Fresh flowers make any space feel instantly grown. So what if you haven’t done the dishes in a week and your piles of laundry are doubling as furniture ate this point? Like a fresh DIY manicure, a new bouquet or arrangement makes you feel like you’ve got your shit all the way together.
But then there’s that whole short lifespan issue. To get the most from your purchase, there are a few ways to make your flowers last longer.
Start by using a clean container: Wash a dirty vase with one part bleach to ten parts water, scrubbing with a brush.
Keep the water in the vase clean: Yup, that means dumping it out and refilling it every other day. That will extend the life of any blooms, even roses.
Keep leaves out of the water: Sadly, these will rot and create bacteria, aka the real enemy of a long-lasting centerpiece. Some also recommend adding a small amount of bleach, a few drops, to a bouquet to keep any germs at bay (sorry, but who doesn’t love a rule that rhymes?).
Feed them sugar: Adding a one to three ratio of Sprite to water can help feed your bouquet too. The flowers like and feed off of the sugar in the soda.
Here, 21 other flower hacks from Jessica Marshall, owner of Miss Daisy Floral Design Studio in Las Vegas and New York City and yours truly.
1. Plant your blooms outside the vase.
Ginger jars, votive holders, pitchers, vintage bottles, tea tins, a small basket or crate, a watering can, teacups, or fruit (like a pineapple or watermelon) are all creative containers to hold a floral arrangement. If something isn’t water safe, place the stems in another container filled with water and place it inside. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
2. Grow your blooms from scratch.
Instead of buying cut flowers, pick up forced bulbs (or bulbs that are forced to bloom out of season by growing them indoors)
from your local plant store. Nestle a few into a clear glass vessel with rocks, fill up to the bottom of the bulb and watch them grow. They’ll last weeks longer.
3. Propagate your sad succulents.
That’s just a fancy word for grow new plant babies from one of your existing succulents. And that's especially helpful if your plant OG is looking a lil off. Gently wiggle off several mature leaves at their bases and place them in a tray of soil in bright but indirect sunlight. Mist them every few days with water to keep the top of the soil and the leaves moist. After a few weeks, you’ll start to see a new succulent growing from each leaf you pulled.
4. Show off your flowers in food.
Frozen into ice cubes, garnishing cakes or cocktails, or sprinkled on top of salads, edible flowers add an instant, I’m-channeling-Martha moment to your table. Just use flowers sold for consumption, flower shop finds are usually treated and might not be safe to eat.
5. Try a no-brainer DIY arrangement.
Even if you have no clue how to arrange flowers, like seriously, you only know to put them in water, you can still put something pretty together. Just choose blooms that are the same color, and it pretty much always looks good. How easy was that?
6. Use small stones inside a vase to prop up your arrangement.
Floral foam is terrible for the planet so skip it. Clear tape can be tricky to stick on in a grid pattern depending on your vessel. Instead, place clean rocks in the bottom of your vase to help flowers where you want them.
7. Cut the stems of your flowers at a 45-degree angle one inch from the bottom.
This instantly increases the surface area for water intake, so your flowers will be well hydrated.
8. Use a teacup as a vase.
Don't trash flowers with shorter stems. Instead display them in a teacup. Keep the stems together using a clear hair tie, like Goody Ouchless Mini Elastics, so they don't separate in the teacup, which also makes it easier to change the water. Pictured here: pink ranunculus, lavender, and wildflowers celosia and muscari.
9. Open closed buds quickly by putting them in warm water first, then cold water.
After cutting flower stems as described in No. 1, put flowers in a glass filled with warm water. After a minute, move flowers to a vase filled with cold water and leave them for 20 minutes. Flowers will open up to their maximum size. Pictured here: pink peonies.
10. Use vodka to keep your flowers looking flawless.
Before putting your flowers in a vase, add several drops of vodka and a teaspoon of white sugar, which delays wilting. When your flowers eventually do start to die (sad face), add a shot of vodka into the water and the stems will stand up straight again for a day or two. Pictured here: tulip orange princess flowers.
