What Is Garden-Style (European) Floral Design?

Garden-style floral design is a loose, asymmetrical way of arranging flowers so the result looks gathered from a garden rather than assembled in a shop. It is the only style Adore Flowers builds in, from our Downtown Los Angeles studio.

Style is the first decision when you buy flowers in Los Angeles, and most sites skip it. A garden-style piece and a classic domed bouquet can cost the same and read nothing alike in a room. Here is what the style is, what goes into it, and how to order one here.

What makes an arrangement garden-style?

Three things: asymmetry, deliberate negative space, and stems left in their natural gesture.

Floral design has a formal vocabulary for this. Iowa State University Extension defines line as "the visual path the eye follows through the arrangement", and treats balance as either symmetrical or asymmetrical.

Garden-style takes the asymmetrical option every time. A rose is allowed to nod, a ranunculus stem is allowed to curve, and a branch is allowed to break the outline.

How is garden-style different from a classic round bouquet?

A classic bouquet is round, symmetrical and densely packed, with every flower facing outward. Garden-style varies the heights and leaves air between the stems.

The same extension guide divides a design into positive and negative space. Garden-style spends as much attention on the empty part as on the flowers.

One reads as orderly. The other reads as alive. Both are real work, and the choice depends on the room the flowers will sit in.

What flowers go into a garden-style arrangement?

Stems with movement and a slow unfurling rather than a uniform head. In our work that means garden roses, ranunculus, dahlias, cosmos, sweet peas, snapdragons and anemones.

Foliage does real work here. Trailing jasmine, eucalyptus and wild grasses carry the outline past the flowers, which is what keeps the piece from closing into a dome.

Is European floral design the same thing?

Close enough that we use the terms interchangeably. European style names the same naturalistic tradition: seasonal material, texture, line and room to breathe.

What both terms rule out is the template. A garden-style designer follows the flower in front of them, so the same order placed twice produces two different arrangements.

Why does the style depend on what the market has that morning?

Because a garden-style piece is built from whatever is at its best that day, not from a fixed recipe. The Original Los Angeles Flower Market on Wall Street opens at 5 AM, Monday to Saturday, and that is where our stems are chosen.

In six years of design I have never built the same arrangement twice. The season decides more of the piece than I do, which is the part of the job I like most.

Who is a garden-style arrangement for?

People who want flowers to read as an object in a room rather than a gift in a cone. It suits an art-filled home, a design-minded office, and anyone who notices how things are made.

Every piece is set in a permanent vessel the designer chooses to suit it, so the container outlasts the blooms. I choose the vessel before the last stem, because the shape of it decides how far the arrangement can lean.

Does a garden-style arrangement last as long as a classic one?

It holds the same five to seven days, but it changes more across the week. Buds open, stems reach for the light, and the silhouette has shifted by day three.

Care is the same as for any cut arrangement: clean water, a fresh angled cut, nothing below the waterline, and a spot out of the afternoon sun. Our guide to how long delivered flowers last has the detail.

How do you order garden-style flowers in Los Angeles?

Order before 11 AM, Monday through Saturday, and your arrangement is built that morning and delivered the same day. Our hand-tied bouquets and vase arrangements start at $150 in four sizes.

We deliver across 30 Los Angeles County neighborhoods, from the Historic Core beside our studio to Sunset Junction in Silver Lake. Coverage and windows sit on the delivery page, and the studio's story is on our about page.

Related reading

See where LA florists get their flowers, garden roses vs standard roses, and what is in season in Los Angeles, and wildflower arrangements in Los Angeles.