My Friend Is a Genius at Arranging Grocery Store Flowers
These were $20 from Trader Joe’s! Gahh!
A couple months ago, my friend Alison wanted to brighten up the winter. “Whenever I walk into Trader Joe’s, all the flowers look so pretty,” she told me. “So, instead of spending a lot of money at a florist, I decided to treat myself to $20-$25 worth of flowers to make my own arrangements.”
How gorgeous are these???? Here are Alison’s six steps…
1. Buy four types of flowers:
* a seasonal flower (tulips, daffodils, whatever)
* a filler flower (like one with little buds on it, like baby’s breath)
* a flower that fits the color palette (spray roses look good with everything)
* greenery (“I generally like bigger wider leaves,” she says)
2. Greenery goes first, since it’s the foundation to hold everything together.
3. Add the filler flower.
4. Layer in the spray roses.
5. Lastly, add the seasonal flower, which is usually the most delicate, but everything else will hold it up.
6. Enjoy!
As for pro tips? Alison removes any leaves from the parts of stems that will be under the water line. “If underwater, leaves make the water gross and the flowers will rot more quickly,” she explained. Also, if you have time, change the water and recut the bottom of the stems every few days: “That way, the flowers can better suck up the water and last longer.”
“The flowers make me happy every time I see them on my kitchen table,” she told me today. “Arranging them also scratches a creative itch.” But maybe keep your kids out of sight. “My daughter Georgie tries to help but just pulls off the tops of the flowers.”
Thank you, Alison! Follow her on Instagram, if you’d like.
P.S. Alison’s week of outfits, and five ways to arrange grocery store flowers.
Comments
96 commentsWhat is the vase opening she uses? I just followed these instructions and could barely fit all the flowers.
Oh yes! This has been my favorite thing to do lately! And when the flowers start to wilt over time, take out the ones that are still good, cut them, and arrange them again.
This inspired me to swing by the florals at my grocery! Now I have a lovely arrangement to enjoy. So so grateful for this post ☺️
This is perfect timing! I’m getting married this when and making my own bouquet:)
Does anytime know, should you cut all the components to the same length or vary them? I always struggle at flower arranging so am excited to try this approach!
The way I have learned to do bouquets: 1. strip stems of leaves below where they go in the water I like to organize the stems in loose piles by type at this point 2. then hold the bouquet in one hand as you’re adding flowers/stems, kind of rotating back and forth as you go. Stems can be any length, but you want to be holding it the way that it will appear in the vase (or in someone’s hands if you’re making a bouquet to be held!). So taller in the middle (generally) and floofing out in a rounded way. 3. trim the entire bouquet’s stems to the same length so that they will sit properly in water and all absorb water, and will look neat (Credentials: I’ve worked at flower farms a little bit putting together farmer’s market bouquets, and I have done all the flowers for three weddings!)
Thank you, anonymous! Super helpful.
What are people’s favorite plants to grow for flower cuttings? I have roses but we are starting mostly from scratch!
If you’re thinking annuals, dahlias and long stemmed zinnias are both summer showstoppers that look great together and produce a lot of blooms continually. Snapdragons add height, sweet peas and lavender add scent and celosia has great texture. I also like to add whatever greenary I have growing (mint is a favourite, but keep it contained or it will take over), and I love rosehips, dill seedheads and poppy seedpods for interest. Floretflowers.com is an amazing resource for tips and inspiration (as well as seeds!).
Dahlias, Daisies, Peonies, Gladiolas – you can plant these all summer a few weeks apart. Zinnias. There’s so many!
Zinnias always !!
Assuming you are in the US, this is the perfect time to put in love-in-a-mist, which flowers briefly in cool weather, but has wonderful seed heads – great filler for a whole season of bouquets! For annuals, plant zinnias and cosmos. For perennials, phlox, coreopsis, and bee balm last quite a while in the garden, for plenty of bouquets. Happy gardening!
Hydrangeas!
Not sure if anyone has already posted about the environmental and human costs of cheap grocery store flowers already, so forgive me if this is redundant, but in high school I researched this and found that farmworkers who grow flowers for the international flower trade have high rates of miscarriage and cancer. This is because flowers are fragile, and it takes a lot for them to survive trips halfway around the world. You can learn more here: https://www.greenamerica.org/blog/flower-bouquets-are-polluting-planet For my part, I only buy sustainable, local, organic flowers a couple of times a year. It makes flowers even more special, and I know I’m helping sustain good healthy jobs, soil, and plants in my corner of the world.
