Build your own flower arrangement with backyard and store-bought ingredients

Build your own flower arrangement with

backyard and store-bought ingredients

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - On your way to the soup and salad aisles in the grocery store, you've spotted them. Those colorful arrays of cut flowers that look so good. Especially now, when you want to make a centerpiece or special gift.

Combine those grocery store flowers - ones for this project cost $8 - with cuttings of greenery from evergreen trees in your yard.

Two important choices

-- Floral colors: The color range offered in cut flowers is wide, but there is a lot of emphasis on seasonal colors. The occasion, table linens and your own preferences will help guide your choices. A safe choice is one color in light to dark tones - pink to red, for example. It is usually more interesting than one done in single colors. Don't forget that green foliage is part of the color scheme and looks outstanding with red.

-- Greenery: Look for smaller leaves and flexible stems on evergreens such as nandina, Camellia sasanqua and cleyera, and conifers such as cedars and cypresses.

The softer, more flexible ends of cuttings from Christmas tree species such as white pine, Leyland cypress, cedar and Fraser fir also will work well. Leafless, curling twigs from trees such as willows also add interest to an arrangement.

1. Gather materials:

-- A round glass, silver or china bowl about 5 inches tall.

-- Floral foam or glass marbles to put in the bowl with water to hold the flowers and greenery in position.

-- Two bunches of flowers, each containing several long stems. They should preferably be two kinds and different sizes. Medium-sized roses and smaller mini-carnations were chosen here. But round flowers combined with spiky ones also make good choices. Look for stems that bear more than one bloom, including buds.

-- Different textures and tones of green.

-- Garden shears to cut stems.

-- Floral preservative to put in water.

2. Set the height and width of the arrangement

Take a single stem with open blooms and cut it to a length about one and a half times the height of the bowl. For example, in a vase 5 inches tall, the top of the flowers should rise 7 to 8 inches above the rim. Sink the stem deep into the bowl.

Then place stems shortened in the same way in four equidistant places around the middle of the sides, but at varying distances from the rim. This will set the perimeter and help create the roundish effect. Remove any leaves that might get into water.

3. Add more flowers

Fill in the open area with other flowers of varying stages of openness: buds to full bloom. Distribute these colors evenly. Give depth to the arrangement by tucking some flowers below their neighbors. Leave some space for greenery.

4. Accent with greenery

Fill in with greenery around the rim and between the flowers. This will make the colors stand out and fill gaps. The greenery should be distributed evenly, but not set in a rigid pattern.