Featured Image: Thyme Lane Photography
On a Christmas filled with long evenings and flickering candlelight, cut flowers can be a wonderful addition to your home or festive occasion. Although you might think there are fewer fresh flowers available at this time of year there are still plenty of options to brighten up your room or table. Carefully selected blooms can be combined with luscious, scented foliage, an array of seasonal adornments, sumptuous velvet ribbons and a little bit of sparkle.
With so many wonderful themes and colours to choose from it can be hard to know where to start when choosing a festive bouquet or other floral gifts. At Thatch and Roses, we offer an extensive range of Christmas bouquets and have many years of experience in sourcing and choosing the right blooms. In this article, we look at the best cut flowers available at Christmas as well as the best foliage and adornments to combine them with.
Best Christmas Cut Flowers, Foliage and Adornments
The best Christmas cut flowers, foliage and adornments are guaranteed to make you feel festive and will add a touch of floral freshness to your home. We’ve chosen tried and tested items that we use in our professional bouquets, table decorations and wreaths. They bring a range of festive colours, fragrances and textures that will look incredible in your home. You can see excellent examples of all of these in their yuletide glory in our three Christmas collections.
Roses
Red and white roses add a touch of classic luxury to any bouquet. A large rose bloom makes a perfect focal point for your Christmas flower arrangement. They come in a variety of impressive colours but we use the boldness of white and red roses to breathtaking effect in many of our arrangements. For example, our luxury yuletide door wreath and luxury festive table centrepiece showcase several large roses, giving them a wonderfully grand appearance.
Hypericum
Hypericum berries come in white, green or flame red, matched with vibrant green foliage. The joyous appearance of these berries is a perfect addition to any Christmas arrangement. Providing an alternative texture and glistening colours they will give any bouquet a unique finish. They match well with roses providing an ideal backdrop for larger more traditional blooms.
Skimmia
Skimmia is an evergreen shrub with large glossy green leaves and feathery clouds of small red flowers. The blooms come in a range of shades from deep red to almost white and look incredible in table centrepieces or large traditional bouquets. While they don’t have the grandeur of a rose, they add a uniquely Christmassy depth and texture to any arrangement.
Wax Flower
With clusters of small white or pink flowers against a backdrop of narrow green leaves, the wax flower is an evergreen that will last for ages, particularly in the cold winter months. Originally from Australia, the wax flower gets its name from the texture of its petal and has a slightly exotic appearance that adds just the right amount of intrigue to your Christmas flower display.
Eryngium
The small spiky flowers of eryngium combine the prickles of a Christmas holly bush with the crystalline structure of a snowflake. A truly stunning Christmas flower display uses an eclectic mix of textures and shapes to draw the eye. There are very few flowers that deliver this as well as eryngium. A variety of sea holly, it can sometimes have a slightly blue tinge adding another level of intrigue to your bouquet, wreath or table display.
Eucalyptus
Contrasting perfectly with the sharp geometric shapes of eryngium, eucalyptus foliage has large oval-shaped dusky green leaves that give your flowers an ethereal backdrop. Foliage is crucial to building a bouquet in any season but at Christmas, eucalyptus leaves are good enough to take centre stage.
Dried Citrus Fruits
Citrus slices and whole citrus fruits in your Christmas bouquet are a treat for all the senses. They provide a new and unique texture, a sharply festive scent and a wonderfully rustic yet natural appearance. A few judiciously positioned slices will quickly give your arrangement a whole new look reminding your guests of warm winter spices and mulled wine scents.
Pinecones and Seed Pods
The humble pinecone is so easily overlooked or trodden underfoot; however, it and many other seed pods offer a wonderful way to pack your Christmas flowers with new and varied shapes. They last for months, look great and can even be upcycled with a carefully added hint of glitter.
Ribbons
Once your Christmas flowers are tied and ready to go, a deliciously decadent ribbon is the perfect finisher. Carefully place a large bow or twist it through the blooms to accentuate the colours and textures of your flowers and foliage. Just as we mix in different types of blooms or foliage to create different effects, different sizes and textures of ribbon can be used to produce a diverse range of results.
Best Christmas Flower Arrangements
The beauty of flowers, foliage and embellishments is their versatility. Arrangements in a vase can be wonderful, but at Christmas, you can move away from simple bouquets and let your creativity shine.
Here are some of the best arrangements you can try at Christmas. However, this isn’t a finite list and should be used as a jumping-off point to let your imagination run wild and inspire your own creations.
Wreaths
Wreaths are a Christmas classic, boasting a gorgeous ring of green foliage enhanced with your choice of flowers, berries, textures, baubles and ribbons. They’re commonly used as a front door decoration but why stop there? A beautiful yuletide wreath looks great inside as well as outside. If you’ve got a spare picture hook or wall sconce, why not decorate your walls with wreathes and bring that fresh and festive vibe inside?
While many Christmas wreaths have a similar structure of evergreen foliage decorated with a few pinecones or baubles, don’t be afraid to mix things up and add in some non-traditional extras. At Thatch and Roses for our luxury white rose door wreath we create an eye-catching base with textural seasonal foliage and adorn it with exquisite white roses, berries, pinecones, cinnamon sticks and other dried decors.
Door Swag
Swags are another great wall or door-mounted decoration that gives you the freedom to leave the ring of the wreath behind and let your creativity flow. Built on a base of evergreen leaves you can use the natural shapes of the foliage to dictate how you build up the layers. Once you’ve got a structure you like you can start going to town with the foliage, flowers and embellishments. Mix in a range of different textures and scents to achieve a truly memorable result.
