Bloody hell, price of florists nowadays

[Tonight1]

£50 for flowers and chocolate!

I am povvo so would notice this more. It's important as it's birthday and operation combined but £50!!!

The Christmas present is now getting firmly held back for Christmas

@Ilovemydog2 aww! Hope it goes well!

@SadCelticBunny it's strangely nice to encounter a dandelion enthusiast

I was quoted £60 for a small simple wedding posy over 15 years ago. I refused to pay it and made my own with supermarket flowers and ribbon for £5.

The worst I’ve had have been from M&S and Waitrose. Nothing like the photos on the website. Very few actual flowers, padded out with horrid foliage with stems you can’t cut.

I complained to M&S and got spiel about not being able to do anything because I did t have an order number. They managed to replace them in the end though.

Can I suggest Freddie's flowers? 25 for a bouquet delivered in a box that just needs trimming and putting in a vase, after 2 days they look beautiful and last about a week.

I ordered 3 amaryllis Christmas bouquets from M&S - one was to my neighbour , the others to friends far away. I saw my neighbours - it was awful so I complained - M&S refunded me after I sent photos. I sad to think what my friends received.

Example below, ignore my awful ramming in a vase style of arrangement.

Flowers are expensive - they have to be grown so time and labour. The florist has to be paid and also has overheads (which surprise surprise have gone up).

Plus, there are the time pressures with such a limited window when you can sell them. If you sell tea-towels for a living, you could have a warehouse full of them and sell them at your leisure for the next decade or two. If you sell flowers, you've only got very few days to make a profit on them and not have them cost you money in losses.

That said, I suspect an awful lot of florists deliberately put aside the ones that have started to wilt and die and send them out when fulfilling inter-type orders - knowing that the purchaser won't ever see them and the recipient won't want to spoil a kind thought by complaining to their loved one.

I had some Serenata flowers recently. They were £30, so not massively expensive but still a lot of money. They came in a squashed box, the flowers were bent, limp and half dead, I had to cut most the leaves off as they were curled up and dead. I know they're supposed to perk up once in water but they never fully opened or bloomed. Serenata didn't want to know when we complained.
Give me a simple bunch of cheap spring flowers any day.

Everyone has got used to supermarket flower prices. Supermarkets buy low quality flowers in huge volumes, which are processed and arranged into bunches by warehouse staff. They do not make huge profits on their flowers. Add in Brexit, cost of living increase and a general public who do not value the skills required to be a professional florist and it's clusterfuck of doom for all independent florists.

M&S attempted wedding floristry and culled it after a short while because it wasn't financially viable. Morrisons are culling many of their in-store florists, because again, they can't make money.

@ladyofthecanyon is an experienced florist and will back me up!

I heard the bat signal of a fellow florist!

Yup, supermarket flowers are bought in huge quantities - for example M&S have recently bought up all the gorgeous reticulated chrysanthemum blooms in Europe - there's absolutely fuck all for the independent florist to buy. The same happened with the decent Sarah Bernhardt peonies this year - the majority available for everyone else were either so expensive as to not be worth it, or A2 quality.

The awful thing about it is that they throw about 60% of their flowers away because each store just doesn't care for the flowers sufficiently well enough. I was chatting to a couple of our Dutch suppliers who confirmed that M&S only make 10% of their entire flower spend as profit. That is insanely wasteful.

I'll tell you where we do use up flowers that are a few days old and that is in funeral flowers. They do only need to last a couple of days.

What would help is people understanding how to care for flowers - I mean, I get it, it's not an innate skill, but not everyone understands they need to recut the stems before they go into water, or that the water needs changing, or what the best flower - to- water ratio is etc etc etc

If I am sending somebody flowers I try to find a nice local florist via Google maps and order from them over the phone (after checking out their website). I know in my city, most of the florists are not to my taste, but there are a few that do a stunning bouquet for £35.

Although I do sometimes succumb to a bunch of supermarket flowers, it makes me feel a bit sick to see e.g. a bunch of roses that were grown in Kenya for sale for £5. It's just not right.

I try to buy British flowers when I can. I got 5 stems of gladioli yesterday for £3.

This is why I don't like receiving flowers. You've just given me another job to do!

Rule 1. Never send flowers for mothers day
Rule 2. Never send valentine flowers
Rule 3. Never send Christmas flowers.

I learned the hard way. They are rushed with huge orders, and run low on flowers, invariably look nothing like you ordered.

Whenever possible opt for a nice hydrangea plant or something similar that can go in the garden once it's finished flowering indoors.
Or go for a beautiful hand-tied natural arrangement of your own flowers and foliage.

It's such a rip off. I received a bouquet from our local florist for my birthday last year and it was shocking. It was honestly such a disappointment I went to the shop to see how much had been spent, I was shocked!

There's so many more things I'd like for £50-100 than a bouquet that will die and go in the bin within 10 days.

My local Morrisons has started doing proper floristry and it’s good value and the people I’ve given them to say they last a long time

@WhisperingHi please don't say that.

I was trying to do something nice as relative is half the country away and about to go through a painful op as well as birthday. £54 is well worth it if they are nice flowers and chocolates, it would be disappointing if they aren't

Hey so I'm a florist,I have been for 16 years. It took years of training and I'm still learning every day. Its a skilled job. When you think about what actually goes into your bouquet id consider them quite cheap really. Each variety of flower takes years to get right. They are grown in huge temperature controlled buildings,which need staff to grow and pick them. They are then flown over or driven here to wholesalers. So 2 pounds for a rose really isn't that much. You see the price of flowers in supermarkets and you're comparing them to the flowers we specifically pick out for their high grade. We look after them to make them last and we take alot of care when doing our job. Plus we don't have the buying power they have. They buy thousands,we buy a small percentage of that.It really boils my blood when people comment on how "expensive" it is. Our job is a skill,you come to us to do wedding flowers because you wouldn't have a clue where to start. Plus we're in a different situation than a few years ago and I don't understand why people think the flower industry isnt effected by that. Its just ignorance. End of