Leave room for butterflies.

My most valuable flower arranging tip.

One of my favourite workshops is teaching basic flower arranging skills. Everyone’s home deserves fresh flowers. And fresh flowers that you have arranged yourself? Even more scrumptious.

Attendees always ask: What’s your number one flower arranging tip?

The answer is to leave room for the butterflies.

This phrase was coined by Constance Spry. If you’ve never heard of her, she’s truly a fascinating woman. I fangirl extra hard because, like me, she was born in Derby, which is a bit of a shithole and not many cool people come from there. She was a pioneering florist, born in 1886. She wrote loads of books, changed the whole floral industry and even co-created coronation chicken. If my legacy is even half as impressive I’ll be happy.

Back to the butterflies. What does it mean?

Don’t overfill your vase or whatever receptacle you’re using. Flowers are bloody expensive, and you don’t want to hide one of the blooms behind another. It’s a waste. We want to be able to see every individual flower in an arrangement. They’re all beautiful and all deserve to be shown off.

Please don’t mistake this for ‘less is more’. Because I usually work with the ‘more is better’ approach. Who doesn’t want more flowers?! But this doesn’t mean cramming all your flowers into one vase. ‘More’ would look like having three vases filled with lovely flowers, rather than one vase that’s been overstuffed. Or one colossal urn instead of a wee vase.

To leave room for butterflies also means creating negative space. Negative space is just a wanky way of saying the space around and between objects. I love to add in wonky and wiggly branches to create negative space. Tall flowers, trailing foliages and grasses are also great tools for creating lots of space within your arrangement.

Allowing space for winged friends will probably help flowers last longer too. Stems that are crammed into a too small opening of a vase are more likely to mould. Air needs to circulate. Packing your stems together like sardines is a recipe for seriously stinky flowers.

I’ve found this also works for writing. When I started to grow in confidence with my writing, I saw the difference on the page. I’d strip back unnecessary words, easily edit out unneeded bits, shorten my paragraphs. This left much more white space. I’m sure it applies to a lot of creative practices, not just writing and floristry.

Does leaving room for butterflies apply to your creative practice?

With love and butterflies,

Sarah x