It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without an over-the-top indulgent meal but the real crux of the holiday lies in the simplicity of gratitude—I wanted to create an arrangement that reflected that simplicity. Dahlias are some of my favorite fall flowers and are such astoundingly beautiful creatures—they don’t need much to shine. I added some garden roses and various grasses for texture and a stem of pomegranates for a quiet pop of red, keeping the arrangement as a whole fairly minimal. Besides, who has room for a sweeping arrangement on a table full of food?
Flowers
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Dahlias
David Austen roses
Garden roses
Protea
Foxtail
Dried grasses
Smokebush leaves
Pomegranates
You’ll need
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A small—medium tall vase with a smaller opening
Floral clippers
1. Start by adding the smoke bush to establish a base, followed by your statement flower—these are the larger more showstopping blooms, in this case, the dahlias. Then add your secondary flowers and textures—these fill the arrangement out and compliment the larger blooms. I used garden roses as well as dried protea here as my secondary and accented with various dried grasses.
2. Construct layers and build up. For example, cut one flower long and then trim another just shorter to rests right below the longer flower while simultaneously hiding the stem. Again, there are no hard and fast rules here. Some of the most beautiful arrangements have a lot of negative space and unruly stems sticking out here and there. The general idea is to keep the eye moving. There should be a natural movement to the arrangement that keeps it visually interesting.