How to Make Flower Arrangements on a Budget

Let me show you how to fill your home with fresh flowers & greenery on a small budget and with only one stop to the local Trader Joe’s grocery store. Wait until you see all the vases you can fill with just $35!

Trader Joe’s Spring Flower Arrangements

I stopped at my local Trader Joe’s last night and filled a bag with just flowers, greenery, and Spring branches all under $35! Let me show you how with only $35 I made enough arrangements to fill my house.

OK, I have a small house…but still!!

Why Trader Joe’s for Flowers?

• High Quality– Trader Joe’s is known for offering high-quality products at affordable prices, and their flowers are no exception. They source their flowers from reputable growers and ensure that they are fresh and in excellent condition.
• Wide selection: Trader Joe’s offers a wide variety of flowers, from tulips to roses and everything in between. There is always a large selection of seasonal flowers and some really unusual ones too! I prefer the bunches of just one type of flower but they do have lots of premade bouquets at a few price points.
• Affordable prices: While Trader Joe’s flowers are high quality, they are also priced affordably. You can get bunches of eucalyptus and most of their greenery for just $3.99!
• Sustainability: Trader Joe’s is committed to sustainability and works with growers who use sustainable farming practices.

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Choosing Flowers for Arrangements

So how do you choose what flowers to buy to get the most bang for your buck? Well, I’ll share with you my best tips.

First, I choose the star of my flower arrangement. That is the main flower that I think will be the prettiest part of my arrangement. Today I am going to choose 2 different flowers to use in different vases. Then I pick a flowering filler variety. This is something with a smaller bud. The final part of my flower arrangement will be the greenery filler.

Flower Arrangement Formula

• The Star- the main flower
• Flowering Filler
• Greenery Filler

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What I bought for $35 at Trader Joe’s: 20 tulips for $11.99 (you can get 10 for less), 2 bunches of greenery, flowering filler, spray roses, and a bunch of fresh pussy willow branches.

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Tulips: Tips & Tricks

Trader Joe’s seriously had the best selection of tulips around! You will find bunches of 10 and 20 in a huge variety of colors.

Today this bunch of red and yellow tulips was calling my name!

Cut tulips straight across

Once you have your tulips unwrapped, figure out how long of a stem you want. Then grab a sharp clean pair of snips and cut straight across the ends of the tulips to the desired length.

Remove the lower leaves and any leaves that are yellow or damaged.

Poke Pin Hole

I don’t know the exact science behind this tip but it seems to be one of the tricks to stop tulips from dropping.

Take a pin and poke it through the stem near the top, below the flower.

Copper Penny Tulip trick

The next little trick to help with droopy tulips is by dropping an old copper penny into the vase. You need to dig around that loose change jar for a penny dated before 1980 when they still had copper in them. There is probably one hanging out in the bottom of your bag…

Tulips also love cold water in their vase and I’ve read that some people even add an ice cube a day to the water.

simple Budget Tulip Arrangement idea

Today I am going to use a round vase. The more narrow neck of the vase makes a nice support for the tulips and I think the round shape compliments the flower. This dark green glass vase is from IKEA.

Look how droopy the tulips were when I first put them into the vase…but just you wait!!

Next, I grabbed a few of the pussy willow branches and trimmed them down so they wouldn’t be much taller than the tulips. I added the branches around the vase.

Here is the arrangement from yesterday right after I made it… droopy tulips!

But just look at the vase of tulips this morning! Isn’t that crazy??!! If you only have one takeaway from this article today let those tulip tricks be it!!!

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Making a Rose Arrangement on a Budget

How many of us automatically think that roses are always expensive?? Well, they don’t have to be! Trader Joe’s always has a nice variety of roses, both longer-stem roses and bunches of spray roses (smaller flower heads)

This week I bought the prettiest creamy white spray roses for just $5.99. Oh, they are so lovely in real life!

Make sure to trim the ends of the rose stems. For roses, I make a diagonal cut across the woody stems to allow maximum water consumption.

The roses were added to my vase of water first. I do use the plant food packet that comes with the flowers.

Next into the vase, I added the flowering filler. These delicate peachy German statice flowers were the perfect compliment to this shade of roses.

This time I am going to use some of the greenery (Variegated Pittosporum) filler that I have. I trimmed down a few branches of this variegated greenery and added them around the vase.

The filler makes the vase appear full and adds another layer of color and texture to the arrangement.

Here’s the finished arrangement. For $14 I made this gorgeous arrangement! On top of it I still have leftover greenery and the smaller filler flower leftover to make or vases to put around the house.

The vase is a Pottery Barn-inspired one that I made from a thrift store find.

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More Vase Ideas

There was still a bunch of German statice left over from the rose arrangement. This was perfect for a small accent to use on my coffee table.

Instead of a traditional vase, I am using a Walmart planter to hold the flowers. It is not watertight so I hid a glass of water inside to keep the flowers fresh (although these flowers will make terrific dried flower stems too…I’ll definitely be saving them).

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You can not beat the $3.99 eucalyptus bunches from Trader Joe’s!!! I pick a bunch up whenever I go and usually have a vase of it somewhere in the house. If you could only buy one thing I would suggest this because it’s so affordable, fills an entire vase, and lasts for a super long time!!

This vase will go on the guest bathroom counter to add some green to the bathroom.

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Two other simple arrangements I made were a vase of pussy willow stems to go on top of my china cabinet and the rest of the variegated greenery to go on the coffee bar counter.

A pitcher is perfect for flower arrangements! Especially in your kitchen.

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Here’s What $35 of Trader Joe’s Flowers Looks Like!

Seriously, just look how far my dollar went and how many vases I was able to fill on a small budget!

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Shop Spring Vases

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