Does Spending More Mean a Bigger Flower Arrangement?

It's a perfectly reasonable assumption. If a $100 flower arrangement is a certain size, then a $200 arrangement should be about twice the size, right? Not necessarily. Price certainly can affect the size of an arrangement. If we take the same flowers, the same style and the same type of container and increase the budget, generally speaking we're going to be able to make a larger arrangement. But once you start changing the flowers, container, design style or amount of work involved, price and physical size can become two very different things. In fact, two floral designs with exactly the same price can be dramatically different in size.

The flowers themselves are probably the biggest factor, because the difference in cost between individual varieties can be enormous. At the time of writing this, we sell carnations for about $4 per stem. At the other end of the spectrum, we can bring in more exotic flowers such as cymbidium orchids that retail for $80 to $100 per stem. That's quite a difference, but there are reasons for it.

Carnations are remarkably hardy flowers. They can be grown locally, they're readily available through our suppliers, and from seed they can begin producing flowers in roughly three to five months. A standard carnation gives us a single bloom on each stem and is relatively straightforward to grow, ship, handle and work with. Now compare that with a cymbidium orchid. Cymbidiums require very specific growing and environmental conditions, and the ones available to us are often imported from Asia. They require considerably more specialized handling than something like a carnation, and a cymbidium plant can take somewhere in the neighbourhood of three to five years before producing its first flowers. One stem, however, can carry many individual blooms, sometimes 10, 20 or even 30 flowers depending on the variety and quality.

Suddenly $80 or $100 for that stem starts to make a little more sense. You're paying for years of growing time, specialized conditions, transportation across enormous distances, careful handling, availability and ultimately the flowers themselves. Every step required to get that orchid from the grower to our design bench is reflected somewhere in its price.

Orchids aren't alone in requiring special treatment. Gardenias are another great example of how particular some flowers can be. They're so sensitive that even the natural oils on your hands can damage the bloom. Florists learn very quickly that different flowers can't all be grown, shipped, stored, handled or designed in the same way, and all of those differences ultimately affect their cost.

So imagine giving us a $200 or $300 budget and saying you want something big. We can select flowers, greenery, a container and a design style that use that budget to create something with considerable physical presence. It could be tall, wide and immediately command attention when someone walks into the room. Give us that exact same budget and ask us to showcase two or three spectacular stems of premium cymbidium orchids in a beautiful vase and the finished design might be physically much smaller, despite being worth exactly the same amount.

Neither arrangement is overpriced and neither is necessarily better. The money has simply been used differently. That's why judging the value of flowers strictly by how much physical space they occupy can be misleading. Sometimes you're paying for quantity and visual volume. Sometimes you're paying for rarity, quality or a particularly spectacular flower. Most arrangements fall somewhere between those extremes.

The vase or container also has a significant influence on the size and shape of the finished arrangement. Professional floral design is guided by elements and principles of design, including proportion, balance, scale, line, form and space. The container establishes part of the framework we're working within, while the flowers selected as focal or dominant elements can influence the height, width and overall shape of the finished piece.

A short, wide container naturally lends itself to a different design than a tall, narrow vase. A large focal flower can change the proportions we need to create around it, while a long, architectural flower might lead us toward a completely different shape than a collection of smaller, softer blooms. This is why adding another $25 or $50 to an arrangement isn't necessarily a matter of simply stuffing more flowers into the same vase. Eventually that would stop looking intentional and start looking like we just stuffed more flowers into a vase. Our job is to use the budget while still creating a properly proportioned design.

Labour is another significant part of the price, and one of the best examples is comparing a vase arrangement with a corsage or boutonniere. Put a $50 bouquet beside a $50 corsage or boutonniere and there isn't much question which one looks bigger. The bouquet wins that contest rather spectacularly, but physical size isn't what you're paying for.

Corsages and boutonnieres are small, detailed work and, depending on the design, can take a similar amount of time to create as a much larger vase arrangement. Flowers may need to be individually prepared and secured, tiny components need to be positioned carefully, mechanics need to be concealed, and everything has to remain comfortable to wear while also surviving hugs, dancing, movement and an entire evening of being bumped around. A lot of what makes that possible is virtually invisible when the piece is finished, and that's actually the point. Good mechanics generally aren't supposed to be the part you notice. You see flowers sitting exactly where they're supposed to be; the florist sees all the little things underneath that are keeping them there. That time and labour have value even though they don't make the finished product physically larger.

The skill and experience of the designer also makes a difference. There's a big difference between putting a few flowers and some greenery together and creating a deliberate floral design. Not every arrangement or occasion needs to be an elaborate work of floral art. Sometimes a beautiful bunch of flowers, nicely arranged and wrapped, is exactly what somebody wants. There are other times, however, when the design itself is a significant part of what you're buying.

Creating an Art Deco-inspired piece with specially imported flowers, for example, requires more than simply increasing the number of stems. The designer has to understand the style, select appropriate materials, consider line, proportion, colour, texture and negative space, and then use the flowers in a way that actually communicates that design. Experience matters. A skilled designer may deliberately leave space where an inexperienced person would add another flower, use one extraordinary bloom where someone else might use several ordinary ones, and understand how your eye will travel through a design and how different flowers interact both visually and physically.

When you start putting all of this together, virtually every aspect of a floral design can influence its price. The flowers, greenery, container, availability, seasonality, where something was grown, how it had to be transported, how difficult it is to handle, how long it took the plant to produce that flower, the mechanics required to create the design, the amount of labour involved and the experience needed to execute it can all contribute to the final value.

That's why we can't simply say that a $200 arrangement will be a particular size. It could be a huge arrangement designed specifically to create as much visual impact and physical presence as possible. It could be a lush, compact arrangement packed with flowers. It could be an artistic design using unusual and premium materials, or it could be two or three magnificent stems of cymbidium orchids displayed simply in a vase. The same thing happens at lower price points. A $50 bouquet designed to maximize volume could look enormous sitting beside a $50 corsage or boutonniere, despite both representing essentially the same value. They're simply different products requiring different materials, skills and amounts of labour.

This is also why the information you give your florist can be more useful than simply giving us a dollar amount. If your priority is size, tell us. If you want something that will make a big visual statement from across the room, that's useful information. If you'd rather have something smaller filled with particularly beautiful or unusual flowers, tell us that instead. Maybe you prefer something compact and lush, tall and dramatic, loose and airy, modern and artistic or traditional and colourful. Or perhaps you simply want us to make the best thing we can for the amount you'd like to spend. All of that information helps us decide where to put the value.

There isn't a correct answer because different people value different things. A $300 arrangement doesn't have to be enormous to be worth $300, just as a physically large arrangement doesn't necessarily have to be enormously expensive. Size is only one characteristic of a floral design.

When you're buying flowers, you're paying for everything that went into creating the finished piece, from the months or years it took to grow some of those flowers to the kilometres they travelled, the vase they're sitting in, the hands that prepared them and the experience of the designer who figured out how all those individual pieces should come together. Spending more certainly can result in a larger flower arrangement, but it doesn't necessarily have to. Literally every aspect of a floral design can influence its price, and physical size is only one of them.

Fresh. Unique. Flowers. It's What We Do!