If you have ever been to our shop on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (which are our market days when we bring in all the fresh goodies), you may have noticed that we are in a steamy, florally mess. Before you take your flowers home they go through a few, probably unexpected, processes to help you to get the maximum life out of them.
For really woody stems we bash them with a hammer on their ends (great anger management) to increase the surface area of the stems to allow the water to penetrate the stem more easily, helping them to drink more! We do this for flowers and foliage such as our viburnum, native flowers and hydrangea.
We also put some flowers through the horrible experience of being dipped into boiling water for about 30 seconds. While this sounds like we are absolutely nuts, it really helps some flowers to drink more water as the hot water travels up the stem more quickly than cold, giving them a quick quenching before they are popped back into the cool water for display. We mostly do this to non- bulbous plants such as roses, hydrangea, peonies, kale, chrysanthemums, gerberas, native flowers, many of our foliages and heaps more. This is something we are taught to do in our education as florists, and keep in mind we don’t do this to EVERY flower that comes into store. Some flowers will be really cranky if you put them through this! Which flowers to use these methods on have been truly tried and tested, passed down over 30 years through generations of employee to employee to keep our flowers fresh and happy!
All flowers and foliages in our store also have their water changed regularly, everyday to every second day to keep their stems fresh and their water source clean. It stops the water from getting stinky and murky and you should continue to practice this at home to help your flowers last longer.
Lastly we make sure to put any flowers that prefer the cold away in our cool room every night. Some flowers (like tropical orchids and some native flowers) will actually discolour if too cold so we don’t put those away. The cold environment for all the rest really helps to extend their life and again the same goes for at home, look for cold environments out of drafts, such as the laundry or garage (when you’re not enjoying them!).
Feel free anytime you are in store to ask for tips, which you could be using at home to get the best and longest life out of your flowers. These are some of the ways that we help guarantee that you are getting the most out of your product and we are always happy to share our expertise with our customers. Enjoy!