Kristina Rimiene: My amazement at lilies

This is the story of how my love for lilies has grown over time and how I have been able to create beautiful arrangements with these flowers.

Lilies are the flower I discovered as a floral designer not too long ago and the truth is I really love them. Find out more about my journey with lilies and how I started using them in several of my floral arrangements.

Before I embarked on the path of floristry, I had quite a few flowers that were my favorites. If you are not a floral designer, the main criteria for loving this or that flower is usually their subjective beauty, color, fragrance and ... feel. Mostly I loved lisianthus, gloriosa, anthurium and roses. Lilies were definitely not among my favorite flowers. For one thing, the lilies I knew had a very specific smell, and white lilies in general were one of the most popular flowers for funeral ceremonies in Lithuania.

Eventually, as you become a professional florist, you realize that you come to love flowers because of their various components, such as the shape of the flower, the texture, the size needed for a particular design, the line or curvature of the stem, the length of the stem, the longevity in a vase and the ability of a flower to be a focal point or a flower to fill out the design you are creating. Put more pragmatically, the more attractive the flower becomes the more you pay. And finally, for me, a professional floral designer begins to love a flower for the story a specific flower tells you.

That said, I began to notice that my gaze has been increasingly drawn to lilies lately because it is a flower with large, expressive buds and blossoms. Lilies fulfill both roles - it can be a strong emphasizing flower or a filler flower in the background. The color scale of lilies is also very broad, and one of their greatest qualities is that they are flowers with a long vase life. I also realized that the scope of lilies is much broader! You can use them to create beautiful bridal decor, a luxurious hotel lobby arrangement or even a beautiful modern floral installation. Sometimes just a single lily hidden in a hair can create a real veil of romance and mystery that would enhance any fashion show on stage or a photo shoot.

For a long time Lithuanians considered lilies mainly as a flower from the nursery of our grandmothers, more often blooming orange. But today we see so many different types of lilies that we can only admire. Full-flowered, large-flowered, small-flowered, multiflowered and with a wide range of colors and shades. In our country, lilies are becoming increasingly popular. They cope very well with the Lithuanian climate, but mostly they remain decorative garden or nursery flowers and are not grown for commercial purposes. Almost all the lilies in our decorations and designs come from Dutch growers.

So lilies have struggled for quite a while to get into the premium line of my favorite flowers. I just needed a boost and that happened when I became Bredefleur Friend of the Month. I was given the opportunity to grow lily Trebbiano, grown by Bredefleur, getting to know them, and it turned out that they are not only unique in color, but most of all they are not fragrant! They have petals with an interesting mix of white and green, strong stems and multiple buds.

Since I am a designer for Bredefleur, a creative idea that came to mind was to showcase the richness of the fall season. Therefore, I chose a classic sculpted vase. In terms of color, the copper covering of this vase was in perfect harmony with the autumn idea. Selected thorn branches with small fruits symbolize the fertility of the autumn season. Ripe poppy scrolls also responded to the idea of an autumn harvest, and after receiving a bunch of these lily varieties, I decided to create an arrangement in which a lily would not only dominate but be clearly expressed. To achieve this goal, I created an arrangement with a list of other flowers that would let the lilies play first fiddle and not overwhelm them with their dominance.

Celosia was chosen because of the texture and significance of the blossom. There are no small, delicate petals in this arrangement. The concept of extremely beautiful fall colors was complemented by kniphofia with orange to brown hues in its flower. Bent stems brought some tension by disrupting the order of the parallel composition used to arrange other flowers. Aspidistra and asparagus green were mainly used to cover the floral foam and not dominate the arrangement to emphasize the central point leading to the lilies.

I always get very excited by the chance to work with these new varieties of lilies. I am especially happy that flower lovers in Lithuania can also see how much fun I had working with them, because the creative process will be broadcast in my program "Floral Dessert" on Lithuanian TV. The Lithuanian flower market is not large, so the availability of each new variety is somewhat limited. So the challenge of becoming BFF of Bredefleur in September not only gave me new opportunities to implement creative ideas, but also brought me the great pleasure of getting to know one of the most beautiful lilies.

The lilies used in these designs are from nursery Bredefleur.

Kristina Rimiene has chosen the floral world as the direction for her life. Kristina is the owner and founder of Studio Flores. This shop/studio in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania, creates floral decoration projects for businesses, events, private parties and weddings.