Valentine’s Day is an event that we celebrate every year, and it has the tendency to sneak up on us most years. Though it is a short event it can hold a lot of importance, and if you do not do it right you have to wait another 365 days before you get another chance to make things right!
Flowers24hours.co.uk has a variety of services on offer, giving you the tools to ensure that this year things play out exactly as you imagined.
Each year, a collection of carefully selected Valentine’s flowers and gifts are put together, from which you can choose, combine or think up an idea of your own, in order to convey exactly the message you had in mind.
TheValentine’s Day Special Flowers and Gifts Collection is a great place to get you inspiration from. With specially designed bouquets and gifts, that can be delivered directly to your loved ones, helping you make this Valentine’s Day especially wonderful.
The flower bouquets and gift baskets are artfully designed. There are gifts available for those looking for something more traditional and for those looking for something more out of the ordinary.
If you don’t want to send that special lady the usual roses and chocolates, take into consideration the I Love You gift basket. This gift is for a loved with more refined tastes, premium wine is combined with an arrangement of fruit, a gourmet basket and an “I love you“ balloon. This combination is playful and you can enhance the joyful message by adding more balloons, bears and chocolates, according to taste. All of which can be done easily through the website.
If you are looking for something a bit less extravagant, but still want your gift to be indulgent with a bit of character, the fine chocolate lovers gift Decadence in a Box gift is perfect! This heart-warming gift includes a precious teddy bear in a bed of Ferrero rocher chocolates, with special gift wrapping. Once again this gift can be varied to suite your tastes through the website. Customer support is also available to make your decision making process as easy as possible.
If you place your order for flowers or gifts in Central London or for anywhere in the UK, you’ll be eligible for free delivery on the 11th and 12th of February, letting you make the most of Valentine’s Day weekend.
All in all the Valentine’s Day services provided are great tool to work with, you are given the materials needed for making your loved one feel unique and special. You can be sure that they will feel like they are the only one, with your gift creation.
The season of festivities has caught up with us once again, this is the time of year where we bring our dinner parties indoors. If you use your imagination there are quite a few things you can do to bring the best out your centrepieces.
Simplicity is key, we have a heard the saying that ‘less is more,’ and it is applicable to this situation as well. You don’t have to break the bank, try to use some things you have around the home like candles or some interesting containers, you might even find some things to use in your own backyard.
Colours are an important factor in reflecting the warm atmosphere of autumn, choosing colours like orange, red brown, green and deep purple will serve exactly this purpose.
Try to bring a bit of yourself and your own garden into the centrepieces, try to use the branches of your favourite plant or tree, pine cones in the garden can also be used.
As long as you stick to what this time of year means for you and try to reflect what nature is doing on its own, you can never go too far. So have your bowls, containers and vases overflow with flowers and plants.
Wandsworth Council and Age Concern have today announced their new initiative for the 1,500 people on a waiting list for a garden allotment.
Londoner’s will be able to sign up to ‘adopt an elderly persons garden’ and tend to it as if it was their own whilst receiving a fair share of the vegetables and fruit they harvest.
This match making service will allow Londoner’s the benefit of having a garden whilst promoting relationships between the young and elderly. These gardens will also be better tended and allow for more appreciation and enjoyment by their owner.
The average wait time in Wandsworth is 39 months, but in nearby areas wait times are dramatically worse – Islington is an approximately 25 year wait whilst Camden has a whopping 40 year waiting list for a plot.
When heatwaves hit the UK, a lot of us are shocked at how hot it can actually become! To combat the heat, most of us need to increase our water intake. Similarly, so do flowers and plants. Here’s some tips to keep your flowers fresh through the hot weather.
1. Keep the flowers out of direct sunlight as this will be too hot for them.
2. Check the water levels inside the vase and replenish when needed
3. Change the water more often than usual – bugs have a higher growth rate in the heat
4. If it is a potted plant, make sure the soil is moist unless directed otherwise by care instructions
5. Mist-spray the flowers and leaves to keep them hydrated but make sure there’s no sunlight on them as the water droplets can act as a lens and burn the leaves!
If you want to send flowers in hot weather, it is important to note a couple things. Some companies do send their flowers by post – this process can take up to 5 working days and the recipient will open the box to find dead flowers. So you want to send flowers with a company who delivers directly, or has a dedicated over-night courier to avoid disappointment!!!
Maryline entered the World Skills UK Floristry Competition last week for people with under 7 years of experience and came second in the London heat, losing out by only 2 points for a broken leaf!
Arriving at the show at 5am, Maryline dedicated herself to perfecting her designs, which Worlds Skills UK had categorized into table arrangement, bridal bouquet and corsages/garlands. “The main issue here was the time limit,” Maryline said, after the competition. “At work, we have time to switch things around if we’re not happy with them and replace broken leaves, but here I just didn’t have the time! I ripped the flower in the corsage when we had 5 minutes to go – sadly, I knew there was no time to rewire everything.”
She came 1st in the group for table arrangements, 2nd for a bridal bouquet and 3rd for her corsage and finished overall in 2nd place!
We’ve all heard of the typical burglar who comes in the night, breaks into your house and steals your lifelong trophies and possessions, but how many of us have heard of flower poaching?
