Arranging your roses

Jane Copperwaite, a freelance floral designer based in London created this unusual and effective arrangement during our floristry day. Her design uses swirled veronica with open blooms of Miranda and an unnamed rose in a large glass bowl. If you'd like to create something similar for a special event, allow day or so to allow your roses to open out to about half their full glory. This will allow them to look upwards in a natural way, revealing their delicately-folded inner petals.

English Cut Roses associate perfectly with most other cottage garden flowers, herbs and foliage. Their soft colours and very slightly nodding heads make it easy to create a classic English Country Garden effect. They also look superb on their own as featured in our Purely Roses bouquets. The blooms will look absolutely magnificent in a single vase. However, you may need to split some of our largest bouquets to create several smaller arrangements as each rose fully opens. Two or three fully open blooms can be very effective in a small vase or jug, either on their own or mixed with other flowers and herbs. For a contemporary, minimalist look, arrange several tall, slim bud vases in a row, each containing a single rose. For a stunning, easy-to-create dinner party arrangement, float a few flower heads in a large, open bowl of water. Swirl in some foliage or herbs for an interesting, textural effect. At Christmas, one open rose bloom tied with a sprig of holly, mistletoe or ivy makes a beautiful place setting. Keep the place settings fresh in a little water until shortly before your guests sit down for their meal. When creating a more formal arrangement, never let all the open blooms face forward. Try to give an impression of natural growth, showing the many different angles of the blooms. Allow some roses to face outwards at each side. You'll find that English cut roses are attractive from every angle. Unless you plan to wire your roses, never try to work against the habit of each individual stem. This would be a battle that the rose would win every time! One of the simplest ways to achieve a very natural effect is to gather the stems loosely together to create a bunch. Make sure that the bottoms of the stems are level, then gently drop the bunch into a vase of the correct height. Each rose stem will naturally fall in a way that suits its individual shape. All you should then need to do is to slightly adjust the spacing between each bloom. During the summer, many of our customers choose Purely Roses bouquets, then customise the arrangement for the home by gathering a few stems of perennials and herbs fresh from the garden. This creates a spectacular, totally original floral design with very little effort. Click here for pictures taken during our Floristry Day