Baskets with lilies in Phuket: book them a few days before the date
A lily basket arrives mostly closed. Buds sit along the upper part of each stem, the lowest one opens first, and the rest follow it upwards over the days that come after. What a courier hands over on the island is the beginning of an arrangement.
Nobody can usefully hurry that.
Warm water and a heat source will force a bud open sooner and cost the flower most of its life in exchange. The timing question therefore gets settled at the order stage. For a date that matters, the basket is booked with a couple of days in hand, and the recipient watches it fill out over the week.
Occasions with room to grow
Four scenarios here suit the slow opening particularly well.
- An anniversary, where the arrangement should still be worth looking at a week later.
- A family date at a house in Phuket Town, with somebody at home to top the foam up each evening.
- A small wedding. The piece goes into the room a day or two ahead, and by the ceremony it has opened into the shape the florist planned for it.
- A recovery or a thank you meant to sit in a hallway for a fortnight.
It works against you at a party. Guests arriving at seven see green buds and two open heads, and a photographed table wants flowers that are already at their fullest.
Getting it to the address
Deliveries along the west coast sit in a 90 to 180 minute window, covering Patong, Kata, Karon, Kamala, Surin and Bang Tao. Rawai, Chalong, Mai Khao and Phuket Town are on the same board, while villas, marinas and airport routes get windows of their own. We work 9 AM to 10 PM, orders start at 2200 THB, and payment goes by bank card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PromptPay, bank transfer or cash to the courier in baht.
The rainy season runs May to October and we add route time for it, as we do for evening traffic on the hill roads. A closed lily basket is the easiest thing we carry in either case, since nothing on it is open enough to bruise. The heads that matter have not arrived yet.
There is a second reason people choose the basket over a wrapped bouquet in the first place. Nothing has to be unwrapped, cut or put into water, the foam underneath was soaked before assembly, and the only job left is topping it up from the top edge.
Airport arrivals are the exception worth naming. A tall stem on a soaked block makes an awkward thing to walk through a terminal, so for that one we build a lower bowl with fewer stems in it.
Heat does its work after the delivery. At 25 to 33 °C with humidity on top, the foam empties faster than it would in a cooler room. A lily empties it faster than anything else on the bench, because the stem is thick and juicy and the leaf is broad and soft. Check with a fingertip at the rim every evening. Pour a thin stream until the surface stops taking it, and watch that the excess does not run out along the base.
Anthers are the other daily job. We strip the open flowers at the bench, and the buds that unfold later at the address belong to the recipient, dealt with by tissue or small scissors within a few hours of each one opening.
"Somebody asks every week whether we can send it already open. We can send it three days early, and that is the same request answered properly."
— JFLOO florist
One question decides whether we build this at all. Lilies are toxic to cats in every part, the water in the foam included, and a basket at table height is easy for an animal to reach. Baskets with lilies in Phuket do not go to an address with a cat, and we will move the order onto a different composition instead.
