Floral Foam - An alternative, just maybe...

The following is not intended to be a particularly scientific experiment but we thought it worth passing on to you that we were recently offered an off-cut from a coir brick with a suggestion that it could be used as an alternative to using standard floral foam in a flower arrangement.

The following are the steps we took to create a flower arrangement and to find whether the coir has the capability to securely hold flowers and maintain their life.

To start we used one of our Melamine Trays. 
The tray size is 20Lx10Wx4.5cm internal depth.

Tray with dried coir

Tray after the coir has been saturated

As you may know, dried compressed coir has the capability to double it size when soaked with water. We allowed the coir to absorb as much water as possible without becoming too saturated, then compressed it slightly, finally adding just a little more water.

The example of flowers in the photo above demonstrates how stems can be supported by the softened coir, the tray being 4.5cm or slightly less than 2 inches deep could if increased we think, support taller flowers and foliage.

With only fresh water used to saturate the coir there has been no nutrients for the flowers but in this experiment they have lasted well after 7 days, possibly if a sachet of floral feed was used in the saturation process the life of an arrangement could be extended.

Overall we hope you may agree that perhaps with one or two adjustments this exercise could prove to be yet another sustainable alternative to floral foam.The tray of course could be re-used many times over, the coir possibly could also be used again although it may need supplementing with another piece of coir and refreshing with a little more feed, but if not it is entirely home compostable.

Whilst at the moment we stock the Melamine Trays used in this trial we do not have coir bricks available, however with enough interest we could make this available for our customers. Please drop us a line to sales@floralmechanics.co.uk with your comments.

A sachet of standard flower food powder could be mixed with water to saturate the coir and help enhance the life of flowers. 

If you would like to share this post with other flower arrangers please copy and paste the following link into an email or your social media.
https://floralmechanics-uk.blogspot.com/2023/11/coir.html