Tropical Decorating Ideas With Flowers

I’ve been frustrated the last couple of months over the lack of gorgeous seasonal flowers that seem to be somewhat abundant in other parts of the country. This is the current state of the dining room here at the house and in contrast…

the dining room last year when we had an assortment of amazing peonies available at the local markets. I LOVE peonies…they are my favorite flower! How about you…do you have a favorite?

You can see more of last year’s summer home tour here if you’d like to poke around. This year I’ve decided that I just have to embrace the fact that I live in the tropics and our garden is tropical indeed! A tropical garden that is lovingly tended by my husband mostly (and our lawn service) and has an amazing assortment of what you might expect to see in South Florida.

Tropical garden landscape is known for lots of palm trees and we have them. Did I ever tell you that one year when we had a tree service come in to clean up the yard they counted around 5K coconuts were removed?

The Helaconia is (sometimes referred to as Ginger) are gorgeous and scent free. You simply cut them, trim off any bottom leaves, place the stems in water and they will last for days. Much longer than peonies or roses, yet sadly lacking the alluring aroma…

Our flowers tend to be brightly colored, like the helaconias in the garden in pink. I got a good grip on my garden clippers and went out to do some trimming and based my summer entertaining weekend inside on the colors seen outside…

More helaconia mixed with palm tree clippings, a sprig of red from a nutmeg tree and sweet smelling night blooming jasmin.

I filled a large clam shell with oranges that were left from a magazine shoot I worked on last weekend. That shoot was for autumn, but oranges are classically tropical. I still recall when you could just go outside and pluck oranges off your own backyard tree down here before a blight unfortunately took them all out.

Of course aqua is part of the setting on the buffet with my vintage European syphons and since I’m going bold here I find the soft touch of faded blue glass just works.

If you enjoyed this post you might get some inspiration from last week’s as well, where I shared lots of summer design. All of the links are clickable for your convenience…