By LISA MIKITKA

Special to The Press

Guest speaker Patricia Reppert, a certified floral designer, presented “Spring in My Steps,” at the Parkland Garden Club’s March 10 meeting at the Jordan Lutheran Church, Orefield.

Reppert is accredited through the American Institute of Floral Designers and apprenticed with a highly acclaimed event florist in Philadelphia.

She assists with Philadelphia Flower Show exhibits and has her own entries each year.

A freelance florist, as well, she is a teaching assistant in the Bucks County Community College Floral Design Program and presents classes and design workshops in her studio at Goggleworks in Reading.

Reppert assembled five spring arrangements and designs.

The first was in two colorful rubber children’s boots with Mason jars inserted as vases inside the boots.

Next, she used three small circular vases with 18 pussy willows wired together on the outside of the vase tops to anchor the vases as one piece.

Reppert uses Oasis floral brown wire for this technique.

She inserted some pieces of japonica bush and then built up the focal point of each vase with different pastel colored tulips.

Reppert said when using hyacinths to leave some of the bulb flesh attached to the piece being used.

If the vase opening becomes too small for the arrangement stems, slowly twist and roll the additional stems to advance them into the vase.

Her third design was using curly willow to make a nest-like design.

She added and draped some muted yellow and green yarn pieces to the nest to give a realistic look to the nest, then spiraled varying heights with the various flowers nesting through birds nest anchored to the top of the vase.

She used Spanish Moss on an open circular base, from the neck of a Tide pod lid top, to mount the birds nest to the vase top.

Reppert also used some roses in a basic open glass vase for another design.

She showed how to open some rose flowers slightly further to add dimension by bending down outer petals with your thumb.

Her next design was wiring cattails across the open top of an oblong, metal tin small bucket.

She anchored the cattails with Scotch tape and the finished base looked like a checkerboard with square openings.

Reppert then placed flowers in the open squares down to touch the bottom of the bucket.

She also gave some additional general tips for flower arranging, saying reasonably fresh flowers can be found at the DIY section of grocery floral departments. Reppert suggested hydrating the flowers from two hours to one day and keeping them cool before starting the arranging.

She suggested using the flower food to keep the arrangement looking fresh and change the water every other day, at least.

However, she said only use the flower food once as it gets absorbed by the flowers.

While designing, she suggested picking one flower to feature and at least two to three of the others being used.

She said celosia, statice and craspedia can be dried and last for years.

Goldenrod can be used as a great filler, as well as using Allium flocon, which is in the onion family.

Cattails have many uses, as well in arrangement.

Tree fern pieces and Green Trick Dianthus pieces are also very useful in arrangements and as bases.

Reppert closed her presentation by showing how to braid tulips and use varying heights of carnation flowers and working them up to near the height of the focal point of the braided tulips.

The next meeting is scheduled for April 14 with the program titled “Creating a Fairy Garden.”

The garden club meets 7 p.m. on the second Monday of each month at Jordan Lutheran Church.

Guests are welcome to attend. New members are always welcome.

For Parkland Garden club’s activities and events, go to parklandgardenclub.com.