Mono Bouquets in New Jersey

Mono bouquets in New Jersey: tulip rows in April, imported stems after

Mono bouquets in New Jersey begin each spring with tulips. From mid-April to early May, Holland Ridge Farms in Cream Ridge opens its fields to visitors who cut their own, one colour to a row. Irises and peonies have their own short weeks a little later in the season, and for the rest of the year the choice comes down to how long a bouquet needs to last and how full it needs to look in the vase.

Tulips from the Cream Ridge rows, and the glasshouse weeks before them

Holland Ridge Farms' fields near Cream Ridge run pink, coral and white from mid-April into early May, row after row of a single colour, and for those few weeks a tulip bouquet of one variety is New Jersey's spring held in both hands. The fields set the mood of the season rather than the stem count on any particular order.

Before April, the cut tulips on offer are glasshouse flowers. Dutch growers force tulip bulbs under glass from December through May, which is why a single-variety tulip bouquet is on the list long before Cream Ridge opens its gates. Kept to one colour, pink, coral or white, the bouquet reads as a single flower rather than a mix, which is the point of buying it by the variety.

Presby Memorial Iris Gardens in Montclair holds around 14,000 irises across nearly 3,000 varieties, and the garden is at its fullest from mid-May into early June. Among the state's mono bouquets, an iris bunch keeps its own corner, one colour of bloom repeated stem after stem, a gift timed to that short run rather than sent all year round.

Peonies follow a narrower window still, cut in the northeast only from late May into early June. Colonial Park's rose garden in Somerset County peaks in early June, and that is roughly where the state's own field season closes for the year.

Mono bouquet delivery in New Jersey once the fields close

From June through April, most of what fills a single-variety bouquet has flown in rather than grown nearby: close to four-fifths of the cut flowers sold in the US are imported, and roughly nine in ten of the air shipments clear customs through Miami. That is when mono bouquet delivery in New Jersey leans on flowers chosen for distance and vase life rather than a local season.

Chrysanthemums and alstroemeria are the ones to reach for then, each holding two to three weeks in water, longer than most of what the garden season offers. A hydrangea bouquet needs very little to look full, a handful of heads is already a bouquet, while a bunch of smaller blooms such as dianthus or alstroemeria tends to start around two dozen stems to read as dense rather than thin. Take that as a rough guide, not a fixed count.

Every mono bouquet is made up after the order is placed, and the florist photographs it before the courier sets off; how soon it can travel is shown on the bouquet's own page, with the full delivery terms set out separately.