Thinking Outside the Vase
Something as simple as flowers can make eating at home feel special. Fortunately, grocery store floral departments have really stepped up their game and have made it really easy and inexpensive to pick up a bunch and drop them into vase.
Associations of flowers with food exist in a lot of cultures. The traditional table centerpiece bouquet probably evolved from the ancient Greek and Roman practice of placing herbs and their edible flowers in the center of a table to grab and sprinkle on food like we use salt and pepper today.
Flowers haven’t always necessarily been in a vase in the center of the table. The practice of simply placing flowers directly on the table has roots in India and the middle east where rose petals, fruit blossoms and other flowers were thought to stimulate appetite or facilitate good digestion. It’s certainly still standard practice to sprinkle tables with rose petals in India today. The practice of placing flowers directly on the table also appears in 15th Century Europe during plagues where there was a belief that diseases were carried through ‘bad air’ and that fragrant flowers strewn directly on the table would clear it.
Try placing flowers, plants or other floral elements directly on the table as an alternative to a standard vase of flowers in the center of the table. A lot of flowers and plants hold up fine out of water for the duration of a dinner. instead of just putting them in a vase in the center of the table why not place them around where people can touch them and smell them. You can always put them in something after dinner or encourage people to take them home.
Another alternative to placing a vase of flowers on the table is to accent each place setting with either a small vase of flowers, tied bunch of flowers or a tiny live plant. The succulent above makes a nice gift to take home. A little wire place card holder or a name card hang tag can turn this into a place card holder for larger gatherings.
Real cherry blossom branches placed directly on the tablecloth with blossom-shaped tealights integrates floral with lighting in an unexpected way.
Laying flowers directly on the table as though someone walked straight in from the garden and sat down adds an air of casual spontaneity to the event.
Scattering flowers all over the table brings a level of whimsy and delight that a vase of flowers probably wouldn’t. Photo Credit: Jenny Faye Kooster Hella Nashville
Other things you can try are placing a sprig or blossom the plate at each place setting or setting a small potted plant like a mini succulent at each plate as a gift.
Give your guests a little something to take home by tucking a flower in each napkin.
Dendrobium orchids often show up at grocery store floral departments, are relatively cheap when they do and last a long time. They’re perfect to lay as a gift at each place setting.
It’s these kinds of things that can help us feel that we’re not locked into specific ways of doing things and make having people over or making meals special at home less like a chore and more freeing and engaging.