February 14 — Valentine's Day in New York

February 14 — Valentine's Day in New York: roses, a hat box, a card

On February 14 — Valentine's Day in New York — the choice for most senders starts with roses. In the US, roses account for 83% of the flowers people buy for the day, and 65% of those are red, according to 2022 figures. The choice here starts with colour, then moves to how the bouquet travels: tied in paper, boxed without a vase, or carried home in something closer to a bag than a bouquet.

Red first, white if it fits: the roses sent on the fourteenth

Most people reaching for roses on the day choose 11 Red French Roses, eleven stems bound tight and ready to hand over as they are. For a quieter message, there's 11 White French Roses. Victorian flower dictionaries linked red to passion and white to purity, though no single list of meanings ever became standard. A French rose isn't a separate variety — a florist opens each bloom by hand, folding the outer petals back until the flower looks wider and more open than it did straight out of the box. Eleven rather than twelve is deliberate: an odd stem count still matters to Russian-speaking families around Brighton Beach, while a dozen roses stays the ordinary choice everywhere else in the city. The same red stems go out just as well in a box as they do wrapped in paper.

A box of roses or the Floral Handbag "Raphael" asks nothing of the person who receives it: the stems sit in wet foam rather than a vase, and that foam wants water over its whole surface every day it's on display. Bouquet "Roses with Lisianthus" is worth choosing when roses alone feel like too much of one flower. Sent to a restaurant table, the bouquet is usually timed to arrive with dessert once someone has checked with whoever runs the room. New York apartments run dry in February, radiators on and the air holding little moisture, which is one more reason a box that drinks on its own keeps roses going longer than a bunch left standing in paper.

Strawberries, a card and what rides in the same order

Chocolate-dipped strawberries go into the same order as the flowers rather than arriving separately, and a small gift chosen to go with the bouquet joins the same basket at checkout, so nothing has to be timed or sent twice. The card that comes with it costs nothing extra and can carry a message or none at all. The courier knows only the recipient's name and address, never who sent it, so an unsigned card keeps the sender anonymous without any extra step. Fit a box of strawberries into the same checkout and one delivery covers both.

Why Valentine's flower delivery in New York is booked early

February 14 — Valentine's Day in New York sits inside one of two peaks in the US rose trade, and it shows in how early the good delivery windows go. Wholesalers place their orders with growers in mid-January, and the stems start arriving from the first of February. Roughly half of all the roses imported into the country across a year move through just those two peaks, this one and the run-up to Mother's Day. Every bouquet at JFLOO is put together only after payment clears, and the flowers themselves are bought for that specific order rather than pulled off a shelf. On a day this busy the delivery windows run wider than usual, with no promise of an exact minute, and ordering early simply leaves more of them open to choose from; a date booking still reaches any zone in the city. If the 14th falls on a Sunday, the wholesale houses on West 28th Street close for the day, though that has no bearing on when an order here can be placed. A photo of the finished bouquet goes out before the courier leaves, delivery in the centre costs nothing, and the delivery zones page covers the rest of the city.

The easiest way in is colour first: red or white roses settle most of the choice before anything else does. From there it comes down to container, a box or a handbag standing in for paper, and whether a gift rides along in the same order as the flowers.