Out of the Beer Bottle and Into the Winebox: Cool Ways To Style A Bouquet

By: Garden Collage | April 22, 2015

Daisy’s Wine Box

We are a family of wine collectors, so we’ve accumulated several beautiful wooden wine boxes over the years. I use them all over the house and I’ve found them to be surprisingly functional, so this week I decided to use one for my flower arrangement.

To make my arrangement, I first went to the Race Farm Stand at the Union Square Farmers market– this is one of my favorite places to pick up plants in NYC, because they have so much variety and an amazing selection. For this project I decided to stick with low-maintenance plants– an array of long flowering plants to mix with some moss from my garden, which gives the arrangement some texture. (I get my Moss from Moss Mountain— it’s fabulous.) For this bouquet, I used:

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A wooden wine box sourced from my local wine shop (you could also use an old one that you already have)
A Bag of small stones
Organic potting soil
2 Sedum plants
4 Moss squares
2 Bellis Perennis plants

To assemble, drill 6-8 holes into the winebox for drainage, then put a layer of stones on the bottom of the box. Add a layer of soil on top of the stones, then manually break up the root mass in each plants and arrange them in an “x” pattern (or style to your taste) inside the winebox. Give the arrangement a generous watering after assembly. (GC Tip: If you want a wonderful summer Chablis to enjoy with your bouquet, visit MCF Rare Wine— Matt Franco has a fantastic collection.)

Bea’s Beer Bottles

Living with my brother comes with many perks: there’s always someone to help take out the trash, to watch bad TV with me, and to pick up groceries on the way home. I happen to also have a brother who loves beer– both the cheap kind you can get by the pitcher or the small batch, locally-brewed variety– so living with him also means that I’ve accumulated a ton of beer bottles.

After years of fighting about recycling and empty bottles, I decided to come at it with a new approach. Beer bottles, it turns out, are funky and fun decorations, and most of them look like they could have come from an antique fair. I started playing around. A tulip here, a succulent stem there.

With time I actually started asking my brother to save the bottles we liked, and soon I started using them in place of my trusted mason jars. Now, a rose in a beer bottle seems like a perfect contrast– a super-modern way to style flowers in the home. What used to be neglected recyclables are now a new selection of vases and centerpieces. I recommend saving the bottles you like and giving them a run through the dishwasher to give them a rustic feel. Then, go wild. I’ve found that Valentine’s Day shades are my favorite– I tend to work off a white/red/pink scale when it comes to brown beer bottles, which is the most common shade you’ll find. Color is truly up to individual preference: use one bottle for a dramatic, minimalist decoration or set up a row of bottles as the anchor for a table. They work just as well indoors as out, and are an ideal way to transform clutter into something nouveau-chic. If you end up steering your beer drinkers towards some of your favorite bottles, we can’t blame you.