Arranging flowers 101

Nyna Dolby works with cut flowers from the Filoli estate’s gardens when she arranges bouquets for the historic Woodside property. But, you don’t have to have acres and acres of floral options at your disposal when Costco or Safeway will do.

Currently part of the team of arrangers who puts together the weekly flower arrangements at the estate, Dolby has some tips and tricks to make the perfect bouquet for Mother’s Day.

Transforming a supermarket bouquet

Dolby warns that flower bouquets in stores are often made and selected by looking down on them from the top, but that’s not how they will look when opened on a tabletop. Dolby recommends unwrapping the flowers when you get home.

“Sort the materials in the bunch into some type of order — sort by type of flower or color of flower or size of flower,” Dolby said. “Then recombine the bunch with the flower stems at different lengths, so that each can be seen and positioned in the way they naturally grow.”

Pick a vase and a location

When selecting flowers at the store, begin thinking about the vase they will go into and where the vase will be placed. Are they going into a simple glass vase? Or a large extravagant one?

“The location not only dictates the height, but also if it will be viewed from all sides,” Dolby said. For example, if the vase will be placed as a centerpiece on the dining room table then it needs to be low, so the flowers don’t block the conversations of the guests.

Dolby loves all flowers, but she says that some long-lasting ones are lilies, gerbera daisies, roses, and hydrangeas. Her favorite “filler” is foliage found in the garden.

Prepare the flowers

After cutting the flowers, give them warm water to drink right away, with only clean stems in the water. A splash of 7-Up — not a whole can — in the water helps give the flowers a little fertilizer and fructose to drink.

Dolby also said to “condition” the flowers before putting them in water. This is a process of checking the flowers and stripping unnecessary leaves and debris off of them. If there are too many leaves left on the stems under the water line, bacteria will begin to grow in the water, shortening the life expectancy of your flowers.

Her favorite projects are making bouquets for weddings. She always puts parts of the wedding and the personality of the bride into the arrangements.

At one event where she was the keynote speaker, she invited six close friends to support her. She made a wedding-inspired bouquet onstage with flowers inspired by each one of her friends. “I started my talk describing my childhood as “ordinary, and myself as an ordinary grocery store bouquet,” Dolby said. “I took a small bouquet and used it as the center of the hand-tied bouquet.”

She added green hypericum berries for her friend Linda; tuberose for her college roommate Jan. The deep and lingering fragrance of that flower also reminded her of the deep conversations they have enjoyed together. The next was a hydrangea for her friend Jo. Dolby picked lavender for her friend Suzanne, who she has been friends with since their days in Seattle as young moms. “Holly was a garden rose, as her life has been thorny yet she brings the fragrance of love and laughter wherever she is,” Dolby said. Her sixth friend was Kimbra, who is 18 years younger than she is, and is like her much younger sister. She chose baby spray roses for her.

Dolby has had an interest in gardening since she was a little girl when she found her peace in the garden. Her father and grandfather spent much of their time gardening, and she would follow them while they tended to their plants. Her interest in gardening expanded into her adult life when she studied environmental studies and physical geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

After she got married and had children, she lived in Seattle, where she took a six-week flower-arranging class. The family moved to Los Altos in 1993 where her husband grew up. Soon after they moved back, Dolby’s mother-in-law told her about Filoli and she went for a job interview and joined Filoli in 1993. Committee members asked if she had any experience with flower arranging. Dolby recalled saying, “Actually, I took a flower arranging class.”

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