1. Be creative with short-stemmed flowers
Teacups make super-pretty vases for short stemmed-flowers. Pop spring blooms, like freesias and ranunculus, in a floral china teacup to create a vintage table centrepiece that’s perfect for afternoon tea.
2. Open up closed buds fast
Bought flowers to decorate your room for a special occasion but the buds are still firmly closed? Plunge the stems into warm water for one minute before transferring them to their vase of cold water. Twenty minutes later, enjoy your flowers in all their blooming glory.
3. Make them last… with the help of vodka
A cocktail of sugar and alcohol is enough to leave most of us feeling perky, but did you know it could have the same effect on your flowers, too? The sweet stuff is said to nourish the flowers and help them bloom for longer. Mix it with a few drops of vodka to optimise the effects – or lemon juice or vinegar if you’d prefer to keep your blooms tee-total!
4. … and money
Forget dropping them in a wishing well, copper pennies can be put to much better use at the bottom of your flower vase. The copper acts as a natural antibacterial agent.
5. A chilled approach to watering orchids
Orchids are famed for their delicate beauty – but they can be delicate on the care front, too. Especially when it comes to watering. In fact, overwatering is the main reason orchids come to an untimely end in the home. The solution? Ice cubes! Simply place your ice cubes (one for a small orchid, two for a large) in the soil once a week. As the ice melts, the orchids stay hydrated without fear of drowning, but make sure you don't rest the ice cubes directly on their roots.
6. Keep your flowers in place in a shallow vase
Shallow bowl-style vases can look really pretty as a table centrepiece, but keeping your flower heads in place in such a large space can be tricky. Cue: sticky tape. Apply clear sticky tape in a criss-cross lattice formation across the top of your vase and slot your flowers into the holes. Check out our video to see how this is done!
Find out more ways to make your flowers last in our guide.
