Flowers for kids

SPANISH FORK — The Flowers for Kids classes really open things up for the florally impaired.

It's a lot easier to build a bouquet once you understand you need four basic items: focals, fillers, lines and greens.

• Focals are the showy, colorful flowers like roses, carnations and sunflowers.

• Fillers are the baby's breath and goldenrod kind of flower. They expand the bouquet.

• Lines are tall flowers such as larkspur and delphinium that give a bouquet depth and additional color.

• Greens like leatherleaf and tree ferns provide a backdrop to the rest.

Put them together in a kind of triangular pattern and voila! You have a pretty bouquet.

Then it's just a matter of keeping the flowers clean, fed and watered, said Sharon Swapp, floral manager for the Spanish Fork Macey's.

The container needs to be clean and the water should be fresh.

Some sweet and some sour needs to be added to the water as well. Swapp recommends picking up packets of flower food to add to the water or mixing in two tablespoons of sugar and a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to every quart of water. (The flower food also has an agent that helps contain bacteria growth, she said.)

Leaves need to be removed, and the water should be changed every other day to avoid bacterial buildup.

Before putting the flowers into a vase, the stems need to be newly cut with sharp, clean cutters. Sharp cutters do less damage to the stem straws that collect the water.

Once cut, flowers must be put into water within five seconds or less.

In fact, the best idea is to cut the stems underwater.

Flowers will live longer is they're kept out of direct sun, out of drafts and off the television, Swapp said. They should also be away from fruit.

"I love flowers. Flowers are all about feelings. I think my first memory as a baby was of a flower, seeing a pansy and getting all excited," Swapp said.

Children in the class named their favorite flowers.

Remington Rasmussen said he favors roses "because they're so red."

Samantha Irwin voted for sunflowers.

Get more information and ideas from www.flowersforkids.org.

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E-mail: haddoc@desnews.com