Sustainability in Bloom – Ilona’s Rose Heart with OASIS® Bio Floral Foam and Red Naomi Futura roses

Masterflorist Ilona Oostenveld enrolled at a floral school at 14 years old. It was during that time that her natural talent quickly became evident, marking the beginning of her beautiful adventure in floristry. Ever since, nature has remained her greatest source of inspiration; its shapes, its colours, and its endless expressions continue to fuel her creativity.

We had a chat with Ilona recently, after she created a beautiful heart arrangement using the biodegradable OASIS® Bio Floral Foam, for Floral Moments at the World Cup Floral Art 2025. Ilona brought her creation to life using our Red Naomi Futura, the rose with the lowest carbon footprint in Europe.

This is a breathtaking heart arrangement. How did you decide which materials to mix to achieve both beauty and sustainability in your design?

The sustainability was brought to life by the OASIS® Floral Products and the Red Naomi Futura roses. OASIS® Floral Products created a meter-by-one-meter heart on a foot made from brown bio-floral foam. Which is 91% Biodegradable. I arranged the heart with the beautiful Porta Nova Red Naomi Futura roses. The result was a beautiful arrangement, but I wanted to give it a little bit more depth, so I made a hanging shape over the heart and put some beautiful orchids in it just to make it a bit more exciting to look at.

How many Red Naomi Futura roses went into creating this stunning heart? And also give us a breakdown of the other materials that beautifully complement the design.

There are 500 Red Naomi Futura roses in this arrangement. The other materials I used were OASIS® Rustic Wire and Cymbidium orchid flowers.

Take us through the creation process.

I started by putting the OASIS® Floral Foam heart in the water. It took three men to take it out of the water; I think the heart contained more than 50 L of water inside. I then began the arrangement process by placing the roses along the edges of the heart, gradually working my way toward filling the middle section. I made sure the middle part was higher than the edges to bring out the proper 3-D effect. After that, I made some kind of scarf from the rustic wire, and then connected the loose parts by using OASIS® Paper Wire as well as some plastic tubes in between. I did this so that I could place the orchids in the design without putting them in the floral foam.

Apart from the sufficient water to keep the arrangement fresh, the OASIS® Floral Foam also contains a lot of ingredients that make sure the flowers will open up beautifully, and the bacteria will not grow as fast. It’s a beautiful product to make shapes like this heart.

What message would you share with fellow florists about using sustainable floral design products?

Make sure you use products that are sustainable, like the Portanova Red Naomi Futura roses that have been grown sustainably and are the roses with the lowest footprint in Europe. It is also important to carefully consider what to use as a basis of the floral arrangement. The OASIS® Bio Floral Foam that I used is a sustainable product that is 91% biodegradable. These products together make a stunning and sustainable arrangement.

Smithers Oasis continues to offer solutions that help florists create beautifully while supporting a more sustainable future for the industry. Bio-based sustainable products available for florists include OASIS® NatureSource™ Maxlife Floral Foam and the OASIS® Renewal™ Floral Foam.