6 Best Floral Design Books

Reading the best floral design books is a great way to enrich yourself with the art of creating breathtaking bouquets. A beautiful bouquet can truly transform any space with flowers that add dimension, color, and subtle fragrance to change the mood of any setting. Following flower arranging books will teach you everything from the basics to more advanced techniques.

Best Floral Design Books

Book Name & Author Image Rating Price
Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style by Christin Geall 9.6 View on Amazon
Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden: Grow, Harvest, and Arrange Stunning Seasonal Blooms by Erin Benzakein & Michele M. Waite 9.8 View on Amazon
The Flower Recipe Book by Alethea Harampolis & Jill Rizzo 9.3 View on Amazon
Flower School: A Practical Guide to the Art of Flower Arranging by Calvert Crary 9.4 View on Amazon
Flowers by Design: Creating Arrangements for Your Space by Ingrid Carozzi 9.6 View on Amazon
Flower Color Guide by Taylor Putnam & Michael Putnam 9.4 View on Amazon

1. Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style

The author Christin Geall who is a floral designer, photographer, and teacher emboldens designers, gardeners, and entrepreneurs to think differently and deeply about their work with flowers and floral design. She draws upon the fine arts and historical sources whether exploring Baroque music, the paintings of the impressionists, or the work of floral innovators like Gertrude Jekyll and Constance Spry.

Covering all aspects of floral design, including choosing flowers and plants to grow and arrange, selecting tools and vessels, balancing color and form, and even photographing and selling arrangements, Cultivated offers universal lessons for all levels of practitioners, budgets, and materials. Geall’s stunning photographs of her own lush designs illustrate techniques for creating brilliant arrangements that spark the imagination.

This is a complete master class in floral arranging, the book addresses everything from caring for flowers and choosing vessels to photograph your work and selling arrangements. She devotes an entire section to learning from the past, elevating floral design to its deserving place as fine art. Christin makes floral design approachable, inviting absolute beginners and master designers to learn along with her.

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2. Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden: Grow, Harvest, and Arrange Stunning Seasonal Blooms

Erin Benzakein is a florist farmer, leader in the local farm-to-centerpiece movement, and owner of the internationally renowned Floret Flower Farm in Washington’s lush Skagit Valley. In this stunning flower book, she provides readers with vital tools to nurture a stunning flower garden and use their blossoms and cut flowers to create show-stopping arrangements.

Among a sea of new florists and floral books, Floret Flowers stands out. Erin Benzakein’s integrity, openness, and passion for flowers are unmistakable. In her debut book, she not only introduces us to the basics of growing our own flowers, but she also shares her deep love and understanding of gardening in a way that will leave even the most doubtful grower feeling inspired to get their hands in the dirt.

This flower gardening book is overflowing with lush photography of magnificent flowers and breathtaking arrangements organized by season. It makes a beautiful gift for any occasion, for friends, loved ones, and gardening enthusiasts alike.

You will find inspiration in this lush flower book through irresistible photos of Erin’s flower farm that showcase exquisite blooms, tips for growing in a variety of spaces and climates, and step-by-step instructions for lavish garlands, airy centerpieces, and romantic florist design and décor for every season.

This is an ideal book for flower lovers, avid and novice gardeners, floral designers, wedding planners, florists, small farmers, stylists, designers, crafters, home decor aficionados, and those passionate about the local floral movement who will love this book.

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3. The Flower Recipe Book

Flower arranging has never been simpler or more enticing. The women behind Studio Choo, the hottest floral design studio in the country, have created a flower-arranging bible for today’s aesthetic. Filled with an array of stunning, easy-to-find flowers, it features 400 photos, more than 40 step-by-step instructions, and useful tips throughout.

The arrangements run the gamut of styles and techniques: some are wild and some are structured; some are time-intensive and some are astonishingly simple. Each one is paired with a “flower recipe”; ingredient lists specify the type and quantity of blooms needed; clear instructions detail each step, and hundreds of photos show how to place every stem.

