“It’s just cool to have a little bit of nature indoors. How lovely is it to open your eyes in the morning and the first thing you see is this beautiful flower beside your bed?” asks Kathleen Hyppolite, who runs the New York-based floral design company, Kat Flower.
We’re talking about how trendy floral arranging has become among 20- and 30-somethings these past two years, a movement we jokingly call a “petal-ution.”
It may sound slightly Martha Stewart in a middle-aged, full-time, stay-at-home mom kind of way.
But in actuality, the trend is being fuelled by fashion lovers, hipsters and arty types the world over who are tricking out their flats with carefully curated arrangements made with their own thorn-pricked hands. Basically, the kinds of people you’d imagine spending their mornings nursing a hangover after a swanky night out, rather than rolling out of bed to trek to a flower market.
“I think people have gotten into flowers because of the online shelter
mags and flower blogs that have become so popular,” Hyppolite says of
sites such as her own own blog (katflower.blogspot.com), The Little Flower School, and Lotte and Bloom.
They’ve elevated the idea of flowers from being something that you buy
on special occasions to an accessory that can personalize your space in
as meaningful a way as a sofa or painting.
Hyppolite gives us a little workshop.
1. “As soon as you cut a flower from its natural source, the earth, it’s on suicide watch. So you need to do a series of small steps to prolong its life. The most important is to make sure you use a clean vessel. It can be an old spaghetti jar — anything that holds water.”
2. “Remove any foliage on the stem that is below the water line in the vessel because the foliage can introduce bacteria into the water. You don’t want to have leaves floating around. And be sure to cut the stem on an angle. This gives the stem the best chance to drink and flourish.”
3. “If you can wear clothes, you can arrange flowers. Approach it in the same way. For example, you can do interesting things by mixing flowers of varying texture. A big bloom can look pretty with something more vine-y. You can see the difference in texture between a flower like a dahlia and something like cockscomb.”
4. “When it comes to the shape of the arrangement itself. I don’t believe that there is necessarily a wrong way to do this. It’s hard to mess it up. Just trust your instincts and be sure to place the flowers in the vessel at an angle in order to maximize the flower’s potential to drink.”