Table Centrepiece
Table centrepieces are almost as close to Christmas as Christmas trees and stuffing. The perfect blend of deep green foliage and red berries of flowers is just what’s needed to set your table in a festive mood. However, despite centuries of tradition, there’s still plenty of room to think outside of the box and get creative with your design. We love our traditional advent centrepieces featuring tall elegant white candles but we also enjoy our vase-based festive table centrepiece which we’ve packed with textures, colours and scents.
Festive Vases
Vases of beautiful blooms look great at any time of the year, but at Christmas, you can really bring the festive cheer with layers of textured foliage, berries and flowers. Offering a spectacular display of the best in Christmas foliage, we like to use extra-large recycled vases filled with high-quality Irish eucalyptus, spruce, berries and much more.
Bouquets
Wonderfully there is still enough space at Christmas to include a fabulous bouquet of flowers. With a Christmas bouquet, you can embrace the opportunity to reach new heights of luxury and opulence.
When making bouquets for Thatch and Roses, one of our favourites, the Christmas Florists Choice Bouquet, comes with our choice of the very best the season has to offer. This lets us get really Christmassy and explore breathtaking blooms, unique seedpods, and textural foliage.
The beauty of these bouquets is that they never just sit quietly in the corner of a room, they explode with Christmas scents of sweetness, pine and citrus and are so genuinely eye-catching that you’ll notice them the moment you walk in.
Festive Flower Arrangement Tips
There are so many things to do when planning your Christmas flowers, it can be hard to know where to start. We’ve come up with a list of things to consider when designing your flower arrangements to ensure they stand out from the rest.
Colours
Considering the colours available and which you will use in your arrangement, is a great way to give your arrangement a cohesive, intentional appearance. This Christmas we have divided our products into three themed collections, each with a relevant colour palette:
- Festive collection -Rich and decadent using deep reds, lush verdant greens and opulent textures to express the perfect essence of Christmas.
- Traditional collection – Fragrant citrus and spice notes are blended with the natural textures of pinecones, lotus pods and gorgeous seasonal foliage. This embodies all the colours, textures, scents and sights that we love about Christmas. Because the focus of this collection includes a broad range of embellishments and experiences the colour palette is wider, including everything from reds and greens to yellows and browns.
- Yuletide collection With a contemporary take on the winter wonderland, the yuletide collection has sparkling winter whites and frosted finishes intermingled with natural lime and mossy greens.
Themes
Themes can be used to match your flowers to a particular celebration or to express something specific. All of our experiences of Christmas are so varied that different themes may be more appropriate for different people. For example, for some people Christmas may be all about family and togetherness, for others, it may be more about loss and remembrance. Keeping a theme in mind as you create your flower arrangement will help you choose the best flowers, foliage and adornments to match it.
Textures
Textures are the florist’s secret weapon, while it is important to consider flowers, colours and themes, it’s textures that will take your arrangement to the next level and make it look professional. The texture and tone of different foliage-rich plants can be woven together to create a feast for the eye. An abundance of textures and tones can prevent your Christmas arrangement from having a flat, boring appearance and make it gloriously three-dimensional.
Scents
A genuinely memorable Christmas flower arrangement shouldn’t just look great it should also smell great. Christmas is a wonderfully sensory time of year with many memorable sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures. Great arrangements play on as many of these as possible.
A really great way to engage the senses is to choose items that build up layers of fresh Christmassy scents. We often incorporate flowers and foliage with heady floral notes but also less common smells like citrus and pine. When combined it’s incredible how much these scents can add to the ambience of a Christmas celebration.
Containers
A classic vase can look stunning but don’t get held back by convention. Getting creative with the container you put your festive blooms in is a great way of creating something fresh and new. For example, we use hat boxes for some of the arrangements in our Christmas collection. Their broad base and bold colour are ideal for a gift bouquet but also deliver a uniquely striking appearance you’ll be unlikely to find anywhere else.
Shelf-life
Whatever the time of year, the shelf life of your cut flowers will be a determining factor on which you choose and for how long you can enjoy them. This is still true at Christmas; however, the cold temperature means that if you keep your flowers away from the radiator, they’re likely to last a long time.
In addition, by including long-lasting items like evergreen foliage and embellishments you may be able to keep your arrangement looking great for the full 12 days of Christmas.
To learn more about how to extend the life of your cut flowers visit our blog post: How to keep fresh flowers alive for longer.
Conclusion
Christmas flower arrangements are a wonderful opportunity to embrace your creativity and let your imagination flow. There are more options when it comes to flowers and foliage at Christmas than ever before, so there’s no excuse not to try something new. Pick one or two of the ideas and tips we’ve mentioned and give them a try, or if you want some great examples of what’s possible at this time of year, visit our Christmas collection.
FAQS
What is the most popular flower in December?
Poinsettias are often considered to be the most popular flower in December; however, when it comes to cut flowers, roses are often the most common. They come in a range of festive colours and offer a rich, luxurious appearance that’s perfect for the season.
Is there an official Christmas flower?
Poinsettias are generally thought of as the official Christmas flower. They’re native to central and south America but are known all over the world for their stunningly festive appearance. The flowers of the poinsettia are the small buds at the ends of the stems and the large red parts are actually colourful leaves.
What is the flower colour for December?
Red and white are common flower colours used in December and the Christmas season. Both colours are often paired with green foliage to create beautiful festive bouquets.