One of my roles at the shop is to assist with the purchasing of our weekly flower order for events and to stock our shelves. For the most part, it’s one of the tasks I really enjoy—it’s pretty much online shopping with none of the guilt!
But, I’m not going to lie, there are weeks when it gets a bit tiresome… especially when you’re deep into a season and you’ve been seeing the same flowers on the market for months. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy seasonally available flowers like branches in Spring (think Cherry Blossoms and Magnolia branches) and vines in the Summer (sweet scented Jasmine, and funky Passiflora vines) and of course fluffy Peonies during warmer summer months (LOVE!).
I do think that part of my job is to vary the rotation of flower in store so our clients are constantly surprised and our florists don’t fall into a rut of deploying the same blooms week after week. But this can be hard especially when we have customers regularly requesting flowers that are technically “not in season”. I know you’re expecting a lecture on why you should buy seasonal flowers, but it’s not meant to be.
To be honest, there are few flowers that are truly seasonal anymore—with temperature-controlled greenhouses and international flights that can cross hemispheres in hours you can pretty much get most blooms at any time of the year these days. That’s not to say that the blooms will be great, flower heads will be smaller and shelf life shorter. But past all of that, I feel like we’re loosing the element of surprise that the change in seasons typically brings—especially in a two-season location like Bahrain (hot and hotter, amirite?!).
While I love peonies and ranunculus, I feel like seeing them for a brief period makes them all the more enjoyable and makes me excited when they’re truly at their peak and in season. So yes, I’m going to stubbornly continue to order with what’s technically in season. But know that I’m doing this for your own good! (And my mental sanity!!).