Thank you so much for pointing this out! Sometimes we can all get caught up in what we want, and lose sight of of the true costs. I always feel that if something is cheap, there is a cost somewhere. And importantly, we all lose by not looking out for one another and this incredible planet that sustains us. We win by diving into community care. It’s empowering, try it!
I do wonder though if “boycotting” grocery store flowers (and florist shops, because are they any different really, other than price and maybe flower size?) is any kind of solution though. Having visited some of the places our flowers are grown (e.g., Guatemala), I know that those flower fields are a huge lifeline/main economy there. I hear you about the environmental and human costs – and I agree; just pointing out that its not a simple solution and pulling the plug will also have human costs.
Anon and Emily, both of your comments make really good points, and I think they really complement each other. Emily, I hear you when you say that existing systems are built for this and changing them will be painful in the near-term. I think taking a historical perspective helps me. I know it was hard to transition away from lead paint and asbestos, as well as from exploitative systems like enslavement and child labor, but it’s important to do these things because human health and dignity matter. Similarly, I try to imagine what the world would look like if we really put the health and well-being of our planet and all its people at the top of our priorities list. Maybe those fields in Guatemala could be used to grow food organically for the people who live there and, while we transition to that, we could establish a “fair trade” flower certification to make sure the blooms we buy don’t cause so much suffering. I don’t have all the answers, but I think that when we change our values and start examining the systems we participate in, we can come up with lots of ways to make them –– and our world –– better.
I’m a big fan of finding a local flower farm if you can! Some local farms will sell with various shops around them. I used to follow a flower farm on IG that would post where to get their flowers, and I’d run out immediately to get some.
Thank you for highlighting the environmental/human cost of cheap flowers. I wondered too – appreciate your linking to additional resources.
Definitely going to do that pink/purple arrangement for mother’s day. I follow @happy_arranging on instagram – her whole page is flower arrangements using flowers from TJ’s, and she tells you the exact flowers/fillers need to buy to make it. I’ve replicated so many of her creations!
Happy arranging is the best! I took one of her virtual classes online & I love how easy she makes it!
These are great! I also have the secret skill of flower arranging and it is fun to shower the folks I love with pretty flowers. Does anyone remember the scene in 6 Feet Under where Ruth Fisher (the really tightly wound mom) learns how to arrange flowers? I always think of her now when I am putting my arrangements together!
Yes!
Thanks so much to Jo and Allison for sharing a low cost way to help our own little corners of the world beautiful.😍
As an Australian I can’t believe the price of the first arrangement $20… even with conversion rate it would be about $40 or so Australian dollars. I pay about $35.00 for roses only, add the other flowers and I’m looking upwards of $60. Recently wanted to purchase baby’s breath and a small bunch was $16.00. Supermarkets near me don’t have a great selection, I purchase from a market and the prices are still steep. I’m also trying to be mindful and buy only Australian grown flowers.
I hear you Rita! Same situation over here in Canada. One of my close friends is an incredible florist, and I’ve learned through her just how horrible and destructive the mass market flower industry is – like so many things, the cheaper the product the worse the conditions, for the product and the workers *cue Debbie Downer womp womp noise*. I love flowers so much though and Alison’s arrangements are so beautiful! Hoping to grow lots of cut flower varieties in our garden this summer so we can have arrangements for a few months :)
Same here in Sweden. Those bunches would end up being more like 60-70 dollars. Oh to have a Trader Joe’s close by!
I’m in the US and also can’t believe that top bouquet is $20! She must be doing something clever. Most TJ’s bunches of one flower are $7-$9 and filler about $3-4 so I’d love to know her secret. Maybe she grabbed one bouquet with two flowers in it? Alison, please share!
If you add a little bleach to the water the flowers will last longer!
My related tip is that if you want to really up your game you should either invest in a floral frog or two to help with getting your arrangement just the way you want it, or to do the poor man’s version and make a tape grid (masking tape) across the top of your vase, and use that to get your flowers in the desired spot. Both of these will also let you not need to cram your vase quite as full.
Came here to share this too, Caroline! A couple of important tips to help end up with an arrangement like this: – use a wide-mouth vase – use a frog or make a floral tape grid – as you place the flowers/greenery, angle your stems outward so the arrangement flows off the sides I second what others have said about cutting the stems and replacing the water every few days to help the arrangement last. When the arrangement ultimately looks tired, remove the flowers that are past the point of no return, take out and cut all of the remaining stems, and make a whole new arrangement. I usually do this a couple of times over the course of an arrangement’s life and it can help them last up to two weeks.
