Nineteen roses: what happens between the counter and the door
A bouquet is finished twice. Once by the florist, who sees it upright on a bench under cool light, and once by whatever happens to it over the next hour in a car, a lift and a corridor.
Nineteen stems sit at a comfortable point in that second stage.
Why the bunch travels upright
Laid flat in a boot, any bouquet presses its outer heads against the floor of the car, and the marks show up as brown bruising on the petal edges within the hour. Roses bruise less readily than peonies, but the outer ring takes the weight of everything above it, and those are the heads the recipient sees first. Couriers carry this size standing, wedged in a crate or a bucket with a little water, and steady it by hand on turns. A bunch of nineteen fits in a footwell without folding the wrapping. Larger counts start needing the passenger seat, and after that the boot with the parcel shelf out.
Heat is the other thing that happens in a car. Ten minutes in a hot cabin costs a rose more than a whole day on a cool windowsill.
The last hundred metres
Doors, entry phones and lifts are where deliveries actually go wrong. This count can be carried against the body with one arm, which leaves a hand free for a keypad or a phone, so the courier does not have to set the flowers down on a wet step to call anyone.
That matters for the person handing them over too. If you are carrying them yourself, you can hold a lift door, take a coat off and still arrive with the wrapping the shape it was in the shop.
Stairs are the exception. Anything gathered and wrapped catches on a banister at the turn, and the fix is to carry the bouquet in front of you rather than at your side for those few steps.
What to check when it arrives
- The outer heads: flat or brown-edged petals mean the bunch travelled lying down.
- The wrapping at one side: a crease that will not open out is a sign it was carried pressed against a body for too long.
- The tie: dry underneath, with no leaves trapped in the band.
None of these are worth a complaint on their own. They tell you what the flowers have been through, which decides how quickly you need to get them into water.
Getting them into water
Deep water first, unwrapping second. An hour in a cool room and a full vase restores the pressure the stems lost on the road, and after that the flowers forgive most of what follows.
Then take off every leaf that would sit below the waterline, recut each stem at an angle with a sharp knife, and put the bunch back. Nineteen roses drink steadily, so the level drops visibly overnight for the first two days.
If a bouquet has to wait somewhere before it reaches the recipient in Nice, the safe place is a cool hallway or a stairwell, not a car park and not next to a radiator. Cut roses hold for one to two weeks, and most of the difference between the short end of that and the long end is decided before the flowers ever reach a vase.