For homeowners in Rockridge, Oakland, this is a common occurrence. Each year, dedicated gardeners in Rockridge spend their time and effort planting beautiful front gardens of lilies, hydrangeas and rose beds – only to wake up to find them missing! And to make matters worse, their Dogwood and Japanese maple trees get stripped completely bare! Apparently some are even dug up by their roots and taken away in the night! Dogwood’s grow over six foot tall! Amazing what some people can do if there’s money involved!
One homeowner has even said, “Every time I look at the tree in bloom it breaks my heart because I know it’s going to be poached,” but what can the police do? After residents’ searching local florists and marketplaces to find no evidence it seems this flower poaching is not only on the increase but also, to the outrage of the local community, a very low priority for the local police!
A pity really to see such beautiful neighbourhoods being destroyed by people looking to make an easy dollar. The best idea would probably be for the residents’ to implement their own off-the-house CCTV system to catch these guys in action! Good Luck with finding the poachers, Rockridge!
“In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love”
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
On these rare occasions where Britan smells the scent of freshly mown grass, feels the heat of the sun and hears nature busily preparing for the summer, we often turn to think about those special people in our lives and wish they were there, sharing that moment with you.
Waking up from the cold dark winter to newly blossoming flowers reminds me of the days when I was a naive teenager, madly in love with one of the girls, Jennifer, from the girls school across the road. We used to spend hours and hours picking flowers and lying on the grass in the summer, staring at the sky watching clouds go by and playing games, spotting clouds that looked like elephants and faces. I thought our love would never end, and when it did those skies just looked dark and the clouds began to resemble the confused thoughts in my head, heavy masses, weighing down on me. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself life goes on, as the saying goes, “There are plenty more fish in the sea.”
Now, these flowers and clouds make me think of new beginnings. I haven’t seen Jennifer for over 4 years and I have no wish to, because I’ve found a new wonderful woman I can share these spring and summer moments with.
Now I’m older, I’ve stopped picking flowers and instead send beautiful hand-made bouquets, especially at this time of year when the sun shines and light them up through windows. So today, I’m going to send my girlfriend the most exquisite bouquet, one we call ‘The Flame of Love’. For me, it symbolises our passion and her beauty. While our love may or may not last forever, I know in my heart I will always remember the way she makes me feel.
Butterflies, as cliche as they sound, do indeed exist, and now serve as one more spring reminder that love is out there for us all. For all you people still reminiscing about your Jennifer, you are faced with two choices: tell her how much you care or forget her. Either way, don’t let those clouds become heavy masses like I did. Let them be butterflies.
Since time immemorial human emotions have been related to flowers and their different colours. Nature has created disparate flower colours appealing to each and every human mood and emotion. This relationship has surely been felt by many of you when you’ve stopped and chosen a specific flower colour or flower variety to make your loved one feel special. You must have also felt the difference while selecting flowers for different occasions or when you’ve hand-picked red flowers for your anniversary, white for funerals and yellow for a formal party. The colour of a flower expresses the very sentiment you wish to convey to the recipient.
Apart from the colour of the flower, a buyer also looks into the variety of flower he or she wishes to send for different occasions. For example it is roses when you want to express your love to your beloved, orchids when you want to impress your boss and lilies to express sympathy.
Happy and sad occasion floral arrangements speak for themselves at your local flower shop or online florist. They make sure that you can now easily express all your emotions through flowers. They offer the widest range of flowers types, colours and arrangements perfect to suit all occasions in life.
The online florists make sure that you have to make the smallest possible effort to send the right gift of flowers. All you need to do is visit a relevant website, select the flowers that you wish to and order online and just wait till it is delivered at their doorstep as you requested.
Cushion chrysanthemums or mums are already filling the stores this season. Red, yellow, and orange flowers are flooding the shelves of stores, to ensure that you have a flood of colour in your garden for fall.
Prices are extremely low as well, with a large pot of mums going for as little as 11 dollars. This is an extremely low price considering all the hard work that is needed to grow these flowers.
But prices set aside most savvy gardeners know that this is the flower to be jumping on, not just for its range of colours but because of the beauty and endurance of this flower which cannot be surpassed.
This is basically a win-win situation — gardeners get the flower they rely on every year to bring them lasting colour into fall and growers are happy to produce the flowers when they know that it will bring them business.
This year the trend for planting flowers in containers has become so widespread that many mums come in hand-painted corrugated metal-looking pots, ready to be placed in the most beautiful spot on your patio.
Both visually and sensually, flowers used in potpourri or dried flowers provide beauty in the home.
Carrie Lovett of Clarke County dries flowers just for fun and her hobby has also become part of her business – Carrie’s Creations.
She arranges dried flowers for herself in vases and she says: “for my business, I do cards and picture frames.”
Even though Lovett has been drying flowers and herbs for nearly two decades she only started her business recently. She actually admits to not having a great interest in gardening. She visited the state arboretum in the early day to do some research for which flowers and scents make the best combinations.
She says: “I also pick my own flowers and do whatever appeals to me.”
Lovett says that drying flowers is not very difficult, but it is very much dependant on the flowers you choose to dry. People also need to remember that flowers need to be dried at their peak, and that they lose a bit of their colour during the process of drying.
Prices are extremely low as well, with a large pot of mums going for as little as 11 dollars. This is an extremely low price considering all the hard work that is needed to grow these flowers.
Both visually and sensually, flowers used in potpourri or dried flowers provide beauty in the home.