A lot goes into floral design, from selecting a style to bringing the blooms to life and enjoying them with friends and family. With so much effort and beauty, it’s no secret that we want these flowers to last. While creating a jaw-dropping floral design for a special occasion, event, or home is fun, it also involves patience and time. After searching for the perfect blooms at Cascade Floral Wholesale, the first step is to ensure your flowers live long, healthy lives by prepping your stems. Then, once your blooms have been arranged, and your pieces have been finalized, caring for these fresh stems is just as important as putting them on display. Learn from the experts here at Cascade Floral Wholesale about how to prep and care for your event flowers in six easy steps.

1. Give Your Stems a Fresh Cut

Clean the stems by removing any thorns, leaves, and foliage. While this makes the stems easier to work with, it also helps extend their healthy life by eliminating any bacteria living on the foliage. This first step is a win-win!

Next, trim the bottom of your stems at a 45-degree angle to allow them to soak up as much water and floral food as possible. Cutting a straight line across the stems will result in your flowers standing flush at the bottom of your vase, which hinders their ability to hydrate properly.

 

2. Food & Water

Before jumping into floral design, it’s crucial to prepare a clean bucket of water and flower food to revitalize your blooms. Once cleaned and trimmed, place each stem into the bucket so they can drink up all the healthy goodness and thrive in your designs. Allow your fresh flowers to soak for two-four hours prior to arranging.

3. Cut to Size for Your Floral Designs

One can bet that these fresh flowers will be too tall to create a handheld bouquet and certainly too large for a corsage, boutonniere, floral crown, etc. This means you will need to cut your flowers to size by measuring them against any floral foam, oasis, floral hoop, or even your wrist or lapel, depending on your creation. As mentioned, always make your cuts at a 45-degree angle to keep the blooms fresh.

4. Store Your Design

After you have created and finalized your floral designs, it’s time to store them before your event. For designs like bouquets that are not already in floral foam or a vase, keep their stems hydrated in miniature vases or floral water tubes. The best places to house your finished products are in a cool space, preferably a flower cooler. However, if you don’t have this luxury, have no fear! Any refrigerator or chilly location will be just fine as long as your flowers are kept away from direct sunlight, drafty areas, and hot climates. You can also cover your floral designs with a damp cloth or plastic wrap to help keep them fresh and hydrated.

5. Water Your Flowers 

The easiest way to keep your flowers healthy and thriving before and after an event or occasion is by watering them. While some floral designs are more straightforward to water than others, it is still critical to replenish your blooms with fresh, clean, and cool water every day. For vase arrangements, empty the old, dirty water before adding new water. Floral designs created in foam or oasis can soak up fresh water poured from a watering can. Easy peasy!

6. Open Your Blooms

If you are creating an arrangement or floral design for immediate use at an event, you want your blooms to be as full and luxurious as possible. If your flowers have yet to fully blossom by the day of your occasion, gently spin the stem between your palms or carefully shake it. Another tactic to expedite the blooming process for your flower is to expose it to direct sunlight or low heat from a blow dryer. Please note that these processes trick your buds into blooming prematurely and, therefore, can accelerate their entire lifespan.

Any event or special occasion would be incomplete without vibrant blooms bursting with celebration and love. Not to mention, nothing is worse than putting in hard work and effort and watching your blooms wilt prematurely. By taking the proper steps and giving your fresh flowers from Cascade Floral Wholesale a little TLC, you and your friends and family can admire and enjoy your floral designs to their fullest potential.

Color is a fundamental part of floral design, and exploring the many shades and hues that exist naturally in the world is an exciting and beautiful adventure. This year’s Pantone Color of the Year, Viva Magenta, is one of those stunning and exciting shades. It is a bright and bold color, and here at Cascade Floral Wholesale, we enjoy finding beautiful and artistic ways to incorporate this color into arrangements and all sorts of flower creations. Whether looking for vibrant Viva Magenta blooms or ways to highlight these fierce, confident, and marvelous stems with complementary colors, the experts at Cascade are diving into everything you need to know about styling Viva Magenta flowers.

What is Viva Magenta?

Viva Magenta is a color that shines with power and vigor. It is a shade pulled from the red family and rooted in nature, making it the perfect color to look for in floral blooms and arrangements. The organic origins of Viva Magenta come from the humble cochineal beetle. This scaled insect produces reddish carmine dye, one of the brightest and most precious natural dyes. Viva Magenta is an excellent shade to incorporate into the color palette of your flowers because it is a hybrid color. It is a bold color that is welcoming and not too aggressive, making it an excellent hue for event floral designs.

