How to make a cabbage vase for a pretty spring centerpiece

I have made these cabbage centerpieces many times in the past, but have never taken the time to share the how to until now! I will share all of my secrets to make the easiest and prettiest centerpiece with a cabbage vase for springtime!

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Supplies for making your cabbage vase

Large head of cabbage (look for a head of cabbage with some loose and dark green leaves)
Sharp knife
Small jar or glass
Sharpie marker
Greening pins
Floral foam
Fresh flowers

Prepare your head of cabbage

Turn over your cabbage to expose the bottom of your head of cabbage. Use a sharp knife to cut off some of the large and dark green leaves from the base and set them aside.

Cut the bottom of the cabbage so it sits level.

Turn the cabbage over and dry off the top with a paper towel. Set your jar or glass on top of the cabbage and use the Sharpie to draw a circle. Use your sharp knife to begin cutting out the circle of your cabbage.

I find that cutting the hole large enough for the jar takes quite a bit of effort, but it is worth it!

MY SECRET TIP!! When you find that it is getting difficult to get through the cabbage, it is probably because you are getting close to the core. At that point, turn your cabbage over and cut out the core and cut all the way through the cabbage.

Now you can slide your jar or glass down into your cabbage and get ready to make your floral arrangement.

It is not necessary to use floral foam if you don’t want to, but I like the freedom it gives me to style my arrangement. Do make sure you are using wet floral foam and that you have soaked it completely.

Make your floral arrangement

I was making a centerpiece to coordinate with a pink and green table, so that is the colors I selected for my flowers. I began with some green hydrangeas. I cut my hydrangea into individual smaller pieces by cutting it where I have added the black line in the photo below.

I added the small pieces of hydrangea all around the edge of my jar as shown below.

I used pink tulips, pink ranunculus, green chrysanthemums, some pink peonies and white cushion chrysanthemums and white daisy mums.

Now that your arrangement is finished it is time to take those leaves you removed and add them back to your cabbage. Use greening pins to attach the leaves to the cabbage. I set my cabbage arrangement on a cabbage salad plate.

You can see where the greening pin is where I secured the first cabbage leaf by the red arrow.

Wrap the leaves covering the greening pin and securing the additional leaves with greening pins up beneath the flowers at the base of the flower arrangement.