How To Make A Centerpiece

Hi, my name is Alexandra Lyons, and I am a master florist here in John Lewis in Oxford street and I am going to show you today how to make a table centrepiece. You are going to need some candles and some pearls, some nice large blooms in season and some flower foams. You soak the foam and pop it on your tray, and start placing your flowers in.

If you can cut your flowers at a slant, they are going to foam better and you just push them in. You can use any flowers in season, and we are not using any foliage in this as it will give them a sumptuous feel. So for Christmas you could do berries and greens and foliages.

You are going to a garden to see what's there so that's always lovely. These are beautiful hydrangeas and so I would use these, so lovely this time of the year. This is going to go on a table for a dinner party.

Then you can wow all your guests with your floral creations. You would want to try and cover all the floral foam so you can't see it. Remember that your guests are sitting down and they get to look from the side.

You always do small low arrangements for table settings, so otherwise you would block the view and they can't speak to each other. The exception to that is if you do a very narrow vase and then you could do something on the top. Once you have placed your flowers you can decorate with anything you like, you could use haper decorations are really good.

I've got some nice pearls on a string here, and I'm just going to thread them around and just create some bits of interest. You need to remember that your candles all burn down, so please keep an eye on them. So if there is a fast burner you'll end up with getting your flowers a little singed and you don't want that.

You don't have to stop at decorating the centre of the table, you can also decorate each place setting. And here I've placed a nice large flower in a little bit of water on a plate, it just adds a little something. And this is how you make a centrepiece.