How the work stands.
No more floral foam — why I stopped, and what holds an arrangement up instead.
I used foam.
Until this season, some Lovely Coven arrangements were built on floral foam. I'm saying that plainly, because a studio that asks you to trust its hands shouldn't begin by hiding what they held.
Foam is the green brick inside most arrangements you have ever been sent. It is fast, it holds a stem at any angle, and it is plastic. It doesn't break down. It crumbles — into pieces small enough to wash down a sink and into the water.
In 2019, researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne tested foam microplastics on freshwater and marine animals. Every species they tested ate it, and some showed signs of stress. The version sold as "biodegradable" leached more than twice the phenolic compounds of the ordinary kind. The following year, the Royal Horticultural Society announced a ban on floral foam at its shows, Chelsea included, from 2021.
I knew enough of this and used it anyway, because it was easy. That is the honest reason. As of this autumn, foam is part of the studio's past, and it stays there.
What holds the work up now.
Pin frogs. A heavy plate set with brass needles — in ikebana, a kenzan. It sits at the bottom of the vessel, takes a branch at a steep angle, and weighs enough to keep it there.
Wire. A cage of chicken wire shaped inside the vessel and fixed to its rim. It lets a gesture reach past the lip without pulling the whole piece over, and it is used again and again.
Branches. A nest of twigs or vine does the structural work and stays in the composition. Nothing is hidden that couldn't be seen.
Weight. A cantilevered arrangement is a lever. When a branch reaches out, something heavy has to sit on the other side of the pivot — a weighted liner, stone, a denser vessel. Every piece is tipped in the studio before it leaves. If it doesn't right itself, it doesn't go.
Water tubes, for the single stem placed where the water can't follow.
Why it matters to the work.
Foam lets you put a flower anywhere. That is exactly what's wrong with it. Without it, every stem has to earn its place against gravity — and that, more or less, is the whole aesthetic.
What it asks of you.
Foam held water where you couldn't see it. Open water keeps flowers longer, but it's yours to watch.
- Top up daily. Stems drink hardest in the first two days.
- On day three or four, recut the stems and change the water.
- Keep the arrangement away from fruit bowls, radiators and direct afternoon sun.
- If a single stem sits in a small glass tube, refill it.