Readers will learn how to work with a single variety of flowers to great effect, and to create vases overflowing with layered blooms. To top it off, the book is packed with ideas for unexpected vessels, seasonal buying guides, a source directory, a flower care primer, and all the design techniques readers need to know.

This is a pitch-perfect combination of beautiful and functional showcasing over 100 floral creations. The Flower Recipe Book breaks down flower arrangements as if they were recipes: including ingredients, how-to steps, and ideas for altering arrangements to suit your style.

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4. Flower School: A Practical Guide to the Art of Flower Arranging

Create the flower arrangements of your dreams to keep at home, take to the office, or display on any special occasion using the simple tips and tricks and masterful techniques taught by Executive Director and professor Calvert Crary and the master florists at FlowerSchool New York.

FlowerSchool Executive Director Calvert Crary is publishing a book that will make it possible for even the greenest at-home arrangers to create gorgeous, Instagram-worthy bouquets. This hands-on, comprehensive guide provides readers with step-by-step instructions that cover all the most crucial aspects of flower arranging, including:

  • How to buy the best flowers and how to get the best prices.
  • Selecting your flowers based on texture, color, and seasonality.
  • Conditioning your flowers to ensure they last as long as possible.
  • Pairing your flowers with the right vase.
  • Creating arrangements in a wide variety of styles that will work for any occasion.

Including advice from the school’s well-respected master florists, and featuring beautiful color photographs of each unique arrangement, Flower School offers invaluable, insider tips and tricks that can only be gained through years of experience, providing readers with the fundamental tools and education they need to create homemade floral arrangements that are on par with any professional design.

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5. Flowers by Design: Creating Arrangements for Your Space

Flowers are classic, timeless design elements that enliven your home and your life. Flower arrangements can act as an extension of your style and your tastes, complementing and accenting the aesthetic in your home. Ingrid Carozzi brought us beautiful arrangements in her first book, Handpicked, and is now offering even more tips and techniques to bring the joy of flowers into your space in new and fresh ways.

Flowers by Design focuses on creating unique and beautiful floral arrangements that fit into and complement the overall look and feel of your home. Floral design is such a wonderful, timeless, and subjective art form that Ingrid’s Flowers by Design weaves together floral stories and instructive approaches in one beautiful volume.

This book is far more than a floral guide, Flowers by Design is an enchanting journey into a world of unique and vibrant compositions that inspire and instruct the reader in creating their own floral works of art, suited perfectly to their own home and style. Meeting someone like Ingrid that is as passionate about flowers is an incredible experience, and that passion is truly showcased in her new book Flowers by Design.

In Flowers by Design, Ingrid Carozzi discusses fresh ideas in floral design through the prism of her creative friends. Using their different work and living environments as starting points, Ingrid demonstrates inventive and beautiful approaches so that the reader can take away useful information for their own arrangements. It is a graceful book with gorgeous photography that should be on any flower enthusiast’s shelf.

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6. Flower Color Guide

To help you find what you are looking for, Flower Color Guide is the first reference book to organize flower types by color, with an emphasis on seasonality and creative color schemes and the results are stunning in their sheer variety. What Pantone is to color, Flower Color Guide is to flowers. Planning a wedding, a dinner, a birthday party, a romantic evening, holiday entertaining, or just arranging flowers for the pleasure of having them, more often than not your creative process begins with thinking about the color of the flowers that you want.

Showcasing 400 flowers at their peak, with stunning photography, this guide includes an appendix featuring perforated pages, tips on flower care, notes on how to prepare vessels, and a list of suggested color schemes. This book is a great gift to give or to have for oneself, the book speaks to the most seasoned flower enthusiasts as well as those just beginning to explore the possibilities of arranging flowers.

Taylor Putnam and Michael Putnam have built a reputation for romantic, dramatic floral arrangements and installations using color as their guiding principle. They share their knowledge with readers worldwide:  A simple, delightful book that consists solely of the page after page of flower photos arranged by color, from a crisply white azalea to a stunning purple-black calla lily.

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