### Seasonal bouquets in Dubai: ordering flowers nobody has photographed yet Most bouquets are chosen from a picture. A seasonal order runs the other way round, since you agree the mood and the budget first and the workshop fills it from whatever arrived fresh that week. People find that uncomfortable until they know what happens between the order and the door. Deliveries land on fixed days. By midweek we know exactly what is standing in the buckets, what has opened too far to send out on Friday and what will be at its best in two days, which means a seasonal brief lets us build around the strongest stems in the room instead of chasing one variety to match a photograph taken months ago. What comes in is largely imported. Dutch roses at 60 to 90 cm, Ecuadorian stems reaching 120 cm and Dutch peonies each arrive on their own schedule, and tulips and chrysanthemums come from UAE greenhouses on a much shorter run. That short run is the useful part of the week here. Greenhouse stems reach the bench with less time spent in cold storage, and it shows on the third and fourth day rather than on the first. Flown in flowers are not poor quality, they simply arrive with part of their vase life already spent, and in a city where summer air reaches 40 °C that spent portion matters more than it would in a mild climate. #### Four things that decide the build - The address, because DIFC and Business Bay take a morning handover and a home in JBR usually wants an evening one. - Whether the bouquet stays on a table or travels onward the same day. - Whether anyone will be present to take it, or the flowers wait at a desk. - One colour or one scent to leave out, which is the single line that prevents the most disappointment, since a positive description of what you want is much harder to act on than a clear statement of what you do not. Delivery takes 2 to 4 hours across Downtown, Marina, JBR, Business Bay, Palm Jumeirah and DIFC, and we work 9 AM to 10 PM. Orders start from 250 AED and payment goes by Apple Pay or cash to the courier. #### How the heat enters the decision Summer bouquets travel in insulated packing and stay out of direct sun, which is straightforward. The harder part is the swing between an air conditioned lobby and the street, and a stem that has already spent days in transit handles that swing worse than one that came in this week. So a seasonal brief is not only a way to buy more volume for the money. It is also the version of the order least likely to arrive tired, and in July that is the argument that persuades people. Hotels take these deliveries easily. At Address Downtown, Atlantis The Palm or Four Seasons the flowers are assembled the same day and handed over at the building rather than held back while we wait for a named variety to land. Business handovers are the one case where the format needs a caveat. Companies usually have a colour of their own, and a seasonal build will not always land on it, so for office addresses we either hold to a neutral palette or order the variety in advance and treat it as a different kind of job. Family dates are the easier half of the book. There the brief is a mood rather than a specification, and the bouquet can be built from whatever came in strongest that morning without anybody being disappointed by a shade. > "The order I like best is three lines long. Palette, occasion, and one thing to avoid." > - JFLOO florist Send the date, the district and that one exclusion. Dubai runs on GMT+4, so give the handover time in local hours, and if the date cannot move, say so at the start rather than after the bouquet is built.