How to create a joyful daffodil arrangement to welcome spring

Spring’s earliest blooms, time-honoured and graceful, rise up out of a neoclassical mantel vase. This impactful asymmetrical arrangement resists the urge to follow the lines of the vase’s curvaceous form and is altogether more wild and free.

Is there a more nostalgic flower than the daffodil? For me, daffodils conjure notions of floral church displays and roadsides in spring, vintage postcards and Cicely Mary Barker fairies. A childlike bloom, common and simple in structure, it is often overlooked as a contender for formal flower arranging. So many poets and writers have described the beautiful simplicity of the daffodil. Shakespeare celebrates the ‘flower that comes before the swallow dares’, Wordsworth catches them dancing in the breeze and Housman laments their demise come Easter. Traditionally daffodils symbolize new beginnings, fertility, good luck and strength, their large glowing blooms radiating in huge groups, reflecting the sun’s warmth and their own resilience in being among the first to emerge from the cold dark winter. The first sight of daffodils has long been thought to bring the viewer luck, and taking care not to trample them is said to bring abundance.

Despite this flower’s unfailing annual appearance, I tend to hold swathes of daffodils in parks as a sacred sight; they are not to be picked! Every year, I grow half a dozen or so varieties for cutting and I find it difficult to extract them from the garden. There has been a narcissus revival in recent years. Where once they may have been considered just a cartoon-like flower, we now see many unusual varieties: salmon, pink, coral, peach, crisp white and, of course, yellow. Besides the classic trumpet shape are exquisite, rare, tropical-looking flowers with huge, incredible ruffles or double petals.

For this arrangement I chose a 1950s ceramic mantle vase that I’ve always been drawn to because of its unusual dimensions. It lends itself perfectly to my design. Proportions are key here. It is all too easy to make the mistake of keeping the size of the arrangement close to that of the vase, and to follow its shapely curves. However, over the many years I have experimented and battled with these vases, failing and trying again, I have come to realize that to go big and break the lines of its form leads to an overall more impactful arrangement.

Ingredients

• Wide, shallow vase measuring 35 x 15 cm (14 x 6 in)
• Chicken wire measuring 50 x 50 cm (20 x 20 in)
• Wire cutters
• Gardening gloves
• Florist’s pot tape
• Strong scissors or secateurs
• Forsythia x 10 stems
• Prunus blossom x 10 stems
• Hellebore x 10 stems
• Daffodil x 25 stems, different varieties

Method

Cut a large enough piece of chicken wire to fill your vase, loosely scrunching it into place. Secure across the top with a few strips of florist’s pot tape. Fill the vase with water.

Next, create the outline for the arrangement using your tallest pieces of blossom first – in my case, forsythia and prunus. Establish the highest and the widest points in order to achieve the overall size and proportion of the arrangement in relation to the vase. I chose to create an asymmetrical design.

Once the proportions are set, you can fill in more of the middle space using multiple stems of blossom, including the hellebores and daffodils. Remember to keep the overall shape of your arrangement intact.

Staying within the perimeter guide that you have set with the blossom branches, take care to use blooms with height higher up in the design and any shorter stems tucked in closely to the vase near the centre. Allow some of the longer stems to jut out at the sides.

Create varying depths with the blooms by having some tucked in and others protruding out in front of them, even if it feels as if they are obscuring the shorter blooms.

Weave any remaining smaller flowers, such as hellebores, in between the daffodils or wherever there may be a noticeable gap. Stand back from your arrangement to see if there are any lines you wish to break by having a flower interrupt them.

The ancient Greek myth about Narcissus, a handsome youth who was granted his good looks by the gods, is a well-known tale. Being immortal, his beauty was permanent, but only on the condition that he never tried to view his own reflection. Once, while Narcissus was hunting in the woods, a beauteous wood nymph named Echo fell desperately in love with him, but Narcissus cruelly rejected her. So consumed was she with sadness, that the gods were not pleased. The goddess Nemesis lured Narcissus to a shimmering lake. There, in his vain state, he was unable to resist gazing at his own reflection, and fell in love with himself. As he gazed, the divine penalty took effect, and he simply faded away. In his place sprang up the golden flower that bears his name today. Once again, mythology provides a darker side to what often appears to be nothing but sunshine.