Q&A | Submerging flowers

A student from the floral demonstration I did last month at the College of San Mateo emailed me with a question and I'd like to share my response with you all in case you were trying the same thing:

Hi Annie,
I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your demo at CSM and sharing some of your trade secrets. You have that God given talent of creating something majestic out of the simplest materials. I was mesmerized.

QUESTION: I was wondering if you have some simple method of keeping flowers submerged in a tube vase...especially if you want to float a candle. Example, 3 roses or 3 dendrobium stems. I tried wrapping the bases with plenty of the deco wire but wasn't enough weight. Any hints? Thank you again for sharing your talents.

ANSWER: Here are a few methods to try:
(1) Use a small pin holder (the ones used in Ikebana) at the bottom of the vase, stick your rose or orchid stems to it and place rocks/pebbles on top to hide the pin holder. That should keep the flowers in place. If you don’t have a pin holder, you can also try to keep the flower submerged with just the rocks/pebbles. That is the more traditional way of keeping flowers submerged.

(2) But if you’re like me and you don’t like the look of the typical rocks/pebbles at the bottom and would like a more clean look of just the flowers with the floating candle on top, place the flower in the vase FIRST, THEN fill with water to just the TOP of the flower (BEFORE the flower starts to rise in the water). At this point, place your candle so that it holds the flower down too. Then you can proceed to fill with more water until flower may start to float again. The only problem with this method is that the top of the waterline can only be as high as the length of the stem of the flower.

(3) To combat the problem in (2), you can place a piece of clear cellophane, crumble it and place in the vase between the flower and the candle. That way, you get your space between the flower and the floating candle.

(4) If all else falls, you can also try to get a cylinder vase that is thinner, so that the diameter of the vase is the same as the diameter of the flowers, so that the flowers should fit snug in the vase and not float to the top.

If you're reading this and will be trying this out, let me know what you try and tell me what worked for you! Good luck!!