Seventeen peonies in Dubai: what to settle before you order this many
Summer air near the coast reaches 40 °C and carries humidity with it, and that one fact decides more about a large peony order here than colour or variety ever will. Heat pushes every head towards its final stage at the same time. Outside the summer months the same bunch can go out further open, and it holds that state for longer.
We add insulated packing for the drive and keep the box out of direct sun from the bench to the door. Peonies come here from the Netherlands outside the season, so seventeen heads have already had a long journey before ours begins.
The drive in this city is short and the pause around it is not. A box waiting in a car park while somebody hunts for the right entrance picks up more heat than the whole run does, and seventeen heads packed together hold that heat between them. So we ask for a phone number that will be answered, and we ask for an hour instead of a day. The shorter that pause, the further open we can send the bunch.
"The order I question is seventeen heads for somebody flying out in two days. The bunch does its whole life in an empty flat."
— JFLOO florist
Two things are worth checking before a count this size goes through. There has to be a container in the home that will actually take it, and the recipient has to be at that address for the days that follow. A large bunch left standing while somebody is away does all of its opening and dropping unseen. Timing matters more here than with any smaller count, because the flowers do their best work in the middle of the week, some way after the day they arrive. Order for a quiet week when you have the choice.
Seventeen heads need an audience.
Three questions we ask back
- Which day the flowers should look their best.
- Whether the recipient stays at that address all week.
- Whether the vessel at home is wide or narrow.
We work 9 AM to 10 PM. Orders start from 250 AED, and payment goes by Apple Pay or cash to the courier.
Ask for mixed stages instead of uniform tight buds. A bunch built entirely from closed heads opens together and finishes together, which throws away the main advantage a big count has. Two or three stages across seventeen stems give you flowers that renew themselves for most of a week.
Ask, too, whether we will take the stems down in length at the point of sale. Long stems look impressive in the wrapping and are the first thing that has to go once the bunch is in water. Seventeen thick stems in one vessel also crowd the water badly, so a wide container and a daily change count for more than the trim does. Splitting the bunch between two vessels around the fourth day is the move almost nobody thinks of.
Across the city
Downtown, Business Bay, Marina, JBR, Palm Jumeirah and DIFC all fall inside the 2 to 4 hour window. Offices in DIFC take this count as a desk piece and it stands there through the working day, which argues for tighter heads. Family dates and hotel addresses in Downtown and Marina go the other way, since the paper comes off within the hour.
Business handovers and family dates want different things from the same seventeen stems. One needs flowers that still look composed at the end of a working day, the other needs them at their best the moment the door opens.
Tell us the week, not only the day, and tell us who will be in the flat while the bunch opens. Seventeen peonies in Dubai are a good order for somebody who is staying put, and a poor one for a suitcase that leaves on Thursday.
