New Year baskets in Dubai: what is under the weave, and what it weighs
A woven wall hides every part of the mechanism. That is generous to whoever built the basket, since the outside shows only material while the tray, the foam and the fixings stay out of sight.
So look at it from the inside. Lift a stem at the rim and get your eye behind the weave. Check whether the foam is damp all the way through, what holds the tray in place, and whether that tray slides when the basket is tilted.
The build itself is simple enough. A lined tray or a sheet of film goes in first, soaked foam sits on top of it, and the stems are pushed in from the outside edge towards the centre. Dutch roses at 60 to 90 cm are cut short for this and do most of the visible work. Greenhouse chrysanthemums from the UAE hold the outline for longer than anything else in the tray, and Dutch peonies out of season go in one at a time, near the middle, where nothing brushes past them. Tulips come with a warning attached, since they keep growing after cutting and will stand above the rim of the weave within a day.
The weave hides good work and bad.
The non floral half of a basket comes in two kinds, and the difference decides what happens on the evening it is opened. Anything standing on the base lifts out cleanly and leaves the basket whole. Anything mounted on a pick leaves a hole behind it, and that hole has to be filled by somebody at a party who has better things to do. Say at the ordering stage whether the contents are meant to be taken out, and the build changes accordingly.
"A basket that has been checked from the inside looks the same as one that has not. The difference shows up four days later, when the foam in one of them was only wet on top."
— JFLOO florist
Weight is the part nobody asks about. Wet foam, a woven base, glass inside and the water somebody adds on arrival build up to a figure well beyond what the size suggests, and a mid sized basket becomes unpleasant to carry at arm's length after twenty paces. The handle rarely helps, since a woven loop on a thin frame is made for the look of the thing and bends or pulls out of the wall under a full tray. Carried from underneath with both hands it travels fine, and that is how it leaves us.
Across the city
Delivery takes 2 to 4 hours, and a basket sits at the far end of that range. It travels upright and cannot share space with anything that might lean on it.
Apartments in Downtown, Business Bay, Marina and JBR are the easiest addresses, since the lift does the carrying. Villas on Palm Jumeirah add a walk from the gate. Offices in DIFC add a reception desk and a security check before the basket reaches a floor.
Hotels take it at the property, and Burj Al Arab, Atlantis The Palm, Address Downtown and Four Seasons all handle deliveries that way. A basket suits that route because it stands where it is put down and needs no vase found for it.
Summer runs to 40 °C, with humidity along the coast. An open weave is worse than a closed box in that heat, because air moves straight through it. We deliver these insulated, keep them shaded at every stop, and ask that the basket goes out of direct sun as soon as it arrives.
We work 9 AM to 10 PM on GMT+4. Orders start from 250 AED, with payment by Apple Pay or cash to the courier.
New Year baskets in Dubai are worth sending to an address where the gift will stay put, since carrying one onwards is a job in itself. Tell us the floor, the name of whoever opens the door and whether the contents get taken out in front of guests.
