips

Tulips are probably the quintessential spring flower. They are one of the first flowers to emerge after winter and come in all different colors and textures. They are also one of the few flowers that continue to grow after they are cut so you have to use them strategically in arrangements. I joke that tulips are like kids–they keep growing and have a mind of their own.

Stock

I’ve never understood why this wonderful flower has such a blah name. Stock comes in beautiful spring colors and adds height and dimension to arrangements. I often see our designers composing a beautiful arrangement. One of the last elements they’ll add is stock, and the arrangement comes to life!

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Dried Flower Projects

Drying the Flowers

There are three ways you can dry your flowers, depending on how you want to use them. The easiest way is to hang them upside-down in a well ventilated area. You can hang a single stem or several stems held together by twine or rubber bands.

A second way to dry flowers is to press them between absorbent paper using old books or an actual flower press. There are lots of instructional videos online showing how to do this, including this one from the University of Illinois. The best flowers for this kind of drying method are ones that don’t have a lot of bulk to them and will flatten easily. Daisies, snap dragons, black-eyed Susans, gladiolas, will all press nicely. Flowers like roses or carnations that have a bulky base do not press well.

A third way to dry flowers is using silica gel. This is a great method if you want the dried flowers to essentially look the same as the fresh flower version. You can get silica gel at any local craft store or through Amazon. Again, there are a lot of instructional videos online, including this one from MonkeySee.

Projects Using Dried Flowers

Epoxy Resin

A.K. Art & Creations

One of my good friends is a jewelry maker and just started experimenting with resin. Epoxy resin can be purchased at any local craft store or through Amazon. She has come up with gorgeous pieces from pendants to earrings. She has also created some beautiful serving trays and bowls. The resin allows her to embed different objects such as metallics, shells, and flowers.

A.K. Art & Creations

What to do when stuck at home with your children? Take a walk around the neighborhood and collect wildflowers. There are a lot of apps you can download to your phone that will identify the flower for you. Wildflowers are intrinsic to our pollinators so it’s a great opportunity to help children understand the roll pollinators play. Some wildflowers are a source of energy for hummingbirds, some food for caterpillars, and some, like milkweed, are the sole provider of shelter and a place to lay eggs for the monarch butterfly. It’s amazing what flowers you will see once you start looking for them to collect.

Preserving Bride’s Bouquets and Corsages

A lot of brides want to preserve their wedding bouquets. The two best methods for this are the hang and dry method for a vintage look or the silica gel method if you want the bouquet to look similar to the way it did on your wedding day. The stems of a bouquet are wrapped very tightly. While air and silica gel will be able to circulate between the greens and flowers on the outer-most edges of the bouquet. Air and silica gel will not be able to get between the wrapped stems. Over time, moisture at the base of the bouquet and between the stems will cause mold and deterioration.

With both methods, you will need to take the bouquet apart, dry the individual stems, and reconstruct the bouquet. While there are several local companies that preserve bouquets, it’s a fun project to do, especially when stuck at home. Just make sure to take a photo of the bouquet before you take it apart and at various points during deconstruction. These photos will help you put the bouquet back together again once the stems have dried.

You can do the same thing with your corsages from Prom or Homecoming or Daddy-Daughter Dances. If you have purchased your corsage from us, the stems are already individually wrapped with floral tape and should dry well without deconstruction. I still have my corsage from my high school Prom. I hung it upside down from my mirror the night I got home. It’s a bit brittle now so I have it in the original clam shell, but I love the vintage pink color…and of course the memories!

Memories

Another project you do with your children is more long-term. I have several copies of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I loved exploring nature and “adventuring” as a little girl so this was a well-loved book. One of my copies is a big heavy large print book that became my flower press when I was a little girl. I chose it because it was the heaviest book I had that wasn’t a Bible. Now the choice seems so poetic–wildflowers from my adventuring pressed into a book about adventuring. I included little notes with the flowers indicating where and when I collected them. Now I can flip through the pages of Huck Finn and relive my own adventures.

One of the first arrangements I made at Fantasy Floral included peonies. I wanted to save the peonies as a memory and because they were so full and gorgeous. I just wrapped kitchen twine around the end of the stems and hung them from the curtain rod at our sliding glass door. As the peonies dried, they did lose some color, but that’s what I like about them–the vintage color look. It gives the room a cottage feeling.

Once you have dried your flowers, the projects are endless! You are only limited by your imagination in what to do when stuck at home!

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In Your Easter Bonnet

In Your Easter Bonnet

My great grandmother lived with us for the last half of my childhood. She was born in 1893 and saw transportation go from horse and buggy, to Model T, to airplanes, to launching into space, and landing on the moon. She was also quite the rebel–eloping on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle wearing leather pants! *gasp* But that’s a story for another time. Grammy Doy was from that generation of women who had matching hats and gloves and shoes for each outfit. Easter was the day to wear one’s finest. It was also a day for fresh flower corsages and even Easter flowers in one’s hat!