The Symbolism of Viva Magenta

Part of Viva Magenta’s charm is its rich symbolism. Celebrating confidence, empathy, optimism, and most of all, “fierce grace.” As a member of the red family Viva Magenta signifies passion. The hints of purples and pinks in the color also help balance the intensity of red with joy and fun. The blending of these remarkable hues makes Viva Magenta a perfect choice for a fun and bold bouquet full of life and inspiration.

Viva Magenta in Flowers

There are many great flowers with hues like Viva Magenta. Roses, dahlias, orchids, protea, calla lilies, and peonies all bloom in magenta. If you want to make a trendy monochromatic design, it is a great idea to consider pink and red flowers like carnations, lilies, yarrow, amaryllis, gerbera daisies, tulips, and alstroemeria. A seemingly endless number of pink and red flowers will fit seamlessly into Viva Magenta arrangements.

Viva Magenta Color Palettes

Using color theory, you can pick various tones to pair with Viva Magenta in a floral arrangement. If you want to make your magenta flowers pop, you can pair them with pale blues and grays. Suppose you want to create a brilliant bouquet with a complementary color to magenta. In that case, you can add fresh and vivid greenery like eucalyptus or green flowers like button poms, hydrangeas, and orchids. Another great combination is bright purple and lively blue flowers for an eye-catching palette for your arrangement.

Flowers are one of the most expansive mediums to explore color because of the many natural hues and shades in which florals come. The symbolism of both the color and the plant can create profound meanings and thoughtful expressions. Viva Magenta cloaks us in both power and grace and adds a powerful strength to any arrangement or space it inhabits. Brighten your event, home, or loved one’s day with a DIY design incorporating Viva Magenta flowers from Cascade Floral Wholesale.

Understanding the complexities of design and preparing your flowers and greenery for arranging your bouquet might be easier than you think. While flower arranging is an art, by utilizing helpful tips from the experts, it will be a project that is both fun and simple. The three most critical factors to thoughtfully sort through when planning your bouquet or floral collection for an event is the color palette, shape and seasonality of your flowers, and the fresh greenery to enhance and highlight each bloom. Our experts here at Cascade Floral Wholesale are here to offer the best advice for floral selection techniques so that you can design your own stunning arrangements in no time.

Color Matching and Palette Selection

The most obvious factor to consider when planning floral arrangements is color combinations for creating your perfect theme. Whether a vintage, chic event with shades of blush, burgundy, and green or a bright summertime bouquet with vibrant orange, yellow, and blue, the combinations can seem endless. Deciding on a strict aesthetic will help guide you toward blooms that match or complement one another and create an ideal color palette.

Once you have nailed down a particular look, feel, style, or theme, it’s time to find flowers that enhance each other. Highlight Mother Nature’s natural beauty by consulting the color wheel. Utilizing complementary colors, or those opposite each other on the wheel, will help create a bold and dramatic look. Cascade Floral’s Summertime Brights or Rustic Fall mixes provide the perfect collection to achieve this aesthetic. The flowers included in these packages are also ideal for triatic bouquets that use three colors equidistant on the color wheel. For a more intricate use of this idea with a softer contrast, you could use split-complementary colors, or the adjacent colors to its complement. One example of this is pairing yellow with shades of red and blue instead of its natural complement of purple. If you are looking for a more cohesive, trendy, or sophisticated look, analogous or monochromatic colors are ideal. Analogous colors are any three colors that are connected, while monochromatic colors refer to the different shades of a single color. Our Classic White, Intoxicating Burgundy, and Luscious Lavender mixes offer a great assortment of flowers for analogous or monochromatic arrangements.

Seasonality and Shapes

Another vital factor for creating a magnificent flower collection for an arrangement is to find stems that complement each other’s shape, size, and seasonality. For instance, pairing summer sunflowers and gerbera daisies with winter berries might not look right. Instead, the wide petals of gerbera daisies can pair beautifully with smaller roses. Additionally, the star-shaped vibrancy of gerbera daisies can poorly contrast with the softness and fullness of the beloved hydrangea if you’re not careful. Luckily our pre-selected flower combos are hand-picked to perfection, considering seasonal flowers that perfectly enhance each shape and size to create flawless dimension and cohesions to your bouquets.

Fresh Greenery

The final element or finishing touch to any floral arrangement is adding greenery. Take some time to appreciate the accents these supporting greens provide. Greenery’s soothing natural elements provide a backdrop for the flowers, making the main attraction pop and shine. Greenery also works wonders for adding unique shapes and textures to spice up an arrangement.

