Ina Garten Uses Orange Tulips in a Plain Glass for Easy Bouquets
ina garten posted orange tulips in a plain glass and paired the image with a simple rule: use one flower and use lots of them. She also leaned on water glasses instead of matching vases, a low-cost setup that keeps the look polished without adding extra shopping.
Orange Tulips in Plain Glass
“Choose one flower and use lots of them!” Garten wrote on the Barefoot Contessa’s website. In the same advice, she said, “instead of finding lots of matching vases for my flowers, I just use water glasses! Simple and elegant — my favorite combination.”
She also suggested making “small vases of flowers” rather than one big arrangement, then moving them around until they look right. That approach fits the photo she posted recently: orange tulips set in a plain glass, not a decorative vessel built to do the work for them.
Martha Stewart’s Spring Branches
Martha Stewart offered a parallel lesson in the same decorating lane, saying, “I love pussy willows,” and “I always use these velvety branches for my spring arrangements.” She showed them in an Instagram video in a plain glass vase, keeping the presentation as spare as Garten did.
Stewart also gave two practical flower-care steps: “When cutting flower stems, always cut at a 45-degree angle rather than straight across to allow for greater surface area and increased water uptake,” and, “Just a quarter of a teaspoon of bleach in the water in which you're going to put your flowers helps keep that water bright and clean.... Your flowers will last a lot longer.”
Cheap Tools, Finished Look
For readers trying to copy the result at home, Garten’s formula is the shortest path here: one flower type, repeated, in a water glass. It asks for less equipment than a matched-vase setup and leaves the flower choice to the person arranging the table.
The friction point is obvious enough without making it complicated: the polished look comes from restraint, not supplies. Garten’s tulips and Stewart’s branches both point to the same practical answer — use what you already have, then let the flowers do the rest.
