The Best Books for Beginner Florists.

We own and love all of these books.

Starting to get your feet wet as a florist doesn’t have to be daunting. There are many resources available. Most people would probably venture to YouTube to find some free video tutorials, and that is a great way to get started. But spending time trying to find the right videos can be draining. We think that books are also a good resource for knowledge, and often dive much deeper into the subject than YouTube videos. 

The best books for beginner florists should have a list of tools, instructions on floral care, an introduction to concepts like color, texture, and arrangement, floral recipes to follow, and a showcase of gorgeous floral designs for inspiration.

We feel like it is hard to find an all-in-one book like this. And some are better than others in certain areas. So we put together a list of our favorite books for beginners, and they are the ones we used when we were getting started. 

The Flower Recipe Book

This book is a great example of a perfect book for beginners. Inside The Flower Recipe Book (link to Amazon) you will find a list of tools, how to care for florals, how to use various floral items such as pin frogs, cutting techniques, vessel choice guidance, and even how to set up your vessel for success. 

Where this book truly shines is that it is filled mostly with actual recipes that you can follow along with at home. Just reading through each of the recipes will show you how they are created in detail. The instructions even give guidance on how long to cut certain florals for the recipe. This level of detail is great for when you are just starting because it shows you the methods and techniques that the pros use to determine the “why” behind the myriad of choices in the floral arrangements you love. Most of the recipes are in a step-by-step style with images of each step. It’s great for following along. 

This is a good book for learning the basics and some rules to follow. When you grow and decide you want to break the rules, you will know how and when to do so for your own unique style.

The Flower Workshop

The Flower Workshop (link to Amazon) This was most likely our favorite book when we were first starting. The information in this book is of the highest quality, but it is presented in a way that is easy to understand. 

The first 50 or so pages of this book are indispensable. These pages teach many different concepts, like how to get started planning your own arrangement, how to get the most of out of going to the flower market, how to think about color, focal florals, and texture. 

I think this book is the next step above “The Flower Recipe Book” because it starts to discuss the concepts of floral design in a way that helps you to make them your own. In this way, you can begin to adopt these concepts and use them to help find your personal floral design style. Your style will always develop from your tastes and choices. This book can help you begin to put a framework together to express them while making arrangements with maximum impact and visual interest. 

The remainder of the book is comprised of floral recipes, but they are not as detailed as “The Flower Recipe Book”. This is good in this case, as it begins to leave it up to you on how to arrange them. Ingredients are given, and they are still in a step-by-step format, but it is a numbered list. 

Overall we think this is a stellar must-have for your bookshelf.

Flower Color Guide

Another must-have is one we discovered a few years ago and wish we had with us from the start. Flower Color Guide (link to Amazon) is such a wonderful reference. The book is gorgeous, to say the least, and it looks like it would as much at home on your coffee table as it would be in your floral studio. It is a relatively small book that fits in your hand nicely. Flipping through it is very comfortable.

The book is a very valuable tool. It features 400 florals at their peak arranged in a long color-shifting gradient. This is absolutely the best feature of the book. We think it is genius. Why? Because if you need a particular flower in the color blue, you can simply flip to blue and go through page after page of gorgeous blue florals at their peak and pick them for your next floral arrangement. This beats digging through pages of images on google any day of the week. 

What is also cool is that it will sometimes have duplicates of florals in different colors. For example, they have a dahlia in white and a dahlia in a peach-orange. This is helpful because sometimes you are looking for a floral type first, and then color second. 

This book can help make building your floral recipe a breeze, and at the very least it will expose you to so many different florals. This book will let your imagination run wild with floral arrangement possibilities. 

Lastly, it shows these florals at their peak, and in pretty much perfect in quality. Having a visual example of this is great for when you are at the flower market and not sure if the ones you are looking at purchasing are in good or bad shape. 

Styling Nature

Styling Nature (link to Amazon) is the most conceptual book on floral design that we have come across. We think it helps to showcase and elevate floral art. The author, Lewis Miller, goes in-depth on each element of floral arrangement. 

The subjects of this book are color, composition, movement, shape, and texture. His thoughts on how to approach these, especially shape, have greatly influenced the way we think about floral design. We think this book and its treatment of these subjects helped us turn a page and brought our work to the next level. Although we don’t agree with everything said in the book, we think that this book is a fantastic deep dive into floristry and how to look to fine art, film, and other sources for inspiration in your work. 

We love how his ideas elevate floral art. This is evident in the work presented that showcases his concepts.

We think that this is a great book for beginners, but not absolute beginners. These are things that you can take in and practice after you have a few arrangements under your belts.

In Full Flower

In Full Flower is a great book for beginners for two main reasons. The first reason is it is full of contemporary floral design. The creativity in this book is astounding. It is a showcase of what you can do with your florals, and where the industry is. The second reason is it is a gathering of twenty of the most influential and talented floral designers in the industry. 

The wide range of work showcased in this book is very inspiring. It is amazing to see how unique every florist is. We feel it is this incredible variety of styles and personalities that lead us to this conclusion: There is enough room for all of us to make our mark in floral design. 

As the art of floral design continues to grow and change, this book is a great marker in time for the floral styles we are currently in, and the florists who are designing that way for the time being. 

Looking at their work it is easy to become inspired and want to create something new on your own, using and changing their ideas for your work. We think more inspiring than the work itself are the thoughts behind why these designers create. It goes to prove the point that every florist is unique and inspired by different things. 

This book showcases the “who” behind the work. It is a great introduction to those who are in the industry and what they are building their businesses on. That is why we have it on this list.

We offer a free guide on floral arranging when you sign up for our email. In the book, we break down step-by-step how to make an arrangement with grocery store flowers. We hope you love it.

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