Mother's Day in Los Angeles

Mother's Day in Los Angeles: flowers for a Sunday the market stays shut

Mother's Day in Los Angeles is always the second Sunday of May, and Sunday is the one day the Original Los Angeles Flower Market on Wall Street, in the Flower District, stays shut: on Saturday it closes at 2 pm. Florists advise ordering a bouquet for that Sunday a few days ahead, and the choice starts with what she actually likes: roses, peonies or lilies.

Roses for mum from Ecuador and Colombia, opened by a florist's hand

Cut roses reach Los Angeles through LAX, flown in from farms in Ecuador and Colombia and from greenhouses in the Netherlands. Mother's Day in the US is one of the year's two big pushes for roses, the other sitting around 14 February, and together the pair account for roughly half the country's annual supply.

A rose sold as French is not a separate variety. A florist takes an ordinary bloom and bends the outer petals back by hand, so it reaches the door already open rather than still closed in a bud. Red French roses lead the Mother's Day list for a reason: by the 1920s Americans wore a red carnation to show their mother was alive, a white one in her memory. That same red-for-living colour carried over to roses, and 11 Red French Roses sits right in that tradition, a dozen minus one, already opened by hand.

In water a French rose lasts about a week, sometimes closer to ten days, long enough to still be standing the following weekend.

Peonies in a hat box or lilies in a basket for a May Sunday

The second Sunday of May sits inside the Dutch peony season, which runs from late April into June, so peonies are in good supply for the day. A peony stood in water keeps for five to seven days, shorter than a rose but long enough to see out the week around the date.

Peonies and roses often go into a hat box instead of a wrapped bunch: a box that goes straight onto her table without a vase to find first.

Lilies come from greenhouses and are on the list every month of the year, which makes them an easy answer when nothing else is in season. A basket is worth choosing when no vase is wanted at all, Designer Basket No. 6 being one example. If she keeps a cat, though, skip lilies altogether: they are toxic to cats.

From late April to the middle of June the jacarandas along Mid-Wilshire and through Pasadena turn the streets purple, peaking in May: a colour the city wears for the week, not one that comes in a vase. Heat and humidity work differently depending on the address, too: coast or Valley, the bouquet fares differently.

Mother's Day flower delivery in Los Angeles on the Sunday the Wall Street market shuts

The Saturday before Mother's Day the flower market closes at 2 pm, hours earlier than it does on a weekday, which is why florists buy and get bouquets ready in advance rather than on the day itself. Orders are taken around the clock, and a date and a delivery slot can be booked for any zone in the city.

Mother's Day brings far more orders than an ordinary Sunday, so the slots run wider and nobody promises an exact minute. Placing the order a few days ahead, rather than the night before, leaves more of those slots open to choose from.

The card is free and can carry whatever you write, not a printed line: Anna Jarvis herself thought a bought card was a lazy way to say it. A photo of the finished bouquet goes out before the courier leaves, and delivery terms cover the rest, zone by zone. If the family is meeting for a restaurant lunch instead, the restaurant's manager can be asked in advance to have the flowers ready for dessert.

Start with peonies if roses aren't her thing, or with a basket of lilies if she'd rather have something that needs no vase at all, and book the date before the Saturday the market closes early.