From a mix of various green leaves to a single selection of your favorite to subtly complement the flowers, there are many directions you can go in. One of the most popular types of greenery to incorporate into bouquets for weddings and home décor is eucalyptus, which comes in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, flexibility, and hues. Simply stated, you can’t go wrong with eucalyptus. Salal is another example of a versatile or go-to stem of vibrant green leaves, especially if you want something compact and rich. A pro tip for choosing unbeatable greenery is to match the seasonal trends of your arrangement. For example, if you make a brightly colored summer bouquet, monstera leaves may be an ideal choice to support that fresh and vivid summertime feeling.

While making your own bouquets and arrangements can feel like you’re flying solo, the experts at Cascade Floral Wholesale are here to provide not only quality radiant blooms and fresh greenery but pro tips and advice as well. Before getting started on your next floral project, be sure to check out our collection of DIY Flower Combos and Shop Your Style today.

The winter months can often feel drab and dreary, especially once all the holiday décor has been packed up and stored away for another year. However, the cheer brought into our homes during the holiday season doesn’t have to end once January begins. The beauty, joy, and comfort we find in seasonal flowers may come from Christmas centerpieces, lovely poinsettia plants, and holiday arrangements sent by far-away loved ones, all of which can include rich and radiant red blooms and even those mimicking Pantone’s 2023 Color of the Year, Viva Magenta. Although red is a festive hue, it can also lift our spirits through January, symbolize love in February, and remind us in March of the warmth that is coming soon in spring. This winter, send homemade red flower arrangements to friends and family or brighten your home with your own creations with fresh red blooms from Cascade Floral Wholesale.

The Symbolism of Winter’s Best Red Flowers

• Amaryllis – A symbol of radiant beauty, the tall and sturdy red amaryllis also represents strength and determination. 
• Anemone – Simple yet striking, the red anemone symbolizes love.
• Anthurium – Exotic and tropical, the red anthurium bloom represents happiness and hospitality.
• Aster – a symbol of undying devotion, this daisy-like bloom is a popular flower in Greek mythology.
• Carnation – Soft, subtle, and pretty, the red carnation is a symbol of admiration.
• Dahlia – A natural statement flower, the red dahlia symbolizes commitment.
• Rose – The ultimate symbol of love and romance, the fragrant rose comes in various red hues, perfect for Valentine’s Day.

Adding More Seasonal Favorites

When curating the best collection of red flowers for a winter arrangement, be sure to collect variations of red hues that will add stunning dimension. Accenting your seasonal red flowers with bundles of refreshing greenery and white winter blooms will also help bring your arrangement to life. Incorporate hints of blue, purple, or burgundy flowers to create a serene, relaxing, and moody feel, perfect for a cold winter’s evening. For a romantic Valentine’s Day surprise, include red, white, or pink lilies, especially stargazer lilies, and sweet pink flowers that add a touch of grace, femininity, and adoration.

Incorporating a Touch of Winter

As December’s end nears, the winter season is only beginning. This means seasonal elements and accessories, like pinecones, winter berries, cinnamon sticks, dried oranges, dried cranberries, and even white flocking, are still “in!” Add these winter touches to your arrangements and bouquets for extra warmth, coziness, and texture. Get creative by thoughtfully placing these items among seasonal blooms in arrangements, inside a clear vase for decoration, or on the same shelf you display your winter flowers for a put-together winter look.

If you’re looking for a great way to spruce up your home and banish the winter doldrums, you can’t go wrong with rich red flowers! After the Christmas tree, stockings, Santa Clauses, reindeer, and other holiday items are put away, your home can feel quite empty, bare, or simply cold. Brighten it up with your favorite warm red flowers. Check out our selection of gorgeous winter blooms here at Cascade Floral Wholesale.

If you thought there might be a dearth of pretty florals during a cold-weather ceremony, you are about to be surprised. Getting married during the winter opens you up to a variety of gorgeous seasonal blooms that are quite striking and unlike other flowers typically seen throughout the rest of the year. Below you’ll find some inspirational winter wedding bouquets as well as popular cold-weather blooms to consider using in your event decoration. For all your flower needs, regardless of season, Cascade Floral Wholesale is here to make all your special occasions and events perfectly flowerful! 

