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Home / Make it Pretty / Tablescapes / Flowers – An Important Element of a Beautiful Tablescape

Flowers – An Important Element of a Beautiful Tablescape

Saturday, September 19, 2020

Whether you grow them or buy them, flowers improve the appearance of any table and make a meal special. Often, what I need is a bit of inspiration and seeing a picture or seeing an arrangement someone else has done makes my internal light bulb turn on. Perhaps some of the pictures below of bouquets I’ve made will spark an idea for your new bouquet!

Tulips and Calla Lilies
This is one of the best centerpieces I have ever made. I combined flowers from the garden (hydrangeas, mums) with store-bought orange tulips, rust and plum calla lilies, and hypericum berries. The result was magnificent!

Tulips and Calla Lilies
Here’s a close-up of the arrangement. The colors are just right for autumn.

Fall Flowers in Moss Basket
Grocery Store Flowers – a little of this, a little of that (they were 3 for $10 in little amounts). I stuck them in the moss purse and it was easy, easy, easy.

Fall Flowers in Moss Basket
A week after I made the arrangement above, the lilies were history and the arrangement needed a little refreshing. I bought the smallest bouquet I could find at the grocery store, removed the items that were goners, and spruced it all up.

Orange and purple flowers
These orange roses were amazing. The purple hydrangea paired well with them, but my camera angle wasn’t great for this shot.

Dahlias
Dahlias come in all colors, all sizes. I rounded up the last of the season and plopped them into a fall vase.

Ice water on tray
Take one large hydrangea in a tall vase. Insert gladiolus at various spots through its branches. Instant arrangement!

Monkey Pod with hydrangeas and thistles
Isn’t this lotus pod the coolest thing? Pair it with thistle flowers and some exotic hydrangea. Scatter a few stones at the bottom of the tiny square vase. Perfect for setting at an individual plate or a table for two.

Perfect coral peony
Sometimes a single flower is so exquisite that it’s all you need, either in an elegant little bud vase, or perhaps floating in a bowl. This peony was so beautiful it almost made me want to grab a paintbrush and canvas and channel my inner Georgia O’Keeffe.
Pink centerpiece
Any time you can match your flowers to your dishes and linens (or vice versa) you’re in bonus territory!

Pink cockscomb with lotus pods
See the pink ruffled stuff? That’s cockscomb. It comes in yellow, red, hot pink, and orange. Feels like velbet, looks spectacular. And it lasts! Here, I paired it with lotus pods, thistle, and a bunch of fresh basil.

Place settings
If the table isn’t going to be too crowded with platters and serving bowls, I really enjoy doing individual arrangements at each place setting, in addition to larger arrangements. My table is long (10 feet), so two medium-size arrangements work well. The smaller arrangements are in clear votive candle holders that I got for under $1.00 a piece and can reuse over and over.

Place setting
See? Not too crowded! Even with the individual bouquets and the two larger arrangements. Note how the flowers are an eclectic mix, but they mirror the colors in the dishes.

Place settings
The base in the center is awesome because it consists of three square glass components inside a metal and wood frame. It makes it easy to go big without a major hassle doing the arrangement.

Sunnyside breakfast
Several small vases, each with a handful of flowers and herbs just plucked from the garden. Very effective.

Power breakfast
This is an eclectic mix — a few knockout roses, an ormanetal cabbage, a sunflower, and whatever else we could find!

Pretty picnic
Gotta love Gerber daisies. They’re so perfect-looking, and they come in all the right colors. A few white, a lotta red, and a few tulips thrown in for good measure.

Red cockscomb with basil
Here is a simple arrangement with red cockscomb and basil. Doesn’t it just scream “CHRISTMAS”?

Roses, zinnias, and mint
Right out of the yard! Mint, a little Russian sage or something, zinnias, roses, and an iris bud.

Scabiosa with thistles
Blue and white Scabiosa mix with thistle. It was a great color combination!

Place settings
Several bright colors of glads mirror the colors in our plates and bowls. We kept it tall and thin. I can’t remember if we could actually converse around it, or had to shift it to one end of the table for conversations-sake, but it sure made a great first impression when the guests walked out onto the patio!

See more flower and bouquet ideas from Pretty Food.

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