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February 14 — Valentine's Day in Chicago: roses flown in, spring under glass
On February 14 — Valentine's Day in Chicago — the conservatories at Garfield Park and Lincoln Park opened their last spring show and ran it until Mother's Day. While the city queues to see spring under glass, the rose in a Valentine's bouquet has travelled a long way to get here. That distance shapes how to choose one and when to order it.
Before the Midwest farms open: the long route of a February rose
The Chicago Flower Market, a fixture of the city's own growing season, sells cut flowers from 31 Midwest farms between May and October, so by February none of that local crop is left on the stem. In February, a Valentine's rose in Chicago comes from far away.
More than eighty per cent of the cut flowers sold in the United States are grown in Latin America, most of it in Colombia and Ecuador, and around ninety per cent of that import lands through Miami. The run-up to 14 February is the peak of that import.
The scale shows up in January, when the country brings in roughly eleven million roses a day. Wholesalers place their orders with the plantations in the middle of the month, and shipments begin on 1 February. At JFLOO each bouquet is made to order, and its flowers are bought once the order is paid.
Valentine's flower delivery in Chicago to the restaurant door
Anyone who wants to send Valentine's roses to Chicago before dinner needs one fixed point: the table time. In River North, the city's dense cluster of restaurants and bars, that time is agreed with the restaurant's own staff beforehand. The bouquet can then be timed to arrive with dessert or with the toast, rather than wait at the bar.
The courier hands the flowers over in person, together with a card. The card costs nothing extra, and it can carry a signature or stay anonymous, which matters on an evening when not every sender wants to be named straight away.
On February 14, orders run at several times the usual volume, delivery windows widen, and no courier promises an exact minute on the clock. Placing the order earlier in the day, or in the days before, simply leaves more open windows to pick from. The delivery time is shown on each bouquet's page, and the delivery page explains the rest.
A cake, a heart-shaped balloon or a box of strawberries can go into the same basket as the flowers, along with other gifts to go with the bouquet, and all of it arrives together. Hotels, airport arrivals, orders from abroad and the cold walk to the door are covered on the hotels, arrivals and winter doorsteps page.
In the United States, whether a bouquet holds an odd or an even number of stems carries almost no meaning. The count only registers when there are just a few stems on show; once roses are gathered into a full bouquet, nobody stops to count them.
The more useful choice is colour and size. For colour, there are 11 Red French Roses or 11 White French Roses; Bouquet "Roses with Lisianthus" pairs the rose with a second flower.
'French' in a rose's name is not a variety; it describes a florist turning the outer petals back by hand to open the bloom wider. Before the courier leaves, the sender gets a photo of the finished bouquet and can ask for changes. If a flower has sold out, the florist substitutes a close shade and price, visible in the photo. A box of roses set in wet foam stands on a table on its own, needing no vase, which suits a hotel desk or a restaurant table just as well as a kitchen counter.