5 Beautiful Winter Bridal Bouquet Ideas

Including seasonal blooms in your event, regardless of the time of year, is the best way to guarantee your floral decor is fresh and harmonizes with the season. Plus, sourcing currently blooming florals is eco-friendly. For inspiration to whet your appetite for beautiful winter bridal bouquets, browse through the stunning styles below. 

Green & White – Mimicking the look of snow with winter greens, bridal bouquets with white and green have an ethereal, season-appropriate elegance.

Dusty Hues – This sumptuous bouquet has soft-colored flowers in dusty peach and lavender with contrasting dark purple tulips and waxflowers for an enchanting look.

Peachy Naturals – Ranunuculas in soft peach and cream shades are joined with other muted colors that emanate warmth and quiet notes of romance.

Wine & Plummy – Jewel tones are perfect for capturing the magical beauty of a winter wedding as seen in the above bouquet that has purple roses, burgundy blooms, and a striking protea.

Dark and Dramatic – Moody yet enchanting, these dramatic blooms in dark purple, burgundy, red, and green showcase their stark beauty against a backdrop of winter whites and neutrals.

Popular Winter Flowers

Amaryllis

This large, winter flower comes in colors such as red, pink, and orange as well as bicolored red and white. Their presence is perfect for adding brightness and a pop of color to neutral or muted winter bouquets

Anemone

A stunning bloom with a dramatic dark disc at its center, anemones always make a statement. For winter bouquets, numerous white anemones reflect the white landscape in an enchanting and magic way.  

Calla Lily

Elegant and bold, a bouquet of just burgundy calla lilies adds drama and sophistication at the same time. Against a white dress and snow, it’s absolutely striking.  

Camellia

A large, stunning flower with an abundance of petals, the camellia bloom is always a good choice for winter wedding decor.  

Gardenias

For winter weddings, the gardenia is another great choice when going for a green and white look with the added bonus of a divine scent. 

Ranunculus

Ranunculus flowers add instant romance and glamour. Coming in a variety of colors such as white, cream, peach, pink, red, and purple, there’s no reason not to have this lovely bloom in your wedding decor.  

Sweet Pea

A sweet flower with sweet blooms and a sweet scent, the lovely and charming sweet pea looks right at home in your winter wedding decor. 

Tulips

Always a classic choice and full of romance, tulips are a great choice for winter wedding bouquets. Choose from tulips in white, red, orange, purple, yellow, or peach to blend with any wedding color palette.  

Winter flowers are some of the most enchanting blooms we see all year which is why they’ll make your winter wedding truly exceptional. Beyond the blooms themselves, winter bouquets also typically include natural seasonal elements such as berries, seed pods, blue thistle, and pine cones

Floral arrangement consists of selecting flowers and foliage to create beautiful and delightful designs. It’s an artistic activity that offers a way to express oneself creatively. It is also an art form in which there are fundamental design elements that are used to create a pleasing outcome. To help you create gorgeous and gratifying flower arrangements, our experts at Cascade Floral Wholesale have put together a list of ten fundamental design principles that are essential to creating professional-looking floral arrangements. 

10 Essential Floral Design Principles 

1. Lines

Whether you’ve consciously noticed them or not, professional floral arrangements feature linear-based designs, which encompass four different types of lines:

1. Actual Lines – These lines are actually present in your design. Everything you use has lines. For example, stems, bamboo shoots, or a row of red roses are all actual straight lines. The curve of a leaf or twist of a willow branch represents actual curved lines. 
2. Implied Lines – Your arrangement will create implied lines, where the mind’s eye connects two similar elements or continues a repeated pattern. 
3. Static Lines – Static lines give the impression of a lack of movement. Vertical and horizontal lines that do not lean or incline are considered static. Horizontal lines tend to represent rest, peacefulness, and quiet, while vertical lines, like the columns of a great temple, represent power. 
4. Dynamic Lines – Dynamic lines are neither perfectly vertical or perfectly horizontal, but rather slanted, curved, spiraled, or zigzagged. These lines create the impression of movement within your design. 

If a design appears too rigid or cold, add in a dynamic line or two. Conversely, if your design looks too chaotic, give it more structure with static lines. Usually, a combination of different types of lines creates a visually dynamic and well-balanced floral design. 

2. Shape/Form

Once you’ve considered the types of lines you will use in your design, you’ll need to think about the shape or form your lines will come together to create.

Think of shape in terms of two dimensions and form in terms of three. If you’re creating a design that will only be viewed from one side, then you can focus mostly on shape. If you’re creating a centerpiece or arrangement that will be viewed from all sides, then you’ll need to focus on three-dimensional form. 

