Style Guide: Recipes for Arranging

Welcome to the Sullivan Owen Style Guide—a seasonal collection of floral recipes, styling tips, and inspiration for filling your vases with confidence and care.

Each form in the vase collection was designed by a florist, with real flowers in mind. These recipes are built to show you how to use them, not just display them. Whether you’re styling a market bunch, a handful from the garden, or a single perfect stem, this guide helps you create something beautiful.

We’re just getting started. Recipes will be added throughout the season—check back soon or join the list to be the first to know when new ones drop.

Barely Cinched × Golden Purple

Season: Mid-Spring
Flowers:


  • Herbaceous and Tree Peonies
  • Tall Bearded Iris
  • Late Tulips
  • Hellebore
  • Sturdy Foliage (Beech, Willow)

Styling Tips:

  • Begin with a base of sturdy foliage crossed at angles to support your stems — willow and beech work beautifully here
  • Tuck in large peony blooms to create visual mass. You don’t need many; let each flower take up space.
  • Use tulips and iris to create pockets of motion and contrast. The tulips add a curling softness, while the iris bring texture and richness.
  • Allow some blooms to float high above the rest — the sculptural folds of Barely Cinched help balance the weight visually.
  • Try rotating the vase as you work. Its four distinct faces each suggest a different silhouette.

📸 Arrangement shown:
Tall Bearded Iris ‘Luminate’ and ‘Casual Elegance’, Tulip ‘James Last’, Herbaceous Peony ‘Sunny Girl’, Tree Peony ‘Loyola’, Beech and Willow foliage.

Baby Twist x Rose Golden Hour

Season: Mid-Spring
Flowers:

  • Tree Peony ‘Lasting Beauty’
  • Dwarf Bearded Iris (unnamed variety)
  • Annual Phlox
  • Garden foliage accents

Styling Tips:

This arrangement celebrates the "maiden bloom" on a peony planted back in 2023.

Begin by tucking a few foliage snips into Baby Twist to create a light nest.

Add your feature bloom with a sense of reverence — here, the softly ruffled ‘Lasting Beauty’ peony commands attention.

Let smaller supporting flowers, like Phlox and dwarf iris, play a textural role around the main focal point.

Baby Twist’s petite scale means you don’t need many ingredients — just enough to feel full of life and movement.

📸 Arrangement shown:
Tree Peony ‘Lasting Beauty’, dwarf bearded iris (unnamed), annual Phlox and garden foliage in Baby Twist.

Barely Cinched × Garden Spring Mix

  • Season: Early Spring
    Flowers:
  • 7-10 Seasonal Tulips
  • Airy Foliage to taste
  • Snips from flowering branches
  • Daffodils, Hellbores, seasonal accents

Styling Tips:

  • Begin with a light structure using arching branches and airy foliage, whatever looks good
  • Add your focal blooms in small clusters: tulips and magnolia work beautifully together.
  • Use the vase’s soft folds to cradle stems naturally. The gently cinched middle keeps everything feeling held—but never tight.
  • Let some stems wander off the edge. This vase loves asymmetry and motion and while it's a "cylinder" it has 4 distinct sides so try all of them

🌿 Design Note: Every stem in this design was cut from my garden and arranged just steps away in the greenhouse I built myself. It's a space where I test forms, flowers, and the way they move together. Barely Cinched remains my most-used vase for garden-gathered arrangements like this.

📸 Arrangement shown: Barely Cinched with LaBelle Epoque and light lavender tulips, Genie Magnolia blossom, Tiger Rose Maple Cuttings, Prosecco daffodils and Sandy Shorts Hellebores.

Baby Twist x Blueberry Tart

Season: Early Spring

Flowers: 1st Iris of the Season, Blueberry Tart

Accents: yellow Epimedium blooms, Wedgwood Blue Lilac cutting, Pagoda Dogwood foliage, Fritillaria Uva Vulpis, seasonal tulips

Notes:

  • The iris is the star of the show — make sure you can see it.

  • Baby Twist doesn’t need a whole lot of flowers; its nipped-in waist helps you create a wild and full design with minimal effort.

Envelope No.1 × Muscari

  • Season: Early Spring
    Flowers:
  • 20–30 stems of Muscari (aka grape hyacinth)
  • Optional: 3-5 small face flowers like the mums shown

Tips:

  • Use the vase’s undulating rim to let the muscari lean naturally—they don’t need to stand straight to feel joyful.
  • Tuck in a few larger blooms at varying heights to soften the structure.
  • These soft stemmed bulb flowers are thirsty, make sure to add fresh water often

📸 Arrangement shown: Envelope No.1 with blue muscari + a few Blue Ocean mums

Barely Cinched Prototype × Late Summer Dahlias

Season: Late Summer

Flowers: Assorted dahlias, Plum Perfect roses, purple peppers, sanguisorba, lorepetalum and calycanthus cuttings.

Notes:

This is the original cast of Barely Cinched, it was 3d scanned, lightly tweaked to make for improved castings but is virtually identical to today's Barely Cinched

Baby Twist Prototype × Spring Garden Cuttings

Season: Early Spring 2024 (Testing Prototype Era)

Flowers: Snips from the garden, lilac, dwarf iris, Pink Champagne Epimedium, anemone and fritillaria melagris.

Notes:

  • Captured during the early prototyping of Baby Twist
  • Even in 3D printed form, the vase's nipped in waist naturally creates a wild, airy fullness with just a few stems.
  • This glimpse into the design process shows how the relationship between vase and flower starts long before production.