If you’ve ever driven by a field of brilliant orange California poppies and wished you could have them in your own bouquet, you’re not alone. Wildflowers are often sought out for bouquets, but not all of them—including the California poppy—hold up well in a vase. (It’s also illegal to pick California poppies on state property, so refrain from picking them at your kid’s school.)

Here’s how to make beautiful bouquets with wildflowers in San Francisco, CA.

Choose the right wildflowers

What exactly are wildflowers? A better term for them might be “native species,” which describes a flower that naturally grows in the wild without being intentionally seeded and planted. Many of the flowers we think of as wildflowers can be cultivated in your own backyard, and often are grown from seeds in landscaped areas or wildflower fields.

When you’re making a wildflower bouquet in San Francisco, CA, make sure you choose a variety that will do as well in a vase as it does in the ground. Avoid poppies and Queen Anne’s lace, as both of those will go limp very quickly.

Zinnias, sweet peas, baby’s breath, daisies, sunflowers, bachelor buttons and cosmos are all hardy wildflowers that make great bouquets. If you have a garden of your own, feel free to experiment with other flowers—cut them and place in a vase to see if they’ll hold up for long.

Create your own bouquet

The best times to cut wildflowers are in the early evening or morning. To make sure that the plant keeps producing more flowers and offshoots, follow the stem down until you find a spot where it branches off into another stem. Cut just above this area. This makes it more likely that you’ll get second, third and even more subsequent flowers in the future.

When cutting your flowers, bring out a bucket or a vase of cool water so you can immediately place the flowers in water—this will lessen the chance that your flowers will wilt prematurely. Use very sharp tools, such as scissors, pruning shears or spring-loaded floral snips for the best results.

Between each cut, wipe the blades of your tool clean—that way, if the flowers are suffering from any type of disease, you won’t risk spreading it.

In order to arrange your bouquet, cut stems on the diagonal. Strip the stems of leaves near the bottom (anything that might be covered by water). This will prevent bacteria from killing your flowers early. Foliage higher up on the stem can be left as is—keeping some leaves makes for an attractive arrangement. Fill the vase about halfway with cool water.

To determine the height of your wildflower bouquet in San Francisco, CA, hold the stem up near the vase and cut to the length you want. Arrange the flowers as you like, then enjoy your beautiful new wildflower bouquet.

For floral arrangements for every occasion or no occasion at all, pay a visit to The Delicate Daisy – House of Flowers today.