Floral arrangements can be created in a variety of shapes and forms, but some are more popular. For example, you can make an endless variety of designs using crescents, circles, triangles, ovals, spheres, rectangles, spirals, and other shapes. Working toward creating an overall shape will create a cohesive look, preventing your design from appearing messy or thrown together. 

3. Balance

Balance does not mean that your arrangement needs to be completely symmetrical. It’s better to think about balance in terms of visual weight and negative space. If you have a particularly large bloom on one side of your arrangement, it’ll likely look odd, if you don’t balance it with another large bloom or a similarly sized cluster of smaller flowers on the opposite side. View your arrangement from all angles to make sure you don’t have any unsettling empty spaces or overly full spots. 

4. Color

All flowers are beautiful, but when paired within a well-planned color palette, they can truly stun the viewer. When it comes to color combinations in floral design, you can do just about anything you like. Feel free to play with monochromatic designs, contrasting colors, pastels, and saturated hues. When working with multiple colors a good rule of thumb is to choose three basic hues, two complementary colors that will dominate your design, and an accent hue. 

In floral arrangements, color is more than just visually important. Different colors and flowers have symbolic meanings. Before you settle on a color pallet for your design, you might want to look into the symbolism of the colors you plan to incorporate.  

5. Texture

When you think about texture, you’ll be closely inspecting the surface quality of each element in your design. Due to the way light reflects, rough surfaces will naturally retreat into your design, while smooth, shiny surfaces will pop out with greater intensity. Thinking about texture in your design will help you create more visually interesting creations. Try to incorporate different textures within your arrangement to create a floral design that interests a viewer the first or fiftieth time they see it. 

6. Contrast

Contrast adds drama and visual interest to a design. You create contrast when you place opposite elements side by side. For example, light colors and dark colors, soft textures and coarse textures, or big blooms and small flowers. Contrast is an important design element, but it’s tricky to get exactly right. Be careful to avoid incorporating equal amounts of contrasting elements — choose one to be more dominant. With too many contrasting elements, your design can become overly busy and erratic, resulting in the loss of your design’s rhythm and balance. 

7. Space

It’s important to think about the spacing of flowers within an arrangement to prevent it from looking crowded or to create an intentionally crowded look that seems to burst from the container. Whether you’re going for a line or mass arrangement make sure your flowers are adequately spaced so that viewers can get a good look at each special flower in your design. 

8. Size/Proportion

When creating an arrangement, it’s important to think about the location where it will be placed. Create a design that will be the right size for its intended placement, neither overpowering the room nor getting lost within it. For example, you wouldn’t want a tiny arrangement to act as the focal point of a large room or a large arrangement that doesn’t fit into the corner it’s intended to fill. 

9. Rhythm

Just like repeated beats move us through music, visual rhythm in floral arrangements helps move an observer’s eye through the entire design. You can create rhythm by repeating colors, textures, or even lines throughout the arrangement. For example, long stems that radiate in a fan-like pattern or bright bursts of yellow throughout will give your design plenty of rhythm. 

10. Focal Point

While your viewers’ eyes move through the rhythm of your floral design, it’s also important to provide them with a focal point on which they can pleasantly rest their gaze. You can easily create a focal point within an arrangement by using an unusual, large, or unexpected bloom within your arrangement. Consider using a flower cluster like a hydrangea, a peony, or even a large rose. 

Using high-quality materials and applying these basic design principles to your floral arrangements will make all the difference, transforming your designs from home-made efforts to professionally designed works of art. For more floral design inspiration, we welcome you to contact our floral design experts at Cascade Floral Wholesale. 

Cascade Floral Wholesale is thrilled to unveil our new website. For over 25 years, we’ve been providing quality wholesale flowers to florists, designers and other customers in the area. Our revamped website reflects our commitment to quality, customer service, and affordability.

Browse our site’s gorgeous galleries and richly-detailed pages. There are over 800 products available for our current and future wholesale customers to explore, and we’re particularly proud of our garden roses collection. Hand-selected for their best-in-class quality, these blooms are sure to enchant. Our favorite, Romantic Antique, is a prime example of the form.

Fully optimized for mobile, our site can be viewed by anyone and makes signing up for membership an easy process. Become a member today to gain access to the prices for specific products. We have everything you need to make your events gorgeous—all you’ll need is some vases and some water! Our selection includes trending blooms in the hottest color palette as well as classic flowers for a more traditional look. Our Vintage Blush-Luxury Mix is a great example of the sheer range and quality of florals we have on offer.