For Toronto-based floral designer Bruno Duarte, a bouquet doesn’t need a lot of flowers to be spectacular. Since opening his shop Fresh Floral Creations five years ago — which accommodates everything from single-arrangement walk-ins to big events — he has kept his focus on the structural qualities of plants, often deftly bending and shaping them with the skill of a sculptor. Duarte’s style draws inspiration from nature as well as high fashion and home décor, believing that all these things are closely married. His approach: “The more natural the arrangement the better, then I manipulate it to give it an artistic twist.”
Here, an off-center cluster of bat flower (Tacca chantrieri) lends exotic drama to a mini meadow of steel grass (Xanthorrhoea australis) and moss, each blade individually woven through a low “cage” of chicken wire into a thin layer of floral foam below. As with most of Duarte’s arrangements, the living armature of greenery also gives the design a longer lifespan, lasting beyond the fresh limits of the flowers and providing an opportunity to change things up. In this case, once the bat flowers lost their oomph after five days, Duarte replaced them with Cymbidium orchids. As he says: “You can keep the structure until you’re bored with it. It can also dry nicely.” freshflorals.com
