Does anyone else hate fresh flowers?

I've told this story before on here but many years ago I had a big birthday. I was skint at the time. My friends and family were all better off than me...I received about eight bouquets of very expensive flowers. I only had one vase. I sat in my kitchen with about £500 quids worth of flowers propped up in pint glasses and jugs. I could have cried.

I'm not sure I'd go as far as 'hate' but I'm not really a fan. I just find them so wasteful and am at a point in my life where the sustainability of them (depending where they come from) is an issue for me.

I don't really get much out of having a vase of flowers in the house that I know will have cost someone a small fortune, just to effectively watch them die off over the course of the week/two weeks at best. The unpacking, trimming and arranging is also not something I actively enjoy. Of course I'm grateful when I'm sent them (or anything!) and it's lovely to be thought of but they are effectively an unwanted gift for me, unfortunately.

As an aside I do love flowers, but prefer to see them in the garden/visit a garden and see them in situ.

A couple of people sent me flowers recently. It was really kind of them but flowers & kittens definitely don’t mix.

They had to go on a high shelf in my bedroom & then the kittens had to be shut out of it unless I was in there too, so it was all a bit of a pain.

I have found my people 😂I have also name changed just for this thread as some of this is outing 😬

I hate, hate, hate being given fresh flowers. You have to spend ages trimming them, finding a vase, arranging them and then a few days later they start stinking and rotting 😖They also take up valuable space in my green bin which I have to pay to be emptied!

We have a good friend that DH and I do favours for from time to time. If he does them a favour he gets beer - which he likes. If I do them a favour I get flowers 😩No matter how many times I say 'no need' they always do and the flowers keep coming.....

I get DH to take them into his workplace and give them to a colleague who he knows likes flowers. At least they are not being wasted that way. So if you are married to J and she keeps coming home with flowers that a work colleague gave her, and tells you that the work colleague's wife hates flowers, I promise you - it is entirely true😄

I adore flowers!
I sometimes buy them for myself if I have a 'me' day when I go to a nice coffee shop, buy an expensive interior magazine, cakes from a proper independent cake shop to take home etc etc A bit of a ritual.
I also really enjoy buying them as gifts from a local independent florist where I can be extravagant and choose unusual mixes with the expert help of the shop owner.
I get real enjoyment when I receive flowers as gifts from friends/acquaintances or my family and I particularly like it when DH randomly brings me flowers 'just because'.
I also pick them from my garden in the summer.
Late autumn/winter I make my own giant foliage arrangements with items picked up from my garden or the odd weird/interesting item I find on a walk in the woods after a storm. These arrangements don't really need water and last for ages, gorgeous natural colours. I love them.

I don't buy anywhere near as many flowers as I used to though because they are so expensive nowadays.

I don’t hate them but I’m not good at arranging them and they do make me feel a bit sad because they’re dying.

I’m out walking the dog in the same areas every day and I love the trees, shrubs and flowers I see growing wild. You get to see the whole cycle.

I hate receiving flowers...let's say someone spends £50 on a bouquet to send to me, of course I'll thank them but I'd be far happier with a £20 voucher for Sainsbury's and it would be cheaper for them too 😂

And when someone has just given birth obviously they want chocolate!

However I think letter box flowers are often an awful gift as they're a job for the recipient to do, usually sent at a time when they don't need more on their plate. Like when you've just had a baby for example - no I don't really want to stand for 10 mins and arrange some flowers right now actually

Oh dear yes, or when someone has died. DMiL ended up with a big water mark on her dining table after DFiL died.

Me! They look fine, but all the admin is a pain!

I’ve taken to telling everyone who might every buy me some very clearly that I don’t like them and I prefer chocolates in that sort of scenario. It’s not my birthday till June, so Hopefully they’ll remember and I don’t get another influx then.

I hate them too

Flowers are amazing, what's wrong with you all? (Light hearted).

Fucking hate them with a passion. “Here, let us display severed plant genitals on our table and watch and smell them slowly decay!!”

And every time I look at them, I think “what better things could have been purchased with that money”.

My sister is a florist so she often makes me up lovely bouquets which is very kind of her but I just feel like it’s another chore! Find a suitable vase, cut the flowers down to fit, change the water, remove the dead flowers, then when they’ve all died wash the vase up and put it away again. It’s a lovely idea but I’m far too lazy for all that.

I love them,,but not the kind of weirdly prissy looking bouquet you get from Interflora. I will buy local flowers from a man at the market (which means I will often get an armful of pesticide-free flowers/foliage in season for very little money) and put them in containers myself at home, fairly informally.

We never give flowers to my MIL — she just sticks them, without taking off the tie or trimming them, into the top of a vase by a radiator, or leaves them in the water bag packaging.

Yes. Especially lilies. An ex (and he was already an ex by then, of the creepy stalky variety) sent me an enormous bouquet of white lilies for my birthday a few years ago. Apart from the fact they're associated with funerals and it freaked me the fuck out, especially as he didn't sign his name, they're just awful. I hate the pollen, they stink and they're dangerous to animals.

I recently gave something away on Nextdoor and the woman who came to collect was a bit of a hippy I guess and brought me fresh flowers from her garden and some sort of affirmation card. It was really sweet of her but my god, the flowers stank and were definitely not the variety that were supposed to be put in a vase.

I love having fresh flowers in the house. However I think supermarket flowers bought in bunches of the individual flowers are usually cheaper and also you can then either make a really impactful display of one type of flower or create your own bouquet. Ready made bouquets are usually disappointing and over priced.

I particularly loathe letter box flowers as a gift, from bloom and wild etc. They're shit!! But the one exception is Freddie Flowers who sent instructions on how to arrange etc - they make a lovely bouquet. However I think letter box flowers are often an awful gift as they're a job for the recipient to do, usually sent at a time when they don't need more on their plate. Like when you've just had a baby for example - no I don't really want to stand for 10 mins and arrange some flowers right now actually

Yes, I don't like them.

I've repeatedly told DP (at times when he's not bought me flowers, to be clear, I'm not horrid!) that I don't like flowers. I can never get them to look nice, they've 9/10 got something deadly to the cat in them, they're something to bloody do I've got to find a vase, trim them, usually can't cut through them with scissors either so need to find secateurs from somewhere, then they need checking and water changing so they don't start to smell, I need to find some mythical place to put them where the aforementioned flower chewing cat can't knock them over, they're a pain in the arse. He still just appears with them and hands them to me, as though that's job done. It's basically giving me work. I've asked 'did you put the flowers in water when he's put them in the kitchen - I get a shocked 'no?!'

Don't even get me started on people that give you flowers when you're ill. I can't get myself a drink Marjorie, I'm not up to fucking about climbing on a stool to try to find a vase... 'oh, thank you, they're lovely'

No I love them! And after years of partners never getting them for me, my current husband had sunflowers (my favourite) delivered on our anniversary

I don't like bouquets...but always have fresh flowers in the house. Daffodils, tulips, freesias, flowers from the garden.
Currently got 8 vases of them dotted round the house.

Flowers you buy that are imported and covered in pesticides/herbicides are bloody awful though I’m with you on that one.

Yes me too. Mainly because they remind me of all the flowers we got after a traumatic bereavement. They also set DH’s hayfever off and I always leave them too long so they’re shedding everywhere, smell horrible and the water goes all manky. They look nice but practically they’re a pain.

Nope I have a cut flower patch in my garden and I am desperately waiting for my bulbs to pop up so I can start cutting!

fresh homegrown flowers are the best!