How to choose the right flower delivery service
To find the perfect floral match for your purpose do a bit of research first:
Most of the companies run all over the UK but, before you get started, tap in the postcode to make sure. You don’t want to fall in love with a bouquet only to remember your friend lives on the Shetland Islands and they don’t deliver there.
Check the company’s policies on complaints or non-delivery, and make sure you can give clear instructions about what to do if the person isn’t home. You don’t want them to come home six hours later to find the box has blown over and the flowers are squashed. Good customer service reviews go a long way.
How long should a bouquet of flowers last?
A bouquet of flowers should last somewhere between a week and a fortnight. Anything less than a week is unimpressive. Anything from 14 days or more is excellent.
How can I make my flowers last longer?
1. Start as you mean to go on by looking after your flowers properly as soon as they arrive. If they come with instructions from the florist, follow those. Otherwise, use sharp scissors to trim the ends as blunt ones will crush and bruise the stems. Cut them underwater too, as this stops too much air getting into the stems, and cut at a 45-degree angle.
2. Add any cut flower food supplied. If you don’t have any, lemonade is supposed to make flowers last longer, as does an aspirin crushed in the water. Sink them into very deep water first to give them a really good drink before arranging in a vase with less water.
3. Remove any leaves that fall below the water line as they can introduce bacteria to the water.
4. Make sure the vase is clean before you start (again, to avoid bacteria) and then change the water every few days.
5. Think about where you’re putting your flowers. You should keep them out of direct sunlight, away from radiators and anything else too warm, but also not near an open window. Keeping them near fresh fruit can shorten their life too, as fruit gives off tiny amounts of gas. Florists also advise that you don’t keep them near your TV or computer.
What is the best online flower delivery service?
Having studied all the big players carefully, we’re in no doubt that the best online flower delivery service is Bloom & Wild.
How we chose our recommendations
Online flower deliveries get a lot of reviews online. There’s nothing quite as disappointing as rubbish flowers, and a really gorgeous bouquet is something that stays with you too.
We scoured trusted review sites as well as customer reviews online to create a longlist of the best online flower delivery services available. Then we took to Mumsnet to compare those findings with what our trusted users told us on the Mumsnet forums. By and large, their recommendations were strikingly similar, but there were some delivery services that we struck off the list after we read numerous bad reviews.
From there, we created a shortlist of 20 of the best online flower delivery services, from which we picked 10 that we thought would offer something for everyone.
Why you should trust us
Transparency is really important to us and that's why we're always upfront about where we find our recommendations. We write about products and services that we feel offer the best value– the ones that our users would recommend to their own friends and family.
If you decided to buy something that we recommended as a result of our research, we usually (not always) get paid affiliate commission from the retailer where you make a purchase. But, if you weren't impressed with the product or service and decided to return it or get a refund, we wouldn't make a penny.