Sustainable floristry – what does it mean?

Where do your flowers come from?

It’s time we started thinking more about what we buy, where it’s come from and how it’s made. This conversation is already being had in areas like food and fashion, but as you reach for a bunch of flowers to add to your weekly shop, take a minute to inspect the labelling and country of origin. You may be amazed to see how far your flowers have travelled as around 90% of cut flowers sold in the UK are imported from Europe, South America, Africa and Asia, often by carbon-heavy air freight to the international flower auction hubs in The Netherlands. So what is sustainable floristry and how can we do better?

Here in the UK, in late spring, summer and autumn, the flowers that we can grow in our gardens cannot be beaten for scent, wayward charm and sheer variety and I love to use these wherever, whenever and however I can get my hands on them! I grow cut flowers here in Birmingham and have met other local growers through the fantastic network that is Flowers From the Farm, and I visit these to supplement supplies from my own cutting patch. I also buy in from larger scale UK growers and will also use imports if I have to in order to create the ‘look’ that my larger events and projects require. I don’t love garden-grown flowers because they’re British grown, I love them because they are beautiful and smell amazing and I’ll always give them priority. They are just the best way to achieve the naturalistic ‘wildflower’ look and feel which is a signature part of the way I do flowers: the way outdoor grown flowers wiggle and twist is part of what makes them super special.

By reducing the amount of imported flowers used and replacing them with flowers that you’ve grown or have had their roots in soil nearer to you, you are taking a tiny step towards reducing the carbon footprint of the beautiful, ephemeral blooms which give us that hit of pleasure during whatever time they spend with us.

What’s supporting the flowers in arrangements?

Sustainable floristry is not only about where your flowers come from, it’s about how you arrange them and what you put them in also.

Giving a talk to a flower club recently, I was greeted by a sales table filled with green blocks of floral foam and plastic trays – long time friends and default choices for florists, flower clubs and arrangers across the country. Foam and its accessories have become such a staple of the floristry world that they have, until now, almost been a sign of ‘professionalism’ – but things are changing as our concern for single use plastics, water pollution and our environmental awareness grows.

At the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2018 Flowers from the Farm’s gold medal winning display was the first to go completely plastic free and I like to think that this played a small part in the The Royal Horticultural Society’s decision to ban the use of floral foam from all its flower shows. In years gone by, mountains of green foam would be generated by show displays and would be discarded to crumble into tiny micro-plastics, lingering permanently in landfill long after the crowds had left and the displays had slipped away into memory. The Church of England is currently debating a similar ban and the move towards more sustainable floristry approaches is growing.

People arranged flowers long before floral foam was invented in 1954. There are so many ways to avoid it and the time has come to rediscover them and to avoid reaching for foam as a default ‘mechanic’ to support your flowers.

Sustainable floristry alternatives to floral foam

Chicken wire

When arranging in containers which will hold water, chicken wire scrunched into balls to support stems is a great alternative – it can be rinsed and reused time after time. It comes in various gauges (different sized holes) and personally I find the smallest gauge the least useful. What you need can vary according to the scale of your arrangement and the stem size (and weight) of your ingredients. Sustainable floristry techniques really don’t compromise the beauty of the results!

It comes in rolls and you can cut it to whatever size you need – but wear gloves and don’t use your use your best scissors to cut the stuff as it will quickly blunt them. You can use either the plastic coated wire or the uncoated plain metal type, though the latter may discolour your water after a day or so and can stain glass vases with a rusty residue. If you are only an occasional flower arranger and don’t need a roll of the stuff – rummage around your shed for small off cuts from fencing projects, ask friends if they’ve got any pieces left over from making animal hutches (rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs….) or gardeners who may have been building structures to keep pigeons off their fruit bushes! If you’ve still got a local old-fashioned hardware shop or garden centre, you may be able to buy it there by the metre.

Chicken wire is a great choice if your containers and mechanics are going to stay in your possession but if you’re giving away an arrangement as a gift, there’s a good chance your chicken wire is going to get thrown out with the flowers and even though the plain wire will eventually break down naturally, it takes many years, so is not an ideal solution either.

We’ve all dealt with smelly, slimy flowers in old arrangements and pulling stems out of chicken wire is no-one’s favourite occupation, so only flower arrangers or thrifty folk are likely to do it! Use chicken wire only if its going to come back to you – if not, try the method below.

I wasn’t quite sure what to call these: ‘Armature’ sounds too posh, ‘Scrunchie’ sounds like a hair accessory and even ‘Blobby’ sounds a bit too squishy and wet, but it made me laugh when I wrote it so it’s staying!

Compostable vine blobbies

For bowls and small containers, this sustainable floristry mechanic to support your flowers is fantastic. Simply cut a few lengths of any flexible vine type stem you can get your hands on (ivy, wisteria, clematis, Virginia creeper, honeysuckle etc) and twist them up into a messy ball. I don’t think there is any science to this process, so just go with however it happens to work!

This messy structure supports your flower stems in just the same way as chicken wire, stopping flowers falling over when placed in the middle of a wider container. The beauty of it is that once the flowers have passed their best, the whole arrangement can be removed from the container and be put straight into the compost bin. No more fishing out slimy stems, and no more waving goodbye to all those handy bits of chicken wire which won’t return from jobs!

I’ve found that this method is trickier to use for larger scale arrangements as it is hard to get the structure to be firm and sturdy enough to support the floral materials, but for table bowls and small containers, it’s my new go-to solution! I have to pass on huge thanks to Hannah at Bride and Bloom for passing on this tip at the recent RHS Malvern Spring Show where she was a demonstrator on behalf of Flowers from the Farm – it’s just the sort of tip which this fabulous flower farming organisation is so good for!

A more effective sustainable floristry technique to support larger arrangements is to start them off with a framework of sturdy, woody stems which can then support the softer materials.

Recommended resources

Next time you’re arranging flowers, don’t just reach for the box of green foam without thinking – consider alternative ways to support your flowers. In most cases, there are other ways you can make things work. If you’re interested in foam free floristry, I’d highly recommend the following as useful resources:

• A Guide to Floral Mechanics by Sarah Diligent and William Mazuch
• Flowers from the Farm’s round up of Sustainable Floristry initiatives and workshops offered by its members
• Green Funeral Flowers – my own online course about how to create funeral flower arrangements without the use of floral foam.
• Sustainable Church Flowers – good tips on foam free methods to create larger scale arrangements