We love creating a live flower installation here for our events here at the farm. Not only does it showcase the beautiful flowers in a unique way, it also provides a dramatic backdrop or a fun photo opportunity. Here is the flower installation we made for Cultivate 2022. We’re hosting a family event for Cultivate 2023 and you can expect another amazing flower installation at that event.
How to Make a Live Flower Installation
First, you make your structure. This involved 4 posts securely placed in the ground, with steel wire fencing attached to them for stability. Over the steel wire fencing, we attached a chicken wire the whole length with zip ties. The chicken wire is what you will start poking the flowers into.
Start with the foliage and try to evenly cover the chicken wire with foliage. It’s helpful if you have a person to stand behind your installation to help secure the stems but not absolutely necessary. Make sure to have some of the foliage hang down and over the edges. Notice how our installation has a very loose feel. We don’t want a perfect rectangle. We want the edges to be blurred. (Although, you may want a perfect rectangle and that is fine! We prefer a little bit looser look.)
Once you are happy with your greenery, you move onto your large focal flowers. Place almost all of them how you’d like them. We usually try to space them evenly across the installation. Save a few back for the end in case you need to add some more. For this installation, our largest and showiest flowers were the sunflowers, followed by some of our larger dahlias.
After you’ve stood back and looked at the placement of your largest flowers and are pleased, start filling in around everything with your filler flowers. You’ll need more flowers than you think you will! Once you start thinking you have everything covered where you can no longer see the chicken wire, or see through the installation, step back and analyze it. This part involves a lot of stepping back, noticing spots that look a little bare, filling them in, and then repeating until you are satisfied.
You’re finished! Enjoy your event and people’s amazed reactions at your live flower installation!
A Few Tips
- We normally create our installations the morning of our event and they look good for that day without watering or spritzing them.
- If you need your installation to look good longer than that, you’ll want to make sure its in the shade and plan on spritzing it with water to refresh it.
- You can also save some buckets of blooms to refresh your installation. The greenery usually lasts longer than the blooms.
