As an interior design icon, Bobby Berk certainly has a few tricks up his sleeve when it comes to making your home look its best. Throughout his stint on Netflix's Queer Eye, he taught us everything we need to know about cohesive color palettes and balanced furniture placement. Still, his skills also extend to the more technical minutiae of home decor, like - for example - flower arranging.
There's nothing like a fresh bouquet to brighten your home. Be it an entryway console or a dining table, a vase of vibrant blooms can bring your space to life and fill a room with natural scent. However, a poorly arranged vase with drooping stems or unevenly spaced flowers will have the opposite effect from what you intended, and that's something Bobby knows all too well.
Fortunately, he's shared a hack to achieve perfectly spaced stems that look professionally arranged in just a matter of minutes. It's one of the best tricks for arranging flowers like a pro, and all it requires is a common piece of stationary you definitely have in your home right now. Here's how it works.
The best flowers for cut floral arrangements are so beautiful that they need little intervention, but there's more to a good-looking bouquet than simply cramming your stems in a vase and hoping for the best. "Neatly arranging flowers is crucial in creating a visually appealing bouquet," explains florist Kate Hill. "The placement and alignment of each stem can significantly impact the overall look of the arrangement, and a well-arranged bouquet can also have a positive effect on the longevity of the flowers."
You don't need to be a qualified florist in order to arrange a beautiful display of blooms, however. As Bobby recently shared in an Instagram reel, all it takes is a few pieces of tape to evenly space your stems and give your flowers a bit more structure. In the video, he demonstrates how you can apply pieces of tape in a grid formation across the opening of your vase. This creates separate squares for your stems, giving you more control over their placement and creating a fuller-looking arrangement as a result.
Besides helping you position individual blooms more easily, this trick can be especially useful if you're working with flowers that have droopy stems or heavy heads, such as anemones or peonies. "This is a very quick hack for arranging flowers so that they don’t flop over and getting them to stand up and stay in position," notes professional florist Leigh Chappell. "It works, and it's extremely useful if you’re a non-florist and have a reel of tape handy!"
Alternative methods for arranging flowers in a vase
All that being said, Kate says you can't always rely on this trick, especially if you want a big display that incorporates lots of flowers and foliage since the tape will limit how many stems you can fit within the vase. "Taping a vase to keep stems in place can definitely work, but it may not be suitable for all types of arrangements," she says. "As an experienced florist, I often use alternative methods, such as floral foam or chicken wire, to secure the stems in place."
Leigh is also a fan of this latter method, which works in a similar way to tape while still allowing for plenty of flowers in one vase. "The scrunched chicken wire can be taped into a bowl or low vase using specialist floral tape (available from Amazon)," she explains. "The stems are then pushed in to make a composition that you love. And if we're getting really sustainable, a scrunched ball of flexible twigs can be placed in a vessel and the stems pushed into the gaps."
To give you more control over the composition of your bouquet, you could also use tools such as a flower frog (a gadget with holes that sits within your vase) or a flower pin (a tool with small spikes that can be inserted into the bottom of your flowers' stems). Both work in a similar way to tape by holding your stems in place within your vase and keeping them upright.
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As a general rule of thumb, Leigh reminds us to trim the stems at an angle and use fresh water when arranging blooms. "Also, remember to start with the largest and most dominant blooms first, then fill in the gaps with smaller stems, as this creates a balanced and cohesive look," adds Kate. "These small details can truly make a difference in the final result."
If you take your flower arranging seriously, paying attention to these finishing touches really does make a difference. A tool such as a flower frog might be a good investment if you're embracing all the latest flower trends by regularly bringing seasonal blooms into the home but otherwise, Bobby's hack is a quick, easy, and cheap fix to bring structure and stability to your bouquet.
