Welcome to tips and tricks of floral arrangements. What garden helpers do you use, scotch tape over the top of a glass vase, a frog, styrofoam, oasis, marbles or some other medium?

Trish quietly whispers: What's a frog??

I'm familiar with the amphibian.

I'm familiar with "frogging" a project (knitting)

But this one I'm clueless about!

The frog is a metal disk that has short spikes in it that you put in the bottom of the vase and stick the flower stems in to hold them in place.
We'll keep this our little secret!

Ah-ha! Now I know what they are called! Thanks!!

*and thanks for not telling on me...*

As you can see, I'll be learning, not contributing

You'll be contributing before you know it. Believe me when I say when I joined DG years ago and then got hooked on Cut flowers and arranging, I followed a thread for days, thinking to myself, frog? what? frog what? All the time laughing with Steve yeah we gig frogs at the cabin for deep fried frog legs, but what has that got to do with cut flowers.
Learn something new every day!

I just posted this on another forum here, but I hope it's OK to repost it for Trish... Check out this DG article from a year ago, "Frogs and Flower Arranging -- What's the Point?"

Great article and the designs are beautiful!

I'm glad you like it... it's my only attempt so far to teach anything about flower arranging, which is definitely still a student subject for me! The tulips and the lilac sprig are the only arrangements in the article photos that were my own... unless the spider plant babies in the glass frog (thumbnail photo at the top right) counts as an arrangement, LOL.

Very nice, I looked at the credits and didn't notice that those weren't noted and likely yours! I was wondering if any of them were by your hand, nice job. Great containers!

I do sometimes use a frog for arrangements. But I have a set of these from Lee Valley, and I find these pretty useful, too.

http://www.leevalley.com/garde...

Karen

I have those from Lee Valley too and they work great too.

Do they hold up well, or are they pretty much trash by the end of the year/season?

I have mine for about 5 years now. Mine have the little beads hanging down which helps hold it in place. You can see the beads in this arrangement.

Well, looks like I'll be needing some of these, then!

Thanks for the tip, ladies!

I actually had Steve drill some holes in a round piece of wood that he beveled and that works well too. I just drop it in the vase, insert the flowers and away we go. And sometimes I just use good old scotch tape - clear crisscrossed and it works great too!

I've only had those things from Lee Valley for about a year, but they have held up well. Best thing about them is you can pick it up while it holds flowers in place, to dump the old water, add fresh water, and put the crown back, without messing up the arrangement or bouquet.

Karen

I just love Lee Valley!!!