Also those net bags that come with lemons and onions……you can cut a small square or round and secure over the top of a vase with a rubber band to use as a grid. Just make sure some greenery covers the rubber band.
My best floral tip is to buy potted plants. They last longer than cut flowers, cost the same as cut flowers and if they die – same same. I have a potted plant “graveyard” in a low light part of my garden and most of the sickly loves that I plant there pick up and thrive.
These are so beautiful! Adding a PSA that even a bite of a lily (or any part of a lily plant) can kill a cat, so never bring lilies into a home with cats. Roses, like the gorgeous ones featured here, are much better for pets. (My spouse once brought home Trader Joe’s lilies, and our cat survived a nibble but racked up a $2,000 vet bill!) https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy/lovely-lilies-and-curious-cats-dangerous-combination#:~:text=The%20entire%20lily%20plant%20is,in%20less%20than%203%20days.
Thank you so much, Catherine! We have also had to learn that $2k cat hospital lesson (except we have x two cats!!) after adopting v curious kittens when we unthinkingly brought home the lilies we had regularly gotten to celebrate every occasion. We were like, Wow, these cats are really into the … [googling] … Crap! To the pet emergency room! They told us the poisoning is survivable if you bring them in early enough, but they basically have to be continually flushed with IV fluids for at least 24 hours to clear their kidneys, and that is as expensive as it sounds. Oh, pets!!! <3
I never have flowers because my cats would knock them over. Or otherwise deconstruct them. Friends have gotten me flowers and I have to put them in a closed door room rarely to be seen again ! My husband knows I’d rather have a giant pack of toilet paper than flowers, we joke about it. But yeah, with cats, I can’t have them anyway. I do manage to somehow keep a few blooms from my garden in small clear glass vases on my kitchen window sill. I love them.
Thank you for this. I know two people whose cats were poisoned by lilies. One survived ($10,000 ER bill); the other died. We have several cats so I keep my flowers in the one high spot in the apartment where they can’t go. Even so, I usually limit my Trader Joe’s weekly flowers to roses or sunflowers, since so many other flowers are toxic to cats.
I just did a ton of florals for a work event with things from my local Kroger. Did all white/green/purple, and everyone kept asking who the florist was. Pretty proud.
Love this! And wishing I had a Trader Joe’s!
What timing! I’m doing florals for a breakfast tomorrow morning and grabbed flowers from TJs this morning. They didn’t have great greenery, I’m hoping I can snip pieces from my yard to use.
I had a “cut flower garden” in an unruly part of my yard last year and my greenery for bouquets was just random weeds. Go for it! :)
Beautiful!! For my cousin’s wedding last fall, we did the flower arrangements as a big group in the morning…my aunt instructed us that the arrangements should have “a fill, a spill, and a thrill”…similar to Allison’s formula. They turned out beautifully!
Emma – I love your aunt’s advice. Thanks for sharing!
This is such a southern thing. I remember my grandmother saying this about her pots on the front porch and window boxes!
Is it just me or do TJ’s flowers last longer than flowers from anywhere else? How?!
I was just thinking that I need to get some cut flowers as we still have over a month until things start budding out up here in Vermont. A tip for keeping flowers fresh – dissolve 1/2 – 1 tsp of sugar in a little bit of hot water then add about 1 tsp of white vinegar then add the rest of the water. Works like a charm!
My neighbor was cutting down a fruit tree that was just beginning to bud; he let me have a few branches and I’ve had this glorious 4′ tall arrangement of like, 4 red-budded branches on my bedroom dresser, greeting me every morning as it comes into bloom. Heavenly and free.
Love this formula! Can’t wait to try.
I was watering my plants the other day and found a surprise in my plant pot: my 1.5 yr old son had pulled off the heads of some fake flower blooms and “planted” them in there! So close dude, so close!
It’s common to think of greenery and filler flowers like baby’s breath as background fluff, but a lot of those items can be quite beautiful in a large bunch, or with a scattering of other blooms mixed in. And they often are less expensive, or can be found in the environment or in container gardens. I love arrangements with bupleurum, grasses, olive branches, blooming herbs like lavendar, or lemon balm or mint, stems with seed pods or berries, scented geranium leaves, or slender vines like jasmine or honeysuckle.
So beautiful and such a lovely idea! I keep an eye out for cheap flowers from Coles (supermarket in Australia) and they usually have roses for $15. I’ll cut the stems and have them in a low vase and they look so lovely. Sometimes they have tulips but that’s rare. I love these steps of how to arrange them. My mum used to call the filler the “fluff”. Gum leaves make great fluff.
