By Nazneen Jehangir

New Delhi, Sep 24 (IANSlife): With the festive season right around the corner, get set to open your doors to friends and family after months and months of social distancing. Nothing dresses up a space quite like flowers, they're formal yet inviting, and can be dressed up or down keeping the occasion in mind. Here's a list of the top flower trends to try out in the coming months:

Foraged or Dried Flowers

Food Photographer | Jennifer Pallian

Dried foraged flowers are the big hit of 2021. Trends forecast two methods of using dried flowers -- either in bud and head form in a bowl as potpourri or as dried full flowers, branches and even using foraged items like feathers, leaf skeletons and the like.

Bespoke arrangements

Cody Chan

Ready arrangements are being replaced in favour of personalised bouquets wherein the customer chooses the pattern, container and variety of blooms themselves. People are more inclined to make their own 'creation' based on their individual tastes, lifestyle and fragrance than ever before. There seems to be a growing awareness of knowledge of flowers and also on the meaning/symbolism of each flower whilst making a purchase -- especially when the arrangement is being gifted.

Flower Subscriptions

Leonsa

There are several floral businesses online that are offering flower subscriptions to customers on a weekly or monthly basis to their residence or office either as loose stems or in a vase as a ready to use arrangement. Clients seem to prefer subscriptions to save time and effort and usually the agency will offer a better rate on a subscription than on retail. Customers give their personal preferences and an agreement is reached based on atmospheric conditions like AC or no AC, if housekeeping is available, arrangement size etc.

Sustainable purchases

J K

Sustainability is -- rightfully so -- a major topic of interest currently. People are more aware about reducing their carbon footprint and as a result customers prefer florists that offer sustainable flowers and foam free options. Sustainable flowers are still mass produced but are much more efficient at conserving the resources utilised and also tend to veer much more to using in season and localised produce.

Greens and Biophilic design

Jessica Arends

Covid has certainly left us all longing for more of the outdoors. This has filtered its way to the Biophilic trend where arrangements try to mimic natural designs. There is a lot less structure, a lot more use of greens and "wildflowers" rather than carefully placed greenhouse varieties.