T.T.: How To Arrange Wildflowers

Not that I'm an expert on this, but I do it multiple times a week, so I do have a few helpful tips.

First, make sure whatever you're picking is plentiful. You do not want to be pulling out a relatively rare plant just to have flowers on your tables. But if there are hundreds of the plants lining the road? You're good to go.

Second, don't bother with anything low-growing. There are lots of pretty wildflowers that grow as vines or ground cover, but you can't put them in a vase if they don't have a long-enough stem. So you're just looking for the ones that stand up tall.

And lastly, when you're gathering, make sure you shake the flowers and inspect them to make sure you aren't bringing in a bunch of ants or other bugs. Sunflowers in particular harbor a lot of ants, and no one wants those crawling all over their kitchen table.

Okay! So to put together an interesting assortment of wildflowers, I think there are two big elements: The background plants, and the anchor flowers.

The "background" plants are the tallest ones, ideally those that have smaller flowers in clusters or seed heads, so that they will form almost a screen of plants in the background.

In this bouquet, that's the yellow sweet clover and the long grasses in the back.

These provide the backdrop against which the anchor flowers will be framed.

In that bouquet above, the anchor flowers are the purple silver nightshade. The anchor flowers need to be bigger. Otherwise, the whole arrangement just looks kind of scraggly and weedy.

This arrangement is lacking an anchor. It's pretty enough, but weedy looking.

Just one sunflower helps a lot, though.

Sunflowers are obviously a really nice anchor flower. But if you can get two kinds of anchor flowers--like both sunflowers and nightshade--that's even better.

The coveted Double Anchor arrangement.

I like symmetry, so I always try to balance out the background plants on each side of the arrangement, as well as whatever anchor flowers are in there, both in terms of color and in terms of bulk.

I always make what I suppose could be considered a "flat" arrangement, meaning it's only meant to be viewed from one side. I have it in the middle of our table, so I arrange the flowers to be seen as I'm in the kitchen or walking in through the door. 

Also, I have a big table, so I can have a bigger arrangement. 

I will always be grateful to my grandfather for building a table with extra leaves that will comfortably seat six people.

If you're putting flowers on a small bookcase or side table, you probably don't want something out of proportion to the surface they're on.

You also have to consider your vase. The milk bottle I use lends itself to taller arrangements, but for a half-pint canning jar or something, I would make something less towering and more bushy.

For many years, I would just grab random flowers and throw them in a canning jar, and that was fine. I find now that I actually enjoy the process of putting the flowers together in a pleasing arrangement, but that's a recent development. If you have no interest in fussing with flowers like this and just want to throw them in a jar on the table, more power to you. All that matters in the end is that you're happy with whatever you're looking at in your own home.