It’s easy to grab all your favorite flowers at the market and wind up making a bouquet that looks like horticultural confetti. Yes, flower arranging is an art, but it’s also a bit of a science, says floral expert Debra Prinzing. Her method: Take cues from the color wheel.
“By using the color wheel, the process becomes almost like paint-by-numbers,” says Prinzing, author of Slow Flowers: Four Seasons of Locally Grown Bouquets from the Garden, Meadow and Farm (St. Lynn’s Press, 2013; $17). For example, you’ll rarely go wrong by combining colors that are opposite each other on the wheel—yellow roses and purple lavender, say.
Once you’ve got a palette in place, accent the flowers with berries, branches, grasses, and herb foliage. After all, says Prinzing, “a bouquet is like a little garden in a vase.”