Flowering: Easygoing Floral Design for Surprising Contemporary Arrangements

By Elizabeth Jaime

A fresh, contemporary flower-arranging book from the Miami-based studio Calma Floral, with foundational tips, flower recipes, and bountiful photography that will teach you how to create irreverent arrangements for any occasion.

Heralding a new era in floral design—one that favors a playful, modern aesthetic and a laidback approach—this guide to creating trend-forward flower arrangements invites you to think outside the box. Learn how to arrange unique, eye-catching bouquets by pairing unexpected combinations and incorporating a variety of elements and textures, such as fresh and dried blooms, rhinestones, fruit, and tropical foliage.

Foundational tips for “flowering” set you up for success, and twenty ​step-by-step recipes (paired with step-by-step photos!) make it easy to design joy-filled floral moments—from a whimsical fountain of troll grass to a mossy mounded centerpiece, a Rococo-inspired piece worthy of Versailles, a suspended cloud of fluffy mimosa, and so much more. A must-have for hobbyists and experienced florists looking for something fresh, Flowering is the essential floral book for today.

ONE-OF-A-KIND PIECES: With categories that include 360 Arrangements, Bud Vases + Tiny Arrangements, Party Time Flowers, Installations + Home Decor, and more, this book offers a wide range of flower design ideas. You'll find a piece for every occasion, whether you're looking for a bright bouquet of reflexed roses to gift to a friend, a table runner of carnations and candles for a dinner party, or an installation of dried palms to hang in your entryway.

ALL-LEVEL DESIGNS: Flowering is perfect for weekend dabblers and professionals alike: Hobbyists and amateur designers will appreciate the informal tone, approachable how-tos, and step-by-step photography, which make creating these striking bouquets and arrangements easy and fun. Experienced florists will be inspired to try something new and different thanks to the book's creative inspirations.

ON-TREND AESTHETIC: In a vibrant, colorful package, Flowering makes a fun gift alongside a vase, a candle, or an anthurium plant. Inspired by Calma Floral's youthful brand design, this trend-forward book is a must-have resource for millennials and Gen-Zers who like to have fun with flowers.

FLOWER BOOK FOR A MODERN AUDIENCE: With a relaxed approach and chic style, Flowering is a refreshing update to the classic tomes on flower arrangement. Diverging from the tried and true, these 20 arrangements eschew tradition and make a bold statement with sculptural shapes and unique materials. Anyone eager for a new, exciting take on floral design will find it here!

Perfect for:

• Hobbyists and weekend dabblers who want to have fun with flowers
• Florists and floral designers looking for new inspiration and a fresh aesthetic
• Fans of the modern arrangements designed by Calma Floral, Bloom and Plume, and Under New Mgmt
• Shoppers looking for a Mother's Day, birthday, anniversary, or engagement gift

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Apr 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781797226002

Elizabeth Jaime

Elizabeth Jaime, previously a prop stylist and visual editor at Bon Appétit, is the founder of Calma Floral, a Miami-based floral design studio that creates colorful, modern, and tropical(ish) flower work for people and brands.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

When people ask me how I became a florist, I think they expect some sort of graceful story that involves hours of me flipping through flower books, expensive courses, and some sort of apprenticeship under a seasoned florist. Perhaps if that had been my reality, my path to floristry might have looked and felt a little less chaotic. But the truth is that I became a florist partly out of boredom and partly out of needing to figure out what the next phase of my life would look like.

It was January 2019, and I had just left my job as a visual editor at Bon Appétit, a job I loved but felt I had grown out of. I decided it was time to leave New York (as one eventually does), the city I had called home for nine years, and relocate to the place where I was born and raised, Miami.

I spent the first few months in Miami regretting my decision, mostly because I didn’t really know what I was going to do for work. My identity in New York was closely tied to my profession, and in Miami I found myself without the community I was used to and without a job. So to pass the time, I began doing the things I loved, one of which was playing with flowers.

When I first started making flower arrangements, I truly had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know the names of any flowers, and I especially didn’t know the tools and mechanisms needed to make sure my arrangements had movement, life, and structure. I was forced to figure that all out—and quickly—when I scored my first real flower gig, doing the arrangements for the beauty brand Glossier’s Miami pop-up. Now, anyone who is familiar with Glossier knows how much emphasis they put on their retail florals, and to say that I was a little bit stressed would be an understatement. I felt scared and wholly unprepared. My fear was only heightened by my middle-of-the-night stress spirals where I imagined all the flowers dying within the first twenty-four hours (why does everything feel so much worse at 3 a.m. than it actually is?). I spent the month leading up to the job watching every YouTube video, checking out out-of-date flower guides from the library, and scouring blogs and Reddit posts trying to find all the answers I needed. And while I was able to find some of the information I sought, most of the knowledge I have today I’ve gathered from trial, error, and simply doing.

The Glossier job went so much better than I ever expected, but I realized I still had so much to learn. I spent the next year learning by doing and growing as a florist. I could have gone to a flower school (helpful, but unnecessary, if you ask me), or maybe worked under another florist (super helpful if you’re young and at the beginning of your career), but I felt pretty confident that I had a good thing going and that if I just continued, I’d figure it out as I went.

Still, as this was happening, I wished there was an easy-to-follow guide for the type of flower arrangements I was interested in making. Everything I found was either too niche to one specific area of floristry or way too traditional. I decided then that once I had the knowledge and experience myself, I would write the book I was looking for. A few years later, and here we are.

Geared toward anyone who loves the idea of making flower arrangements but doesn’t know where to start, this book is meant to take what I’ve learned along the way and demystify the art of arranging flowers. It also invites you to think outside the box and reimagine what a floral arrangement might look like. Putting aside traditional flower rules and leaning into an irreverent new wave of floral design, we’ll work with unlikely materials and consider fun, unusual floral pairings that make a bold statement. I want you to flip through this book and feel inspired to create your own floral-arranging world that feels untethered to rules (well, most of them!) and finds you in your kitchen at 1 a.m. gluing rhinestones to an orchid for no other reason than because it looks so damn cool.

If you’ve ever leafed through a cookbook, you might find some familiarity in the format here. The first half of this book walks you through all the basic tools, principles, and ideas you’ll need to familiarize yourself with in order to create beautiful, long-lasting arrangements. Some of these are nonnegotiable, like making sure to process your flowers. Some are just based on personal taste—like how I think chicken wire is the best flower mechanic for everyday use. Regardless, I’ve tried to reduce the noise and share only the essentials, because it really shouldn’t be as complicated as some people make it out to be.

In the second half of the book, we’ll get into the fun bit, where we look at actual arrangements and I show you exactly how to make each one. Just like a recipe, each arrangement includes a flower shopping list of ingredients, flower recipe instructions, and step-by-step photos of how I created each arrangement. The intention is for you to digest how I built each arrangement and feel inspired to create your own version. We’ll also take a look at a few different types of arrangements and the best times to use them.

So whether you’re interested in becoming a florist or just looking to elevate your at-home floral game, you’ll learn that with a few foundational principles, some confidence, and the right set of tools, you too can make cool modern flower arrangements. Because it’s really not as hard as it looks, and if I could teach myself how to make them, so can you.

I.

THE BASICS

At the foundation of any flower arrangement are a few basic principles and techniques that apply regardless of what style of arrangement you’re creating. Think of these as the building blocks that allow your arrangement to have a fun, modern shape and a good foundation and to last as long as possible.

When it comes to the basic rules, the amount of information out there can feel overwhelming and disheartening. So many vases! So many tools! Where do I start? It’s dizzying and off-putting. For that