### Alstroemeria bouquets in Phuket: two weeks if the leaves are watched Two weeks in clean water is an ordinary run for alstroemeria, longer than most things sharing the same table. The limit is rarely the flower itself. Leaves yellow well before the first bloom drops. A bunch with tired foliage looks finished while the umbels are still opening, and most people throw it out at that point without checking what is actually spent. Strip the lower third when the stems go into water. Pull yellow leaves off the top as they appear. That is the whole of it. > "Guests photograph these on the third day. That is when every umbel has opened and the bunch is at its widest." > JFLOO florist Spent blooms need a hand too. They do not fall on their own, they dry and hang in the umbel beside the live ones, and pinching them out at the base returns the bunch to something close to day one. Water is the other half of the job. A hollow stem sours faster than a woody one, so change it every couple of days, recut, and wash the vase each time, because slime on the glass returns to fresh water within the hour. #### Heat and humidity change the timetable Phuket sits at 25 to 33 °C for most of the year in humid tropical air, and warm rooms shorten every cut flower's run. Alstroemeria is not exempt. The umbels open faster in that air, which is useful when a bouquet has to look full tomorrow and unhelpful when it has to last a fortnight. Three habits do most of the work in this climate: - Shallow, clean water, changed daily rather than every second day. - The vase out of direct sun and away from an open balcony door. - A pass over the umbels each morning, pulling anything dry. Orders start from 2200 THB, and payment runs through card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PromptPay, bank transfer or cash in baht. #### Where the bouquets go Most of this flower goes to resort addresses along the west coast. Delivery there runs 90 to 180 minutes, from Patong and Kata up through Kamala, Bang Tao and Surin, with separate windows for villas, marinas and airport runs, and we work 9 AM to 10 PM. During the May to October rains, and on the hill roads after dark, we add route time. Stems travel standing. Flexible and hollow, they curl at the tip if the box goes flat, and the bend is permanent. Airport arrivals are their own case. A guest landing at the north end of the island and driving south has a long car journey ahead of them, so the box has to hold its shape through the whole of it. We keep separate windows for those runs and for the marinas, since neither fits the west coast clock. Built with Thai orchids and tropical foliage, alstroemeria stops being the headline and starts doing the filling. That is usually what a wide vase in a villa needs, and it is cheaper than getting the same width out of imported roses. The flower earns its place at the long occasions rather than the short ones. An anniversary dinner by the sea is a single evening, and almost anything survives a single evening. A birthday in a hotel where the guest stays on for another week is where two weeks of vase life actually gets spent, and that is the order we are asked for most. Volume per stem is the second reason. Each stem is an umbel, so seven of them fill a vase the way fifteen single-headed flowers would, and a villa dining table takes a great deal of filling. Tell us the date the bouquet has to peak. Closed umbels for something a few days out, further-open stems for a handover the same evening, and the leaves come off before the box is closed either way.