To wish people would use local florists?

[Softlysoftly]

I received leaving flowers from a company I used through work in London (I'm in Wales) the other day as a leaving gift, they are lovely and it was very thoughtful of them sucking up .

Anyway they were from a florist in London, had been couriered down overnight and were in one of those mahoosive hip height boxes with reams of protective packaging. I've had flowers before from John Lewis and M&S and they all come with such over packaging.

It's lovely to receive them but so easy to order online with a local florist, or through interflora who then process locally, so saving fuel miles, supporting small business and reducing the huge amount of packing.

So aibu wishing we were back in the times when flowers were simpler?

I agree completely Softly - you can explain what you want, and take their advice on what they have in that's fresh.

DS ordered flowers for me online (Serenata Flowers are SHIT - well, they might be, but as I never received them, I'm not really sure what the actual flowers are like!!!) for Mother's Day and they never arrived. But more to the point, nobody cared.

Seems a little bit of a contradiction to worry about a few extra miles.

I love going to a local florist and coming up with what I want for gift , they like unusual things, she's a pink person etc

I find my local florists are over priced and have disappointed me. I got one to do 3 hand tied arrangements for a teacher and 2 TAs, and they looked rubbish, which was embarassing.

I quite often send Next flowers to friends, and they are always lovely.

Experience and a bit of practice has taught me to go to a wholesaler and do them myself if they're for someone local. I get twice as much for my money.

Where do you think the local florists get the flowers from? Do they pick them in the woods at the end of the field?

No, they get them from the growers in Africa, same as everyone else.

It's all the same airmiles.

All of our local florists have shut down. I had to drive two towns away to get some for MIL on Mother's Day.

Our local florist was shit though, inexcusable for an affluent area.

You used to work with people with more money than sense

Um ... your OP sounds as if you have a very specific idea of what 'local florists' might be available to the rest of us and it's not terribly accurate!

I have two local florists and they are eyewateringly expensive, often have very little that's English or seasonal, and one of them doesn't have a working online order system. So, not 'easy' at all, actually.

Interflora are invariably ugly tat in horrible colours.

I go to the market flower stall which is quite nice, but I've found ordering from wholesalers pretty good too. My wedding flowers cost 60 quid and were enough to do the church, the venue, buttonholes and my bouquet, and people thought they were professionally done. The packing was minimal.

Btw, Real Flower Company is good if you buy during times when they're using the English-grown stuff not the stuff flown in (you can check, they'll tell you). Not cheap either, though.

When you send someone flowers you want them to be nice. You want to know how they'll look and be sure they're of good quality and will last 7 days+. Flowers aren't cheap. I'm not spending £40+ on flowers for a local florist to take advantage of the fact that I will never see them and the recipient won't know that they've been shortchanged.

Interflora are also hit and miss because they are essentially using contractors - you could order identical arrangements and send them to two different addresses and get two very different results depending on how good the local shop is.

My mother sent me flowers a while ago and they were ok-ish, probably would have been £10 if that in supermarket, I then found she had paid £40. Apparently she had gone to her local florists who are excellent but they are too far away to deliver to me and passed the order on to someone else. On complaining they sent some more flowers as an apology but I reckon the two lots together were still not worth what mum paid.

Unfortunately florists like that tar the others with their crapness

Exactly. If I'm buying from Marks/John Lewis it's because I live miles from the person they're for and I know that they'll deliver a good bouquet.

my birthday is in December and the first year my DS was away from home he sent me flowers which were very poor(time of year thing probably)so I told him not to do that again ,the next year I got nothing as he said I told him not to get me anything,poor DH had to listen to me BVU

I suppose I didn't think of the airmiles/local florists being crap angle.

Ok I'll give in on the local but why all the over packaging?! That's my main bugbear, humungous wasteful boxes, ties and cellophane for a regular size bunch of flowers it's just wrong.

percyisgreen indeed I did if they had sense they would have posted vodka

Now your're talking....

You're right on that one. Especially the vodka bit!