I will share a tip I learned at a flower arranging class years ago to cut your stems to the perfect height. Set your vase or jar at the edge of the countertop. Hold the bouquet next to the edge, then raise/lower your hand until the flowers are at the height you want. Hold the scissors perpendicular to the countertop, snip the stems,, and voila!
Oops, meant to say scissors parallel to countertop (perpendicular to stems)!
Pro Tip for hydrangeas when they start to wilt – First, boil a pot of water and let it cool slightly before pouring it into a heatsafe vase. Then, gather the hydrangeas (and cut their stems at an angle) and arrange them in the vase of hot water. The blooms will open back up! S/o to Emily Schuman of Cupcakes and Cashmere for introducing me to that tip years ago!
Hydrangea steams should be cut straight up to create a slit in the bottom of the stem. This provides for rehydration.
Or recut, as Mandy says, and submerge the entire flower in a big pot of cold water.
These are gorgeous! I also love crafting a masterpiece out of grocery store flowers and am an Alison with one ‘L’. Must come with the name. ;)
On the subject of makeshift vases, I’ve been reusing yogurt containers –specifically Oui or La Fermière– which I then fill with TJ’s small bouquets, cut very short. While not as striking as Alison’s beautiful arrangements, two or three of them work well on a dining table. And one advantage is that guests can see over them while conversing.
I do this too! Except I stick them in our bathrooms on or next to the sink. It’s a nice little pick me up while I’m brushing my teeth :)
I remember a friend-of-a-friend who brought a little bouquet like this- a handful of TJs flowers in a yogurt jar with a bit of ribbon tied around it- when she was the +1 at another friend’s dinner. I get overwhelmed trying to select host gifts, but this shows it don’t have to be expensive or fancy!
My daughter selects a mini bouquet from TJs each week after she finishes her grocery store quest for the morning. We give her four items to find between our local specialty grocery, Whole Foods, and TJs. TJs is always the last stop. It makes her so happy. And it makes me so happy.
Joyful! Beautiful assortments. I toggle btwn TJs and Costco for fresh flowers until the garden stock blooms. I recycle wide mouth jars/bottles as vases. I add a drop of floral liquid plant food to room temp water. I often use fresh herbs as filler. Avoid direct sun when displayed.
For anyone looking for vases: I have the HAY Moroccan Vase in pink and blue, and I absolutely love it. A little funky, goes with everything, and great size. I debated about buying it for months, and I’m so glad I did.
My husband started a sweet tradition for us a few months ago. He typically heads to Trader Joe’son Sunday mornings for our weekly shop and would sometimes come home with one of their pre-made bouquets as a surprise. One day he came home with a few bunches of flowers and greenery, as he thought the bouquets were looking little sad. It felt like an episode of “Chopped” but the flower version, as I had no say in what cut flowers showed up in our kitchen; to my surprise it was such a delightful low stakes project! We now do “Flower Chopped Challenge” every couple of weeks where my lovely spouse surprises me with TJs flowers he finds interesting and I put them together. It’s a big win; he gets to browse the flower section and feel good about surprising me and I get to do a light, creative project without any planning or foresight which absolutely keeps the perfectionism wolves at bay. 90% of the time the flowers turn out lovely and it is the best low stakes gift from him to me.
Love this!
I use the same or a similar colors for flower arrangements- feels more peaceful. I also include all kinds of stuff I find outside- tree branches, grasses, etc.
I love fresh flowers … but alas so does my kitty. No matter where I place them he will find a way to them. So, no more flowers inside. I do grow them in my garden, though, so at least I have that!!!
My cat is just the same! There’s not much point getting even non toxic plants and flowers in our house since they will soon be eaten anyway haha
Love this! Pro tip–I buy vases at thrift stores so when I buy someone flowers, I can just give the vase away. It’s also a good way to figure out what style of vase works best for the way you like to arrange flowers.
Such a good idea!
I LOVE these tips! I took a virtual flower arranging class at the very beginning of the pandemic and learned that trick about pulling off any leaves below the water line. DUH!! How had I not thought of that before – makes total sense! I regularly buy flowers at TJs or my supermarket and am amazed at how long they can last! Does anyone have any thoughts about the flower food packet that comes with flowers? I typically dump in when 1st putting in water but then I don’t have any more for the remaining days when I refresh the water. Should I just portion out the packet or does it not really help that much and is just in my head? Also – I’m a recent convert in my love of hydrangeas – I always used to think they were so ugly (what was I thinking)??? But I have a hard time making them last more than a day. I soak them in water, clip the ends but they brown and shrivel up so quickly. What am I doing wrong?
