With the Solstice comes our first massive heat wave. If you haven’t looked at this week’s forecast yet, brace yourself! It’s hard to keep ourselves hydrated when it’s nearing 100F, let alone the flowers!
Event work in a heat wave can be challenging any time of the year, but it’s extra tricky in mid-June when the blooms in season really dislike getting overheated. Peonies, we’re looking at you! And you too, sweet peas!
Here are some tips for keeping cut flowers fresh in a heat while delivering and setting up your events:
- Use the freshest, highest quality flowers that have not been exposed to rough conditions already in transit. Remember being a florist is really just a race with death and decay…the longer the flowers have been cut off the plant, the more their cells are breaking down. Quality, just-harvested local stems are where it’s at in a heat wave!
- Bundle up and work in your cooler whenever you can if your design space doesn’t have adequate cooling. Don’t let blooms get hot at any point in the design process. The tissue in petals breaks down very rapidly once hot.
- Keep a deep bucket of fresh clean water in your cooler at all time. Use this bucket to refill bridesmaid or centerpiece vases as you’re packing to deliver, rather than using tap water.
- Start your delivery vehicle at least 10 minutes before you want to load and get the AC cranking so the interior is well chilled before you start loading. Remember, though, that car exhaust can cause petal drop so don’t let that van run where the fumes will form a cloud around the flowers.
- Get a spare key for your delivery vehicle so you can keep the AC running whenever you might need to leave the car for a bit once loaded.
- If the event is outdoors, bring along a big bag of ice. Put a handful of ice in any vases as you place them.
- Intentionally soak the ribboned stems of boutonnieres and pin-on corsages in cold water. Towel them off just enough that the moisture won’t irritate the wearer, but there’s enough moisture for the stems to stay hydrated a little longer once pinned on.
- If the ceremony is outdoors and you have an install in a sunny spot, use a pop-up tent (the kind you see at farmers’ markets) to keep both your crew and the flowers shaded. Leave the tent up until you see guests arriving and then just pick up the tent by the posts and take it out of sight to pack it up.
- If you know well in advance that the temperatures are going to be hot, choose flowers that can hold up to the heat. Two super stars in this department are lisianthus and zinnias.
Of course there are only so many miracles you can work. So it’s also important to educate your clients on how excessive heat impacts florals.
Good luck out there!!
