Easy "How-to"- Create a Simple Tulip Bouquet

Today on the Flowerlogue… I show you an Easy How-To #10 - Make a Simple Tulip Bouquet as a bridal bouquet or gift.

With the early season of locally grown tulips becoming available in Perth, I thought it the perfect time to create with tulips. Classic or contemporary, tulips make for the perfect simple bouquet. As you know I love monochromatic and en masse designs, and tulips are ideal for this. One colour of tulip, 2 bunches and a simple ribbon is all that is needed. Although super simple, I share my experience with using tulips, what materials and tools are required, tips on conditioning, caring for tulips, costings and substitutions.

The bouquet can also be wrapped in paper as a gift or simply placed into a vase.

As a ‘How-to’, this is a paywalled post. There’s a downloadable PDF for this post so that you can print out and file away.

A quick note before we begin: I’ll continue sharing two How-To posts each month, while the heart of Flowerlogue - the travel, the chats, the behind-the-scenes moments - remains open to everyone. And for the best reading experience (particularly for spacing and images), the Substack app really is worth having. All photographs are taken by moi.

I profess I have experimented growing tulips in the past with success but failed to lift them for the following season. And whilst I love reading about growing flowers, I confess I’m not very good at it, so I’ll stick to floristry. My very first flower festival and first article for Flowers Magazine Australia was about Keukenhof Tulip Festival in the Netherlands. Keukenhof is like a Disneyland for tulips and whilst not for some, what I appreciated from experiencing this Festival was the precision planting by the gardeners and the perfected maintenance of the gardens for weeks on end whilst the Festival is on.

I create with tulips and gift tulips often, as I enjoy their simplicity, their leaves complement the shape of the bloom perfectly and therefore make a perfect arrangement without any additional foliage. They come in a range of colours and varieties. The frilly ones are my favourite.

This design might seem ridiculously easy, so much so that you’re probably thinking well anyone can do that. Well, in fact yes you can, however, florists always have very practical reasons for creating different designs. And don’t you think its the simple arrangements that look easy, but in practice they may not be.

So, for this bouquet I will be designing as a front facing design with a few tulips at the back for the bride to admire. If this design were for a front facing vase you could leave out the blooms at the back. This would also suitable for a gift bouquet. I chose some blush pink and apricot tinged tulips for this bouquet which is a soft and romantic colour combination. I chose a bowed ribbon with short trails in this design, however there are other options such as long trails or just a simple bound stems with no bow or trails. In this situation I would place 3 vertical pearl headed pins down the back of the bouquet so the bride can easily feel the back of the bouquet with her hands. There’s nothing worse than seeing your beautifully crafted bouquet being held backwards in the professional photos!

I consider this design a more contemporary design. A classic design would have all the blooms all on the same level and in a perfect circle, however this doesn’t allow the blooms to open and it is very dense. Also unless the bride tips the bouquet forward, all the guests see is the side of the bouquet. I prefer this contemporary design, as it allows each of the blooms some space to relax and open a little and you also need less flowers as they are each more visible. Plus, my favourite, ‘negative space’ just creates a more relaxed soft flow between the blooms.