It's easy to imagine flowers as vain little starlets, loving to be displayed and adored from their best angle. If you remember that with the next sweet bunch you receive, the arrangement you create will be no less than captivating. It's really much more simple than you might think. A flower's beauty and richness comes from their life, freshness and simplicity.

To use them in rigidly contrived designs with wire or foam that imprison their natural tendencies is to destroy the very essence that makes them so lovely. Sometimes, each flower needs its own vase. Exquisite blooms such as a tropical orchid or a perfect, out-of-season rose are the first to come to mind, but the shape of even more commonplace flowers will tell you if they hold the drama to go solo. An oriental poppy, with its wide, papery petals, would be ideal for a sunlit spotlight.

Similarly, floating separate blooms in low bowls, like small pools, invite our gaze and sweetly frame the face of any flower. The mass effect is by no means always the most beautiful route, and separating them ensures that each flower is appreciated for its proper beguiling properties. For a spontaneous air, group several little arrangements together.

To create a unique sense of balance, use tall cylinders to hold contrasting colors and textures of leaves and foliage and cluster beneath them smaller glasses holding the buds. Or fill three glass tumblers with three colors of roses. Run them in a row down the length of a table and, after the fête, distribute them among guests or rooms. Containers transform flowers, creating a strong alliance. Don't hesitate to use anything that holds water; pots or teacups, old medicine bottles, pitchers, watering cans, galvanized canisters, goblets, concrete bowls, even carefully cleaned egg shells. With every arrangement comes the opportunity to study their intriguing nuances... the depth or subtlety of the colors, textures, shapes and fragrances that make them the joy they are.