Flowers in Berlin

Flowers in Berlin: beyond the market stalls, delivered zone by zone

Every Wednesday and Saturday, around 130 stalls fill Winterfeldtplatz by the Nollendorfplatz station, flowers and plants among them — Berlin's best-known weekly market. A bunch from a stall is one to carry home yourself; ordering flowers in Berlin for someone else, on any day of the week, means a bouquet made to order and carried by a courier instead.

Flower delivery in Berlin by zone

The range covers mono bouquets and roses, flowers in boxes, mixed bouquets, armfuls and designer bouquets, each priced in the catalogue above.

Delivery is free in the city centre. Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf carry a delivery fee with a short wait; Steglitz-Zehlendorf, further out, costs more and takes longer. Each price covers one address, and between 11pm and 7am any address is served by prior arrangement, at a price quoted separately.

A bouquet the florist already has in stock can leave within 45 minutes of the order being confirmed, and most orders reach the recipient the same day they are placed. The fee is added to the total before payment, so the courier collects nothing at the door. Zones and timing in full sit on the delivery zones and timing page.

Potsdamer Platz and the Tiergarten fringe are dense with hotels, and a bouquet ordered there needs the guest's surname as given at check-in, plus the room number if known. Each hotel decides for itself whether the box goes up to the room or waits at reception.

City West and the streets off the Ku'damm are thick with offices instead. There the order wants the company name and the floor, and where a building keeps a pass at the door, reception takes the flowers in and signs for them.

A hospital is the one address worth checking first: the florist finds out in advance whether the ward accepts flowers, and if it does not, the handover moves to the nurses' post or waits for the day of discharge.

BER airport sits in Schönefeld, in Brandenburg, about 25 kilometres from the Hauptbahnhof. Delivery out there runs by request, and the courier waits at the arrivals exit holding a card with the recipient's name; no fixed time can be promised over that distance.

Ordering from another country needs only the recipient's phone number, the card can go unsigned, and a photo of the finished bouquet is sent before the courier leaves.

Berlin's wholesale flower market, the Blumengroßmarkt, has stood at Beusselstraße 44 in Moabit since May 2010, on some 12,000 square metres — twice the size of the old hall on Friedrichstraße, where the trade had worked since the 1920s.

More than 80 per cent of the cut flowers reaching the German market travel through the Netherlands first, and the roses among them come largely from Kenya.

The market on Winterfeldtplatz keeps its own hours: Wednesdays 8am to 2pm, Saturdays 8am to 4pm.

Frauentag off work, Muttertag on a Sunday: dates to order ahead

8 March has been a public holiday in Berlin since 2019, the first German state to make it one. Mother's Day falls on a Sunday in May, and is not a holiday in itself; German shops close on Sundays, which pushes the errand onto delivery instead. Valentine's Day, 14 February, adds a third rush date, though the exact day of the week shifts from year to year.

On all three dates the number of orders climbs well past an ordinary week, delivery windows run wider than usual, and no courier can promise an exact minute; ordering a day or two ahead keeps a slot open.

Einschulung, the first day of school, falls in late August each year, and the classroom celebration usually starts between 9 and 11 in the morning, when each child receives a Schultüte, a cone filled with sweets and small gifts.

Totensonntag, the Sunday of remembrance for the dead, falls in late November each year, and the flowers for it are wreaths, Gestecke arrangements and candles rather than a hand-tied bouquet. Berlin weddings cluster in August more than any other month, at 13.4 per cent of the year's total.

Paper off at the door and a mixed palette: giving flowers in Berlin

Berlin etiquette expects the paper wrapping to come off before the bouquet changes hands, though a decorative paper cuff around the stems stays in place. White chrysanthemums are tied in most people's minds to the cemetery, and a bouquet made entirely of white flowers can read as a mourning gift rather than a cheerful one.

The old rule of giving an odd number of stems still gets mentioned, though few florists or buyers hold to it strictly today. A colleague's flowers are often one shared gift from the whole department rather than several small ones, and a box of German chocolate to go with the bouquet — Ritter Sport's "Danke Schön" among the options — travels well alongside it.

Thirty-degree summers, heated January flats: where the vase goes

January and February average close to zero degrees in Berlin, so a bouquet left waiting on a cold staircase or an unheated hallway loses more than it gains from the trip. Indoors, winter heating dries the air fast, and a vase does better a metre or two from the nearest radiator than right beside it.

Summer runs the other way: June to August often push past thirty degrees, and a bouquet then wants a cool spot out of direct sun, with the water changed as soon as it turns cloudy.