I’ve been dying to do a flower arranging workshop for ages but just never got around to it. You probably know by now how much I love fresh cut flowers. We seem to have flowers in the house pretty much all the time these days. I buy them every 2 weeks or so but sometimes I get only a week out of them. I usually buy them in the supermarket by the way (which is a lot cheaper and more convenient than going to a florist) but I’m not convinced if it’s actually the most cost effective way to do it.
So when Obby offered me to trial one of their workshops (they have a vast selection of courses to choose from, check them out here), I couldn’t believe my luck. It was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. I looked at different flower arranging workshops on their site which was super easy to navigate. Just type in what you are looking for. I searched for ‘floristry’ and I immediately got a list of courses in different London locations. Bloomon was a familiar name to me so I was really keen to book with them.
I attended the Bloomon flower arranging workshop in their new location in Chelsea last Wednesday. They have few different time slots to choose from, but the 8-9 PM course suited me best. The class was quite small (which is good), I think there were 8-10 people in total. It all started off very well as I was offered a glass of wine before I got seated. The atmosphere was very relaxed and the intro was really good too as they explained in more detail how Bloomon works. To sum it up, Bloomon is an online flower delivery service. It’s a Dutch company and all the flowers come from the growers directly from Holland. This means that the flowers are super fresh the minute they land on your door step as there is no middle man. I love the concept but you’ll need to arrange the flowers yourself when they arrived as they are not hand tied. Now this is where I struggle. I wanted to learn how to do this properly, especially since I like buying single bouquets and combining them into one large one.
Here are some behind the scenes shots!
Luckily I got to take my bouquet home with me and I couldn’t wait to find the perfect spot for it in our house. As soon as I arrived home, I cut the stems again (since they had not been in water for an hour or so). I also searched for the biggest vase I could find, although this was their medium size bouquet, I found it huge. I gave the vase a good clean and then added the flower food into the fresh water. I found the perfect spot for the flowers in the hall. I just love a big statement bouquet on the hall table. I always go for a tall arrangement too so it distracts from the hideous wall paper. I can’t wait to get these walls painted at some point.
Top 8 care tips for fresh-cut flowers
1. Clean your vase well. And, when I say well I mean with bleach. I was quite surprised too but apparently a bit of bleach kills all the bacteria. Fairy washing up liquid isn’t quite strong enough to do the trick it seems, so bleach it is.
2. Don’t fill up the vase too high. Flowers drink from the stem so there is no need to.
3. Remove all the leaves from the part of the stems that will be submerged.
4. Cut all stems at an angle so that it provides a wider surface of water to travel up the stem. (This one I knew, ha!)
5. When you start arranging your bouquet, use the medium sized stems first. Start criss-crossing them and then add smaller and larger stems towards the end. Watch a tutorial how to do it here.
6. Change the water every 3 days. Also, since bleach kills bacteria you should add few drops of bleach (only use a capful for large vases, less for a small one) to the fresh water and they will stay looking and smelling beautiful for up to 2 week. I added 3 drops of bleach to the water on day 3 and so far so good. I would be very careful when adding the bleach though. If you can smell it, you’ve added too much.
7. Make sure you always use good, clean scissors to cut the stems.
8. Try to keep the flowers away from direct sunlight, in a cool dry place.
I really enjoyed this workshop with Obby and there’s no doubt I’ll be booking another course with them very soon. I do think attending a workshop in person makes a big difference. You can of course find all the information online too, but you won’t get one-on-one assistance like you do during the course. Also, sometimes you just have to see how it’s done close up before you get the hang of it. I’m currently eyeing up the wine tasting workshop which sounds too good to be true. I love the selection of courses Obby have available at the moment and it’s so handy that they have courses held in different locations so you can just pick the one nearest to you. They also send you a reminder few days before the course takes place, so you don’t miss it. I do think these courses are more fun when you go with a friend so next time I’ll be dragging someone along with me.
You can get £10 off any course at Obby, just use discount code FINNTERIOR10 at check out.
Thank you Obby for introducing me to your wonderful courses. I am hooked!
* This post was in collaboration with Obby.
