Wild blooms and 80s arrangements: top cut flowers trends for 2017

article by Alice Vincent - The Telegraph

Wild and free
The fondness for looser, whimsical arrangements has been around for a few years now, and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast. “A lot of brides want to look like they’ve just walked through the garden and picked a bouquet,” says Bath-based grower Fiona Haser Bizony of the Electric Daisy Flower Farm.

The trend is aided by a heady combination of whimsical, nature-inspired arrangements which proliferate on Instagram and Pinterest, as well as an increasing number of new florists taking up the trade from non-traditional backgrounds who are challenging long-held techniques in the process.

Shane Connolly, a floral stylist who provided the flowers for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, concurs: “The very heavy balls of flowers are looking terribly old-fashioned as the trend for a looser, lighter arrangement takes over”.

Abundance
There has, however, been a slight shift towards the more Eighties look of opulent, overflowing bouquets, which florist Simon Lycett says is a reaction to the rise of shabby-chic floral styling – commonly found in jam jars.

It’s not a cheap style, he says, but one that can be improved by using British blooms: “It can be a costly look but in summer you can have an abundance of British flowers, such as stock, sweet peas, nigella and delphinium, which gives the option of doing something big and blowsy on a smaller budget.”

Leave the vase behind
For florist Carly Rogers, one of the five chosen to represent British Flowers Week, the lines between gardening and floristry continue to blur as flower arranging moves in an ever more natural direction and becomes more pared down and grounded to its origins – the flowerbed.

Go bright or go home
One trend sees colour schemes being stripped to the bare minimum, with impact coming from the choice of hues used, rather than the number of them. Both Lycett and Haser Bizony have noticed a rise in demand for blush and blues, with peach foxgloves proving popular with the latter’s clients.

“People are asking to see a single colour or a couple of tones of the same colour,” Lycett comments. “Bold corals and deep blues seem particularly fashionable and can be achieved with cornflowers in a spectacular way, and also with other bright flowers such as dahlias and cosmos”.

Nicely neutral
But, just as “millennial pink” reigns supreme, a soft pastel that is adorning everything from cafés to sofas enjoyed by the fashionable generation, softer colours are thriving in floristry, too.