With All the Frills Upon It

Easter. Flowers. The two just go together for me! When I was growing up, the green apple tree in our front yard and the huge forsythia bush out back were always wearing their finest blooms on Easter. My brother and I hunted for eggs amongst the many clusters of yellow daffodils and purple grape hydrangea in our yard. And there was always a beautiful centerpiece on the Easter dinner table with flowers that matched the colorful hues we used to dye our Easter eggs.

You’ll be the Grandest Lady

As we celebrate spiritual rebirth and renewal on Easter, Mother Nature is doing her own version of rebirth and renewal. Grass goes from dull brown to emerald green, providing a perfect canvas for Easter Flowers. What are Easter Flowers you ask? For me, they are those flowers that bloom first, even through blankets of snow–tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, crocus, and pansies. They are the sentinels that brave the cold to let us know that winter is behind us, and long sunshiney days are coming.

In the Easter parade

Easter is Sunday, April 12, this year. As you’re dying eggs and putting together Easter baskets, don’t forget your centerpiece! A gorgeous Easter centerpiece is also a perfect hostess gift. We even have a customer that still gets an Easter corsage for his wife each year. There’s something wonderful about Easter memories and traditions!

As I write this post, Fantasy Floral is still open for deliveries and pick-up, but the coronavirus has definitely had an impact. We are using a skeleton staff of just family and doing no-contact deliveries  that we coordinate with the recipients–ringing the doorbell and leaving the arrangement outside the front door to be picked up after we leave. Our drivers are wearing masks and nitrile powder-free gloves and all vases are sterilized before delivery. Curbside pick-up is also available. Just call us to coordinate a time!

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Pinterest and Instagram are wonderful sources of inspiration for flowers and arrangements, especially for newly engaged couples. We love it when couples share their Pinterest Boards or their Knot’s Wedding Vision. They help us understand the look and feel the couple are striving for, and they help us get to know the couple better. The downside is that sometimes couples fall in love with flowers that won’t be in season for their wedding.

Recently we had a bride show us her Pinterest Board. It was full of peonies, but her wedding was in November. You can imagine her dismay when we told her that we might not even be able to get her peonies, and if we were able, they would be at least $20 per stem. Talk about going over budget!

First Steps

Before you start looking for inspiration, first figure out when your wedding will be, and then find out what flowers will be in season so you can focus on seasonal designs. It also helps if you have a budget for your wedding, including how much you would like to spend on flowers; again, this will ensure that you don’t fall in love with a design that isn’t within your budget.

White roses and baby’s breath courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Gerbera daisies

Dark purple calla lilies courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Year-Round Flowers

There are many flowers that are available year-round, not just for seasonal designs. These are flowers that your florist will be able to get for you without too much trouble or extra cost–even if they are out of the normal growing season.

Year-round flowers include roses, gerbera daisies, and lilies, including calla lilies. You can also get filler flowers such as baby’s breath, purple statice, and alstroemeria, year-round, as well as greens such as eucaplytus or ruscus.

Tulips courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Lilac courtesy of Gardenerdy.com

Pink peonies and white calla lilies courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Irises courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Spring Flowers

In addition to the year-round flowers mentioned above, spring seasonal designs can also include tulips, lilac, daffodil, peonies, pussy willow, forsythia, irises, dahlias, and sweet peas. Some flowers, like irises and dahlias, have longer growing seasons and are also available in the summer.

Gladiola centerpieces courtesy of Fantasy Floral

White hydrangeas

Summer Flowers

Summer seasonal designs, in addition to the flowers already mentioned, can also include delphinium, gladiolas, snapdragons, and hydrangeas.

Liatrus

Red anthurium

Queen Anne’s Lace

Fall Flowers

Fall seasonal designs start to take on fun textures with the flowers that are available. This includes marigolds, liatrus, anthurium, Queen Anne’s lace, solidago, and thistle.

Ranunculus courtesy of fiftyflowers.com

Lisianthus

Lotus seed pods

Winter Flowers

Even though it seems that nothing would grow in winter, there are lots of options for colder weather weddings. Ranunculus, lisianthus, and kangaroo paw are beautiful floral additions. Winter seasonal designs also lend themselves to evergreens such as pine needles or holly leaves, berries such as holly or hypericum, and dried elements such as pine cones or lotus seed pods.

Once you’ve decided on a wedding date, set up a time to talk to your florist. We encourage engaged couples to email us photos and/or links to their vision boards before their appointment so we are prepared with pricing, but it also allows us to come up with creative ideas to share that fit a couple’s vision. Go into your florist appointment with an open mind. We often have ideas that are just perfect for your special day that you haven’t thought of yet…after all, this is what we are passionate about, and we love making your special day as magical as possible!

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