How to Arrange Tulips Inside a Tall Vase

How to Arrange Tulips Inside a Vase

Today I am going to share how to arrange tulips inside a vase. Have you seen those beautiful tall vases filled to the top with pretty cut tulips? Springtime makes to rush to locate beautiful tulips and tulip bulbs. Fresh cut tulips are usually the first sign of Spring to arrive in stores and give the slightest hint that the too long Canadian winter is soon to end and Spring is coming.

There are all kinds of pretty ways to arrange tulips, so I hope you enjoy creating a new style of Spring tulip arrangement.

It’s so enjoyable to grab a pretty glass vase and some fresh cut tulips. With a few simple tips and a pretty tall vase, you can recreate a gorgeous tulip inside vase arrangement in just a few minutes.

Arranging tulips inside a vase only has a few simple steps. Let me show you how.

Selecting the Right Vase

To place tulips inside a vase so they display properly you need to have a tall clear glass vase or glass jar. A tall thin vase about 14 to 18 inches high that’s wide enough to fit your hand into is the perfect choice.

Choosing Fresh Cut Tulips

Finding fresh tulips is always a challenge, should we purchase them at a flower shop or local grocery stores? With experience, I have found the grocery store to be the better choice. As long as the grocery store had them displayed in a cooled place and the blossoms are still tight they should be good to go. Grocery store tulips are often smaller, but because of the turnover, they tend to be fresher.

For this arrangement, I searched two nearby flower shops and sadly you could tell the florals including the tulips had been in the refrigerator a very long time. If you have a local flower shop by all means get them there.

Choosing Tulip Variety and Colours

My arrangement is in soft pink because that’s a favorite. There all lots of other varieties of tulips in different colours you could use. Feel free to play with any eye-catching combination you love. I just love the distinctive look of the one colour as is, without any embellishment. But if I ever locate green tulips, I want to try this same idea using a combination of white and green tulips. If you do it, please send me a picture.

How to Arrange Tulips Inside Vase

To make this DIY tulip arrangement you will need:

Step 1 – Prepare a Clear Glass Vase

Wash and rinse your clear glass vase first, and place a couple of inches of rock or filler in the bottom of the vase.

Next measure from the top of the rocks to the rim of the vase. My glass vase is 14 inches tall, but after adding the rocks the distance to the rim is 11.5 inches. Mark the measurement down for trimming the ends of the stems later on.

Once the measurement is marked down, add two or three inches of clean cold water to the vase along with the flower preserver. Make sure to keep the water level where it was, above the cut bottoms, and below the blossoms.

Step 2 – Cutting and Preparing the Tulips

You need to prepare 3 sets of tulips. A tall, a medium, and a short set. We will begin by removing excess leaves. Firstly remove any tulip leaves that will be beneath the water line. This keeps the tulip water cleaner longer. Next, you want there to be enough space for the tulip blossoms to stand out, so remove at least 1/3 of all the leaves.

The ends of fresh flowers from the store likely sealed themselves closed from storage so we will need to trim the ends off before placing them into the vase.

Before we cut the stems let’s make the three different height bundles using a ruler and measuring the blossom placement. The stems will be different lengths.

Place three tall tulips to the back right. Then add two medium length tulips to the left and then two short tulips to the front right.

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Once you have your flowers arranged. Gather the tulip stems together, and wrap them with a rubber band elastic.

Place the bundle of tulips into a sink of cold water so the stems are under the water and the blossoms are dry. Cut each stem off with a sharp knife or sheets so that the bottom is square.

Some tulip stems will be 11 inches long while others may be only four inches that’s fine. Just make sure you cut the bottom evenly across and that all the tulips are shorter than the vase. Remove the elastic, but hold the entire bundle in your hand. Do your best to keep the cut ends underwater.

Visually check to see if the tulip blossoms stand out, if not remove some more leaves.

Step 3 -ArrangingTulips in the Vase

Start with the tallest tulips, and place them on the right-hand side at the back of the vase.

Then do the shortest stemmed flowers placing them right side at the front.

Now finish the arrangement by placing the medium flowers on the left-hand side. You may disturb some of the petals of the other flowers by putting them in. If this happens, use a chopstick or a fork and rearrange the pedals back into place.

Best Tips for Keeping Tulips Fresh and Drooping Tulips

Yes, there are ways to prevent our tulips from drooping and other ways to try and refresh them. I wrote a whole separate blog post about How to Make Your Tulips Last Longer. But, I think the main reason tulips droop is we don’t know exactly how old they are, or how they were kept and transported. With all that said, arranging the tulips in a tall vase is a great way to give drooping tulips extra support.

Cutting the fresh stems underwater at a 45-degree angle helps, as does fresh cold water, ice cubes, changing the water, and adding flower food.

I have heard about using ice cubes, sugar, flower preservers, bleach, and other easy tips for tulips. But the best way to keep them is to buy them as fresh as possible and to realize they have a limited vase life no matter what we do.

Where to Place Your Tulips

Place your tulips in the right place, where it’s as cool as possible, and make sure it’s in indirect sunlight. Because the tulips are inside glass, it can act like a magnifying glass and cook our beautiful tulip arrangement.

The Spring season is coming soon, and I bet you are as anxious for it to come as I am.

Happy Crafting. Leanna

Other Related Tulip Posts

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I will certainly be purchasing several more bouquets of fresh flowers before Spring,  It really brightens the mood in the house.

Enjoy your week!