Succulents and Air Plants in Floral Design

Succulents in a bouquet were a wedding trend around 2014 and then became a punchline, which is a shame, because they solve several real problems and nothing else solves them. Used with any restraint at all, they remain one of the more useful things in a designer's kit.

What they are good for

They do not die. A succulent in an arrangement outlives every flower around it by weeks, and then continues existing indefinitely. In an arrangement that has to survive a long event, a hot room, or a delivery to somewhere difficult, a succulent is the element that will still look correct at the end.

They provide a surface nothing else has. Matte, geometric, dense, cool-toned. Petals are translucent and layered; a succulent rosette is opaque and solid. The contrast is genuinely striking, and it is the reason the pairing worked before it was overdone.

The colour range is unusual. Chalky blue-grey, dusty lilac, bronze, sage, near-black. These are colours that are difficult to find in flowers and expensive when you do.

They are re-plantable. The one thing in an arrangement that is still alive in a year. A rosette pulled out of a bouquet, allowed to callus for a few days and set on soil will root and grow into a plant. For a wedding bouquet this is the closest thing to preservation that requires no technique at all.

The ones used

• Echeveria — the classic rosette, in blue-grey (E. elegans), dusty pink-lilac (Perle von Nürnberg) and ruffled forms. The workhorse.
• Sempervivum (hens and chicks) — smaller, tighter, often red-tipped. Good for boutonnières.
• Sedum — trailing forms for spilling over an edge; Sedum 'Autumn Joy' flower heads are excellent autumn material in their own right.
• Senecio (string of pearls) — trailing strands of green spheres. Extraordinary in a cascading bouquet and fragile in handling.
• Tillandsia (air plants) — no roots, no soil, silvery-green, alien-looking. See below.

Mechanics — this is the part that goes wrong

Succulents have no stem. They arrive as a rosette on a stub, and getting them into an arrangement requires a wire.

The standard method: push a heavy-gauge floral wire horizontally through the base of the rosette, just above where the leaves attach, bend both ends down to form a false stem, and tape it. Done properly this is invisible and holds securely. Done badly the rosette rotates on the wire and ends up facing the floor.

Two consequences worth knowing as a buyer. First, this is labour — every succulent in a bouquet is a hand-wired element, which is why succulent work costs more than its material price suggests. Second, the rosette is heavy. Three or four large echeveria add real weight to a bridal bouquet, and a bouquet that a bride has to hold for six hours has a weight budget.

Air plants specifically

Tillandsia are a different proposition and an underrated one. No roots, no soil, no wiring required in the same way — they can simply be tucked into an arrangement or nestled into a vessel. They take water from the air and from occasional soaking, and they will live for years with almost no attention.

They read as sculptural rather than botanical, which makes them useful in contemporary and minimal work where a flower would be too soft. A large Tillandsia xerographica in a shallow stone vessel with nothing else is a complete object and needs no maintenance beyond a soak every fortnight.

They are also excellent corporate and desk gifts for exactly this reason — our Evergreen Desk Garden and Private Green World both work in this register, and Black Stone Green World takes it more sculptural.

Where the trend went wrong, and how to use them now

The failure mode was quantity. A bouquet that was fifty percent succulent stopped reading as flowers and started reading as a terrarium someone was carrying. Add the mason jars, the burlap and the baby's breath of the same period and the whole vocabulary became dated as a set rather than individually.

The correction is proportion. One to three succulents in an arrangement of twenty-five stems is an accent, and it works exactly as well now as it did then. The eye reads it as an unexpected texture rather than as a theme.

The other correction is context. Succulents against rustic material — burlap, kraft paper, mason jars — is the dated combination. Succulents against genuinely luxurious material — garden roses, ranunculus, silk ribbon, a good ceramic vessel — is not, and never really was. It is the same contrast that makes concrete and brass work in interiors.

For a modern take on the sculptural-plant register, Green World on Wood and Sculptural Ceramic Vase are the right starting points, and specific succulent work can be specified through the Designer Flower Mix.

Aftercare, for the recipient

If your arrangement contains a wired succulent and you want to keep it: pull it out when the flowers are done, unwind the wire, and let the cut base sit dry and exposed to air for three to five days until it forms a dry callus. Then set it on top of gritty soil — do not bury it — and water lightly once a week. Roots appear within a month.

Air plants need nothing but a twenty-minute soak in room-temperature water every one to two weeks, shaken out thoroughly afterwards so no water sits in the centre, which is the only thing that kills them.