Video Home » Red Rose and White Calla Lily Bouquet - 92930 - 1-800-FLOWERS.COM

Congratulations, you've received what I consider to be one of 1-800-Flower's most elegant bouquets. It combines the timeless and sophisticated beauty of the rose and the calla lily. Also included is some ruscus to help fill out the bouquet. The easiest way to get started is to open your bouquet and spread out your flowers and separate them by variety, so you'll have all of your roses together, your calla lilies and your foliage. First thing to do is to check your roses. Roses's naturally have guard petals that are around the outer edge of the flower itself. This is here for a reason, it actually protects the inner petals of the rose. We like to keep them on in shipping, but if you find that a few of them are a little too bruised, you can just simply go in and go down to the base of the petal and just give it a quick tug and you can remove them. Don't remove too many because you'll see as it hydrates and starts to open up it looks very natural and very beautiful. The next thing I'd like you to do is look at the bottom half of the stems of the roses. Calla lilies don't have any additional foliage, but the roses, if there is foliage still on the stem that would be below the water level when you make your arrangement, simply pluck that off as well. You don't want any of the extra foliage to be below the water level; that promotes bacteria growth and will shorten your vase's life. The flower food helps with that, but it also looks nicer without the foliage in the water, gives it a nice cleaner look. Then you are ready to arrange. With this particular bouquet I think it's best to work with each different variety one at a time, so we're going to start with our foliage. We'll take all of our stems of ruscus and get them pretty much the same height on the top and then we're going to cut all these stems at once, make the process just a little bit quicker for you. Notice I'm cutting the bottom of the stem on an angle. That helps when you're putting the flowers into the vase of water to help it start to take up the maximum amount of water and get the hydration going as quickly as possible. If I had cut the flowers stems straight across the bottom, it might flush on the bottom of the vase and not be taking up the water that it needs. So the same thing, make sure to be very careful that the calla lilies in particular, that you're using a sharp cutting tool, a knife or some sort of clippers. This has a soft stem and you want to just be a little gentle with it and not crush it. So the ruscus has formed my base, I'm going to take each stem of calla, give it a fresh cut, you notice when it's out of water for a little bit and even once it's in your vase the bottom of the stem does start to split a little bit and that's natural. So when you're placing your callas in, go from one side of the vase to the next. A fresh cut, taking off the bottom piece, and then place it in the vase. So we're creating a natural grid, I'm going to be making an all around arrangement in here with this bouquet. When you're making your arrangement, decide where you're going to place it. If you're going to be placing it on a side table, perhaps in a foyer, then arrange your flowers accordingly and have them all facing the front of the vase, because that's how people will be viewing the bouquet. You see how the foliage, the ruscus, helps to keep my callas in place. Now we're going to go to the roses. You're doing the same thing, you're taking each rose stem, giving it a fresh cut on an angle, and now I will simply place my roses in between my stems of calla lilies and ruscus. You will find your natural process, whether you want to take a little more time, that's up to you. Once you put your flower in the vase, if for some reason you want to take it out and put it in another spot, if you take it out of the water just give it another fresh cut on an angle. You want your flowers to drink up as much water as they can. They've been travelling for about 24 hours now to get to you to bring these smiles and they're very thirsty, so the sooner you get them hydrated, the better. Now to get your flowers to last as long as possible, you really should go through this process every two to three days. Take your vase, you can take your whole bouquet out at once, clean the vase itself, because the cleanliness of the vase is very important, and then add a little more flower food, you'll get two packets with your delivery, and give each flower, either all together in a bouquet, but with this size bouquet and the types of flowers like the calla lilies, probably would be better to give each of them an individuatl cut. The more care you give your flowers the longer they'll last. But it's really really important that you enjoy them and don't feel burdened by them at all. They're such a thing of beauty and they really do make people feel good. I have flowers in my house all the time and everyone appreciates it in my family. Look at that, isn't that beautiful? Callas and roses, the classic symbol of elegance and beauty.