I Asked Martha Stewart How to Make Grocery Store Flowers Look Gorgeous — Her Tip Works Like Magic

As the original lifestyle doyenne, Martha Stewart is full of tips on how to maximize every inch of your home — but as someone who used to work at her iconic magazine, Martha Stewart Living, I know that her advice on flowers is the best of the best. Just pick up a copy of her recently published Martha’s Flowers (one of 101 books in total!) and you’ll see her care tips for finicky flowers and plants are literally life-saving.

It’s why my ears perked up during a recent interview with Martha on behalf of Scott’s Miracle-Gro, where she serves as chief gardening officer. She shared a flower arranging hack that I hadn’t yet read in any of her tomes; and while it sounded a bit counterintuitive when I first heard it, I realized that her advice is genius after I had the opportunity to try it myself.

It all has to do with store-bought flowers and bouquets. You may be pleasantly surprised to hear that Martha doesn’t turn her nose up at grocery store bunches — and has come up with a method to make them feel so much more elevated. 

More often than not, the pre-arranged bouquets sold at grocery stores, convenience chains and your local neighborhood bodegas are sold in cellophane wrappings with minimal opportunity for customization. And given their price, you may be inclined to want to make the most of them by saving every single stem in the bunch — but that’s where Martha says otherwise. Her rule for these bouquets? Deliberately downsize.

“When you bring home that bunch of flowers from the bodega or the grocery store, start by opening them up,” Martha explains, recommending that you literally lay out all of the individual flowers and botanical stems on a countertop. “And then I want you to take stuff out that you don’t really like, [because] they put a lot of filler in them… We should always be sizing down.”

Reducing the actual volume of the bouquet may sound scary (why throw out half of what you just bought?!). But even if you’re left with just 50% of the actual stems, a smaller gathering of florals and fewer varieties often make bouquets look so much more expensive. Less is more, Martha says, and she’s totally right.

Curating and eliminating fillers like baby’s breath, Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrods, eucalyptus or seasonal limonium buds to make up just 20% of what’s actually in your vase makes grocery store flowers look dead chic.

“Cut the stems much shorter than they are, as they don’t have to be three feet long like they are old — after, take time to arrange them in a pretty container at their shorter length,” Martha adds. “You’ll have a much prettier bouquet, I guarantee it. Don’t just toss that bunch in a jar of water!”

A few weeks after we spoke, a dear friend of mine brought me a lovely bouquet made with delicate pink roses from Trader Joe’s of all places — it was quite large and had lots of greenery to make it fuller. With Martha’s tip in mind, I tossed out a bunch of the greenery and got rid of white baby’s breath entirely. I was left with a petite arrangement that looked so much more lovely than if I had left the bigger bunch intact (see above!). 

When in doubt, take Martha’s cue and downsize your storebought arrangements; it may feel wasteful, but allowing delicate flowers to shine makes so much more of an impact in the end.