Basic Blooms

I like having flowers around the house but don’t like to fuss over them a whole lot. I don’t have a budget for anything from the florist, either, so I thought this month would be a good time to come up with some cheap and easy ideas for flower arrangements.

For the centerpiece above, I lined a basket with heavy plastic and transplanted two sixpacks of bedding plants from the nursery. If bedding plants aren’t available, a few small flowering plants would also work. Then I bought a dozen roses from the grocery store, cut four of them short, and placed them in water tubes to tuck into the dirt among the plants – three in one corner and one in the opposite. A little basket filler around the edge hides the plastic liner. Another plus about this one – it’s long-lasting.

Now – what to do with the other eight roses? I put them in a plain glass cylinder vase, and slid some pretty leaves from the yard and a few river rocks into the water around the edge of the glass. A few large leaves from the garden at the mouth of the vase filled the arrangement out a little. Of course it could be done in holiday colors, with pine or cedar branches for a more wintry look.

The best part – I ended up with two arrangements for under $20.