Sustainable Mechanics: A Masterclass in Curation

Floral foam is a phenol-formaldehyde plastic. It does not biodegrade in any meaningful timeframe, it fragments into microplastics as it is handled, and a 2018 study found those fragments in the water it is soaked in. For an industry whose entire product is plant material, it is an awkward thing to be standing in.

Replacing it is not straightforward, which is why the trade took so long to move. Foam does four jobs at once — it holds stems at any angle, it holds water, it is light, and it costs almost nothing — and no single replacement does all four.

What Actually Replaces It

The mechanics that work are older than foam, which only became widespread in the middle of the twentieth century. Florists managed before it and the methods survived.

Chicken wire. Crumpled into a ball and taped into a vessel, it creates a three-dimensional grid that holds stems at angle. It is reusable more or less indefinitely, it costs very little, and it is the single most useful foam replacement for arrangements in a watertight container. The limitation is that it needs a vessel — it cannot build outward into space.

Pin holders, or kenzan. The heavy lead-based pin frogs used in ikebana. Superb for precise placement of a small number of stems, permanent, and expensive up front. They suit sparse arrangements and are useless for mass.

Reusable cage and armature systems. Metal or plastic frameworks that clip into vessels. These are the closest direct substitute for large-scale event work, and several are now made specifically to replace foam in installations.

Structural plant material. A lattice of woody stems built inside the vessel, which supports everything placed after it. Free, fully compostable, and slow — this is the method that costs labour rather than materials.

The Part Nobody Mentions: It Costs More

Foam-free work takes longer. Building a wire armature into a vessel is minutes of work that foam does in seconds, and on a hundred-and-twenty-table event that difference is real money.

It also constrains design. Foam allows a stem to sit at any angle including horizontal or downward, held in place by nothing but the medium. Wire does not do that as easily, and some silhouettes that became standard during the foam era are genuinely harder to achieve without it.

Anyone claiming foam-free is simply better in every respect is selling something. It is better environmentally and it costs more in labour and design freedom. That is the trade, and it is worth stating plainly so a client can decide.

The Water Problem

Foam's underrated function is hydration. A stem in saturated foam is in contact with water along its cut surface continuously, which is why foam arrangements travel well and hold up in installations with no reservoir.

Foam-free work has to solve this separately. In a vessel it is straightforward — there is water in the vessel. In hanging or vertical installations it is not, and the honest answers are water tubes on individual stems, hidden reservoirs, or accepting that the piece is a one-evening object.

This is why so much foam-free installation work uses dried, preserved and woody material: it removes the hydration problem entirely. Our Preserved Flower Dome and the dried end of our work exist partly for this reason.

What This Means for a Client

Three practical consequences worth knowing before commissioning.

Expect vessels. Foam-free design mostly happens in containers, so an event scheme will feature more visible vessels and fewer arrangements appearing to float on a surface. This is a look, and it happens to be the look currently in fashion, which is not a coincidence.

Expect the arrangement to want water. A foam-free piece delivered to a home needs its vessel kept topped up, and unlike a foam arrangement it will show neglect within a day.

And expect to get the vessel back, or to pay for it. Reusable mechanics only reduce waste if they come back to the studio, which for event work means a collection arrangement rather than everything disappearing at midnight.

How to Tell If a Florist Has Actually Moved

Two questions settle it. Ask what they use instead of foam, and a studio that has genuinely switched will answer specifically — chicken wire, reusable armatures, kenzan, structural greening — rather than saying they are moving away from it.

Then ask what happens on the hard jobs: hanging installations, arches, anything vertical without a reservoir. That is where foam persists, and an honest answer describes water tubes, dried material, or an accepted one-night lifespan.

Where the Industry Actually Is

Several national competitions and a number of major flower shows now prohibit foam outright, and a substantial part of the design-led end of the trade has moved. Volume commercial floristry largely has not, because the labour economics do not work at supermarket prices.

The realistic position for a studio our size is foam-free by default, foam by exception where a specific installation genuinely cannot be built otherwise, and honesty about which is which. Claiming to be entirely foam-free while using it for the hard jobs is common and not worth doing — clients who care about this ask good questions.