Festive Flora

Richard from Panache Flowers

Richard from Panache Flowers shares some easy to follow tips on how to create some living, eye-catching indoor decorations for your Christmas table and beyond.

To create a floral arrangement for the Christmas table you first have to decide what colour theme you are going with. If it’s the traditional red, white and green you will need to buy flowers in these colours. My suggestion is red roses, green chrysanthemums, red berries, white Lisianthus, white roses and Christmas spruce.

If your colour theme is gold, I suggest white flowers, gold calla lilies and gold embellishments like baubles etc. If it’s a silver theme, you could use white Lisianthus, white hydrangeas, white roses and white Veronica with silver bauble embellishments. And of course you can go with an Australian native theme including some lovely banksias for a rustic look.

If the table is rectangular in shape, it’s best to use a white glass or ceramic trough. If the table is round then I would go with a fish bowl or a low round glass bowl vase that you leaf-line on the inside to hide the flower’s stems.

In construction of your table centrepiece, if using a trough, place flora foam in the trough first, then put in the foliage to create an outline and place flowers in the order of the ones you want to be the focal point. For the fish bowl posy, make a foliage base in your hand, which is one and a half times the height of the vase, then add the flowers throughout the foliage. When finished, tie the posy together and cut the stem at an even level but be careful not to cut it too short.

People often want to create a Christmas wreath of fresh flowers for the door, but this can be difficult as the flowers are not in water and are exposed to the hot weather. The flowers will not last. You can get very good natural looking wreaths as a base made out of twigs and cane and then you can add artificial berries, ribbons etc. Holly can be easily purchased around Christmas time and can be placed on tables, mantle pieces etc. as a lovely Christmas decoration.