11. Display succulents in pretty dessert bowls.
Dessert bowls make chic pots for a succulent! Simply fill to the brim with potting soil, which you can find at Home Depot, spritz the soil with tap water to moisten it, and then nestle the succulent into the top layer of the soil. Over time, it will begin to grow roots. Just be sure to spray them once a week with the spray bottle until the top of the soil looks wet.
12. Water your orchid with an ice cube.
First, repot your orchid into a vase using potting soil, if it isn't already in a vase, and then water the orchid with one ice cube a week. For larger orchids, use two ice cubes a week. The ice cube melts slowly and gives the orchid a slow drip of hydration, so that it doesn't drown it.
13. Use tape to keep your flowers in place.
To keep short flowers from falling out of shallow vases, make a grid with clear water-resistant floral tape (or thin transparent Scotch tape) to hold flowers in place.
Insert fuller flowers first at an angle since they'll take up most of the vase/bowl. Next, use medium-size flowers to fill in the remaining holes in the arrangement, and then use the smallest florals as your accent flowers to finish the design. Pictured here: blue hydrangea, purple lisianthus, scabiosa pods, lavender, and celosia.
14. Stack a vase within a vase.
Find a vase that fits inside another vase with half an inch of room between them. Fill the space between the two vases up most of the way with water before slipping in sliced lemons (the arrangement pictured required nine lemons). Pop your accent flowers (pictured are a dozen sunflowers) in the center vase, and voilà!
15. Dry your flowers out.
Whether it's a flower crown of a bouquet that you want to save, the best way to dry flowers is by tying the ends of the stems with a ribbon and hanging them from a nail, the corner of a picture frame, or a key rack, where they'll serve as decoration. Pictured here: a flower crown from Crowns by Christy.
16. Drop a penny in your vase.
The copper in pennies works as an acidifier, which helps prevent fungus or bacteria from growing. Note: Marshall suggests looking for pennies minted before 1982, since they contain more copper and will keep your arrangement look amazing a couple of days longer. Pictured here: scabiosa pods and scabiosa flowers.
17. Try decorating with darker flowers.
Black calla lilies, thistle, scabiosa pods, viburnum berries used here look lovely in a pretty birch-covered vase.
18. Twist off the head of a rose to access its petals.
The best way to de-petal a rose without bruising or ripping them is to hold the stem still and gently twist the rose head away from you.
For a fabulous bath, place the petals in a tub filled with warm water and rose bath oil (try this one from Jo Malone), which is naturally hydrating and will make your skin feel extra-soft. The gorgeous flowers will instantly lighten your mood!
19. Organize a rainbow arrangement.
The trick to creating a rainbow arrangement is first laying out all the flowers by color, cutting the stems at an angle, and then placing each stem in your vase at an angle. You want to make sure you insert the larger flowers first to lay the foundation of the arrangement, followed by the medium-size flowers, and finishing with the smaller blooms. And, you're done! Pictured here in order from left to right: black calla lilies, purple lisianthus, blue thistle, blue hydrangea, green trick dianthus, scabiosa pods, sunflower, yellow ranunculus, orange roses, orange tulips, red celosia, hot pink roses, pink ranunculus, light pink peony.
20. Make a rose twist bouquet.
To create a rose twist bouquet with pretty crisscrossing stems, start by inserting your first stem into the vase, and then place the next stem across it and continue crossing each new stem over the last one until the glass is full.
21. Dress up a plain glass vase.
Here, Marshall used twine to doll up this otherwise plain glass vase, tying it in an "X" formation and twisting it in the back.
Carly Cardellino was the beauty director at Cosmopolitan. If you follow her Instagram, then you know she'll try just about any beauty trend or treatment once (the pics of her purple hair are on IG to prove it). But her favorite part about being in beauty is finding the most effective products, and then sharing that intel with others—because who wants to spend money on stuff that doesn't work? No one, that's who. Her most recent discovery: De La Cruz Sulfur Ointment, which will change your blemish-clearing game! Hopefully through the beauty stories she writes—and the experiences she shares—you can see exactly why she's in this business.
