Birthday Baskets in Bali

Birthday flower baskets in Bali: all round, or built with a back to it

A basket finished on every face is a different object from one built with a front, and the two are not interchangeable even when they hold the same flowers in the same bowl.

The all round build is a dome. Every side of it is planted, nothing is left bare, and it belongs in the middle of a table with people sitting around it. The one sided build has a face and a flat back, which lets the same number of stems read considerably larger, and it belongs against a wall, on a hall console or on a sideboard where nobody walks behind it.

Ordering the wrong one is a quiet mistake, because nothing about it is visible in a photograph.

A one sided arrangement set down in the middle of a dinner table turns its bare back on the guests along the far edge, and they spend the evening looking at foam and cut stem ends. A dome pushed against a wall hides work that was paid for and never seen.

"We ask one question before anything else on a birthday order. Is it going in the middle of a table or against a wall, because the answer changes how much of the same arrangement ever gets seen."

— JFLOO florist

Age moves the brief further than the date does. For an older recipient the useful qualities are height, stability and a weight that can be shifted with one hand, in a scheme that needs no explaining. For somebody younger the constraint is usually the room: a rented house in Canggu or a shared kitchen has no surface to spare, and a compact build earns its place where a large one gets moved from table to floor to windowsill and back.

The road, the season and the front door

Seminyak, Canggu and Sanur sit in a 90 to 150 minute window, while Uluwatu, Tabanan and the remote villas run up to 3 to 4 hours. A one sided build takes the long road better than a dome does, since its flat back sits against the side of the vehicle and nothing on the face is pressed.

In the rainy season from November to March we add route time. Above 30 °C in high humidity we wrap firmly and add a cooling element, and the packing comes off the moment the basket is set down rather than at the end of the party.

A flat back set against a wall has one consequence worth knowing in this climate. Air does not move behind it, and the foliage nearest the plaster stays damp long after the rest of the arrangement has dried off, so we leave the back edge of the block clear of leaf rather than packing it out for the look of the thing.

Orders start at 650000 IDR, payment goes through QRIS, GoPay, OVO, DANA or cash to the courier, and hours run 9 AM to 10 PM.

Three details are worth sending with the order:

• Whether the arrangement stands in the middle of a table or against a wall.
• The width of the surface it has to fit on.
• Whether staff or the recipient will be the one taking it in.

Ocean villas and Nusa Dua hotels handle either build without difficulty, and The St. Regis Bali Resort, Four Seasons Resort Bali at Sayan, Mandapa, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, The Legian Seminyak and Alila Villas Uluwatu all move a wide flat base more easily than a tall vase. An Ubud dinner almost always wants the dome, since the table is the whole point of the evening.

Imported roses at 60 to 90 cm and Ecuadorian stems up to 120 cm carry the body of either build, with seasonal peonies, macrophylla hydrangea, lisianthus and ranunculus filling the bowl and orchids taking the upper lines. Birthday flower baskets in Bali are planted to the shape of the room they are going into, so the placement is settled at the order and not at the door.