DIY Fresh Flower Wreath (and how to make it last) - Songbird (2024)

Learn how to make a simple flower wreath with fresh flowers. It’s great for spring and easy to update all season long. With this trick, you can easily keep your precious flowers fresh for a long time.

Spring has arrived! And with it came an insatiable desire for cheerful colors, fresh flowers, and new decorations.

It’s how I roll people. Every new season instantly makes me want to change up my whole home decor, buy new decorations, paint walls and start a gazillion DIY projects all at once.

But who has time for all of that?

Not me…

But I did make time to come up with a quick seasonal decor update that fulfills my need for fresh flowers and that will last all season long.

I made a super quick and easy fresh flower wreath that is easy to update with new flowers in different colors as my mood strikes.

Except for the live flowers I shopped my house and craft stash for all the supplies.

This is such a fun project. It is perfect for spring decor, but it could work in any season because using little glass floral tubes makes this DIY wreath so easy to update and change with little effort. It reminds me a bit of my DIY pallet mantel decoration that used glass bottles in a similar way. I love a floral arrangement that can be updated with different focal flowers so easily.

By the way, you will find a lot more fun DIY decorating ideas at the end of my post that are all super cute and very thrifty in nature.

How to Make a Spring Wreath with Fresh Flowers

I love making wreaths. But I don’t often make a wreath with live flowers. It is – in general- much easier to use faux flowers for a wreath and the fake flowers make for a great wreath too. Updating a simple twig wreath with artificial flowers is super easy like I showed with this spring front door wreath, my fall hallway wreath and my white winter twig wreath. Just recently I made a Christmas tobacco basket wreath with faux flowers that I could update into my winter wreath in just a few steps.

Live flowers need water to stay fresh. Making sure that the flowers on a wreath get enough water to last long enough is difficult.

So how do you keep flowers fresh in a wreath? There are two basic ways to keep flowers fresh in a wreath, both are designed to supply the live flowers with fresh water. The first method uses a medium, like floral foam that needs to be kept wet at all times for the flowers to stay fresh. The second method uses floral water tubes, that function as miniature vases for the flower stems.

If you are able to give your fresh flowers a constant source of water in your wreath you can make them last pretty long. How long will a fresh flower wreath last, if you keep watering it? Well just about as long as you can keep flowers fresh in a vase. For most flowers that is about a week, although some flowers for example chrysanthemums can lost much longer.

For my DIY fresh floral wreath, I chose the second method. I used mini glass test tubes for my fresh flowers. But I did not attempt to hide the tubes but instead made them a prominent decorative feature in the wreath design.

Materials for a Fresh Flower Wreath

Love my wreath?

Want to make one yourself?

Great, let me show you how to make a fresh flower wreath that is perfect for spring.

First, you will need a basic wreath that you can prettify with your flowers. I took an old grapevine wreath off the wall from the guest room. I’ve had it for years and never really did anything with it. It is a whitewashed grapevine wreath that has a bit of a nautical feel because they also wrapped some cord around it.

Any kind of wreath form will work for this fresh flower wreath design. Use what you have or what you can find in the thrift store. The flowers are the star of the show in this project so the wreath itself can be pretty boring and it will still look good.

Then you will need floral water tubes. You can buy the real thing at your local craft store (they are not expensive at all) or you can repurpose similar glass tubes like I did.

You might not realize it but you might have some glass test tubes lying around in your cupboards or drawers. Craft supplies like glitter, tiny beads, and sequins often are packaged in little tubes. And in the kitchen, I have a few that contain vanilla pods or cinnamon sticks.

I decided to make the little glass tubes a central point of my design and for that, they needed a little upgrade.

Queue in my collection of leftover embroidery floss.

I have a little junk drawer full of leftover bits of embroidery floss. Most are from the thrift store or were gifted to me.

I gathered all the colors that screamed pink to me and started from there.

You only need a bit of yarn for this project. Any kind of colorful leftover yarn from previous projects will work. You can totally choose the colors that are perfect for your own style. Just make sure it is fairly thin yarn.

How to Assemble the Fresh Flower Wreath

First step is to make our little floral glass tubes look nice and colorful, and spring-like.

I wrapped each tube with at least two colors of embroidery floss. This is very easy and goes very fast. Hold the end of the thread with your thumb while you wrap the yarn around the tube and over the loose beginning. This will secure the beginning, make sure this loose end is not too short.

When you have wrapped enough simply tie the beginning to the end with two simple knots and cut off the excess ends of yarn.

Step two is attaching the glass test tubes to the wreath.

I tied a length of thin metal wire around the tube (twist the tube around for a snug hold), and then pushed both ends of the floral wire through the wreath. Use wire cutters to cut the metal wire and make sure it has a generous length.

At the back, I twisted the two ends of the wire together while making sure that there was at least one twig or a piece of the wreath frame wrapped up in between the wires.

That’s it really. It is that easy!

Decorating with a Fresh Flower Wreath

The craft part of this DIY project is done.

Next step is decorating the fresh flower wreath.

I hung my wreath in place on the wall and used a plastic bottle with a long sprout to fill up the little tubes. I mixed some flower food in lukewarm water to fill the bottle.

Don’t overfill the tubes because the flower stems will make the water level rise.

And then arrange your flowers of choice.

I choose bright orange ranunculus flowers and some asparagus greens. The freshness and brightness of the orange flowers and green leaves just screamed spring to me. Since there are only five tubes on my wreath I wanted my accent flowers to make a statement.

Each test tube got one flower and one sprig of greenery combined together in little bundles. So I only needed a few flowers for this fresh flower spring wreath.

Use pruners to cut your flowers to the proper length

The biggest flower got the central position at the bottom.

Wow, that colorful flower makes me so happy!

The flowers and greenery that were not used on the wreath were put in a vase to compliment the arrangement on my side table.

As a happy coincidence, I realized that my DIY tiki torch lanterns were just the perfect color to complement this arrangement.

— and yes now that I am writing this I am seeing that one of the lanterns is not burning, and it bothers me so much! Why didn’t I see this yesterday! Oh, the life of a DIY everything blogger! —

More Spring Decorating Ideas

My easy fresh flower spring wreath is my contribution to the Thrifty Style Team Challenge for this month. A group of us bloggers all comes together each month to share a home decor project that is thrifty fun and totally doable for you.

This month there are a lot of spring and easter projects among the projects. Isn’t it awesome how many fresh ideas there are to get your home ready for the spring and Easter season without breaking the bank and going out to buy a whole lot of stuff?

DIY your seasonal decor people! It is the way to go.

Fresh Flower Spring Wreath

I hope you are inspired to make your own spring wreath with fresh flowers.

If you do, then let me know!

I’d love to admire your work and be inspired by your creativity!