After cutting hydrangeas, dip the stems into boiling water for 30 seconds to seal the cut ends and promote water absorption! Good luck!
When I pick hydrangea from my yard I put the stem in boiling water for 30 seconds. They last for weeks this way. Maybe recut the grocery store ones and try that? I think they have some kind of sap that interferes with water uptake? Don’t know the specific but I do know it works.
You can crush an aspirin and add it to the water to keep the flowers fresh.
Julie is right! It sounds crazy, but there are a lot of cut flowers that benefit from placing in boiling water. I leave the hydrangeas for about 10 minutes, and when they finally get droopy (maybe a week later), I just cut them down and repeat. I can usually get 10 days to 2 weeks out of them! Also – H&M and Global Table have great, affordable vases that look way more expensive than they are.
Gardener here who grows hundreds of my own cut flowers every year – for everyone asking about vases…it doesn’t matter! Don’t let that stop you or slow you down. Nobody notices that part unless you’re selling or doing a wedding or something. Use an old salsa jar with the label peeled off! I give flowers away in plastic sour cream containers and not one person has complained.
Agree! I’m a gardener who makes, and now sells, small bouquets. We cover recycled jars with decorative paper (or wrapping paper) and that works great! Here’s a blog post I wrote about it. https://maybeillbecomeafarmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/31/a-flower-recipe/
Agree. I keep my tall Mutti passata glass bottles, jam jars etc. and use them.
LITERALLY just did this yesterday with Trader Joe’s flowers – I did orange peony tulips, the pink wildflowers, and eucalyptus from our neighborhood… absolutely gorgeous.
Love these arranging tips. Just returned home from Trader Joe’s and resisted buying flowers. Now…damn! Did buy a small rose bouquet a few weeks back for a friend and used a CoJ lesson from quite a while back of opening the bloom a bit. They were gorgeous and lasted the whole week.
Beautiful! What kind of vessel/vase does she use?
Yes! That was my question. I feel like I might not have the right vase to use (or maybe it’s just a matter of skill!)
Hi! Alison says she loves to us a vase like this, it’s the perfect size: https://www.wholesaleflowersandsupplies.com/6-x-6-glass-cylinder-vase.html
A pickle jar with the label washed off will work! Or a ceramic pitcher. Or a tall water glass. Or the French press you never use for coffee … etc. (I do have one really fancy glass vase that a friend gave me as a wedding gift many years back, but just as often I use whatever is sitting around.)
Our favourites are a repurposed glass milk bottle (there are still dairies that use them!) when we need something tall and slender, and then this Ikea vase for basically everything else. It’s so cute, a unicorn size that’s good for small and large bouquets, and the ribbed glass obscures enough that it buys you a few extra days when you’ve forgotten to change the water 😉 https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/padrag-vase-clear-glass-10470991/
A ha! Short vase! That makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the links.
Great idea and thanks for all the great pictures. Spring isn’t springing quite as fast as I would like, I will do this (OK, try this) on the weekend for some inspiration. I am in Toronto, Canada. Ice storms, power outs in the 10s of 1000s of households! More snow and freezing rain is coming. Flowers will be perfect!
Love this! These are awesome tips Joanna (and Alison!). The best flower arranging tip I’ve heard is that a monochromatic arrangement looks more expensive (think: all pinks, all purples, etc.). I use this trick all the time to style flowers for my interior design photo shoots.
ooh this is smart!
Any recommendation on the types of vases to use? I have general glass ones that I got for free, in a delivery, etc. And those seem fine, but when i see pics like this, I wonder if they look better than mine because I need to use better/different vases? Does it matter?
My favorite vessels are opaque and not for flowers. I love old tea pots etc. I always look at thrift stores for ones that are fun shapes/colors.
You can also use bowls. You’ll need floral foam and maybe floral tape to help secure the flowers. But it’s a really nice look.
A reusable alternative to floral foam is a flower frog. They come in all kinds of forms, and I see them at antique stores a fair amount. They’re also nice if your vase or bowl is not opaque.
So good! Nearly as stylin as Alison herself
Love this – I love buying flowers at TJs and doing this too! Though normally I start with the flowers, so I will try this tip of starting with the filler greenery instead. Also, I like to lose opaque vases b/c sometimes the stems can look a little distracting (or icky, after a few days)
Wow, she has a gift! Those are beautiful. Buying a lot of the same flower also makes a statement. I love three bunches of tulips.