You may have noticed that a lot of your first arrangements look nice when facing them head-on, but when you look at them from the side, you can see that all of the flowers are on one plane, you don’t have any depth. Depth is important because it’s what makes an arrangement look dimensional instead of just a big wall of flowers. It’s what lets your eyes move in and out on different stems and blooms and leaves. So it’s not just a matter of shoving more flowers into the vase, it’s a matter of playing with depth.
To do that, start with a vase that’s bigger than you need so you’re not crowding all of the stems in. Choose just a few flowers and then place one bloom a little forward, so that it’s leaning a bit toward you, and tuck another bloom way back in the arrangement so that it’s almost hidden. That gives you some forward and back, some depth. And you can see how, when the stems are at different levels, the arrangement looks more relaxed, more like flowers that are growing, rather than all lined up in a row like they’re in a store.
Sometimes you’ll see that all of the flowers are lined up on the edge of the vase, this is something that beginners often do because we want to see each bloom. But that doesn’t create depth. You want to tuck some of the stems way back in the vase so that they’re mostly hidden. It makes the flowers you can see more interesting, and it makes the whole thing feel less crowded. If you’re still having trouble getting depth, try laying one bloom back a bit and raising another one up above the rest. This will help.
The Fix: Practice in Short Bursts
So one way to practice this is to spend just 15 minutes working with four stems. Place one way up front, near the edge of the vase, and the next one a bit behind it and the next one even deeper. Then step back from the vase and look at it. Remove one of the blooms and move it up a bit. Or back. Just play with it until you can see that it’s dimensional, until you can see the different levels. You’ll start training your brain to see when an arrangement is deep or not.
And when you do get it deep, you’ll see that the flowers don’t feel crowded like they do when they’re all on one plane. You’ll see that the light catches them differently and you’ll see that you can walk around the arrangement and it looks good from lots of angles, not just the front. And over time, you’ll get a feel for when you need to bring a bloom forward and when you need to tuck it back, and that will help your arrangements feel full and lush and calm.