Frog A Friend To Many Florists

Many floral design specialists will tell you that the frog is the secret of floral arranging.

To a horticulturalist, the word “frog” means a tool that supports the stems of flowers and keeps them in a desired shape.

They can be made from glass, china, concrete, pottery, ceramic, metal or wire that provides support and stability.

Customarily, dark frogs are used in dark vases and clear or light colored ones in light vases, so that they seem to disappear in water.

Some people collect artistic figural frogs, which are shaped like animals or have a statue rising out of the center. Bathing beauty flower frogs (of women in swimsuits) were made in Germany in the 1920s. English Glass frogs produced in the 1920s and ‘30s were Britain’s answer to American Depression Glass.

Floral frogs owned by the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and a couple of metal containers sold at auction for $4,025 in 1996.

In the 1960s, commercial florists switched from floral frogs, which date to the 14th century, to water-absorbing single-use foam blocks.

Other options for anchoring a cut arrangement are clear or colored marbles, small pebbles, florists’ tape crisscrossed across the top of the container to form a grid, or a supple twig, curled and forced into the vase. A piece of crumpled chicken wire tucked into the vase or taped across the top will also do the trick.