Tall in Bali

Tall roses in Bali: heat, the drive, and the vase at the end of it

Cool nights do more for a tall rose than anything you can buy for it. The island runs humid and warm, with a drier season from April to October and rains from November to March, and neither half of the year is cool at midday. What you can control is where the vase stands.

Keep it out of direct sun and away from moving air. Warm air travelling across the petals dries them from the outside in, and a long stem cannot keep pace with that.

Humidity confuses this. The air holds plenty of moisture, so people assume the flowers are comfortable, and then the vase spends the day in moving air beside an open door. The stem is still losing more than it takes up, and the first sign is a soft edge on the outer petals.

Three neighbours to move away from.

• A bowl of fruit, which releases ethylene as it ripens and brings the buds on early.
• An open doorway with a through draught, which dries petals faster than still heat does.
• A window that catches the afternoon sun, since glass adds to whatever the room already has.

"People move the vase for a photograph and leave it there. Three days later the side that faced the window is the side that failed."

— JFLOO florist

Orders start at 650000 IDR, and payment goes through QRIS, GoPay, OVO, DANA or cash to the courier. We take orders from 9 AM to 10 PM. Tall grades leave at the start of the day where the address allows it.

The drive is part of the care

Seminyak, Canggu and Sanur sit inside a 90 to 150 minute window. Uluwatu, Tabanan and villas off the main roads run to 3 to 4 hours. Above 30 °C and in high humidity we add firm wrapping and a cooling element, and on the long routes the buds go out tighter than they otherwise would. Through the rains from November to March the wrapping stays closed until the bouquet is indoors, because water sitting on an outer petal marks it by the next day.

Every rose here is imported, so the tall grades have already spent hours out of water before they reach the workshop. We hold them in deep buckets from the moment the box opens and build them last.

That holding time is worth asking about anywhere. A tall stem that went from box to bucket the same morning behaves differently from one that stood dry on a bench, and the difference turns up in the second week rather than the first. Nothing about it is visible in the shop.

The vase is the last variable.

Use a heavy one, floor standing or wide based ceramic, because long stems act as levers and a light vase goes over at the first knock. That usually costs the bouquet as well as the tablecloth. Expect the stems to be trimmed to suit whatever container is actually standing in the villa, and take the extra length as a reserve.

Fill it deep, at least a third of the stem, and change the water in full rather than topping it up. In this climate a vase left unrinsed seals the cut within a day.

Tall roses in Bali hold one to two weeks on that routine, and a little longer in a room that cools overnight. If the recipient has to carry the bouquet from a gate or a car before it reaches water, ask us for a water pack, since the hours spent dry decide the rest of the week. Send the address and the hour, and tell us if there is nothing tall to put them in. We will cut the stems to suit before the courier leaves.