The Genius Trick Ina Garten Uses To Style Flowers In A Vase Perfectly Every Time

Although we now know her as a domestic diva who seems to plan fabulous dinner party with ease, Ina Garten's first attempt at hosting was a total disaster. The Barefoot Contessa has learned a lot since that initial gathering, and her decades of hosting casual-yet-elegant affairs have equipped her with brilliant tips to share with the rest of us, ranging from recipes to feed a crowd to simple cocktails to effortless table settings. In regards to the latter, Garten has an especially great hack to style flowers for party centerpieces. 

In a bright and cheery photo posted on Instagram, Garten shares that rather than struggling to perfectly arrange a bunch of flowers in a single vase, there's a simpler solution. The Barefoot Contessa writes, "It's so much easier to make small vases of flowers and just move them around until they look right." Simply use a few vases of similar size and cluster them together to mimic one large arrangement, or vary the proportions of the vases for a multi-layered, tiered affect.

Spreading out your blooms into multiple vases creates more texture and visual interest. Another benefit of having multiple smaller arrangements is that the florals can remain on the table during your meal, as opposed to a large bouquet placed in the center of the table that blocks guests' line of view, inhibiting them from interacting. With multiple smaller vases, guests won't have to peer around a large arrangement.

Smaller, shorter bud vases are ideal as dinner party centerpieces as you can spread them out around the table without them taking up too much room due to their modest size. That said, feel free to mix and match shapes and sizes.

One of my favorite things to do when I bring a few bunches of flowers home from the farmers market is to set out several smaller vases and one medium vase, before distributing the blooms according to size and height, making sure to include at least one of each type per vase. This way, rather than focusing on the florals being a dramatic centerpiece on the dinner table, you can have a smaller vases of just a few blooms to scatter throughout the rest of your home that will add decorative touches to your guest bathroom, entry area, and other spaces where guests might gather like the bar or kitchen.

If you're not hosting, but instead are attending a dinner party, Ina Garten has a strict rule for bringing flowers. Should you want to gift flowers to the host, make sure that they are already in a vase. Don't make your already-busy and, possibly, overwhelmed host feel any more frazzled by shoving a bouquet into their hands and forcing them to look for a vessel to put them in. That said, before gathering or hosting your next event, brushing up on the Barefoot Contessa's crucial advice for a stress-free dinner party can also help.