Care guide
How to make cut flowers last a week longer
Seasonal or not, these three habits double vase life.
The market at 5 am in October smells like sweet peas and wet cardboard. Which means spring has properly arrived. This is the best buying month of the year: winter stock is finishing strong and the spring rush hasn't pushed prices up yet.
Peak right now
Ranunculus are the headliner. Full, layered, and cheaper than they'll be in December. Sweet peas are at their fragrant best. Anemones are still around in decent numbers, and local roses from the Hills start hitting the market in real quantity.
Natives doing the heavy lifting
Flowering gum is the quiet star of October. The buds actually open in the vase, so a bunch gets better over the week instead of worse. Banksia, waxflower and leucadendron are all strong buys right now and outlast everything else in a warm house.
Finishing up
Hellebores are on their last run. Grab them this fortnight or wait until autumn. Tulips are done; anything you see now is imported and priced like it knows it.
What to actually ask for
Ring and say 'whatever's best this week, around $110'. You'll get more flower for the money than any fixed recipe. That's not us being lazy; that's the entire point of buying seasonal.
From the bench
The visual version
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From the article
Questions
Asked about this
Seasonal questions, answered monthly at the counter.
No freight, no cold storage, no middlemen. A stem cut Tuesday at a farm in the Hills and sold Thursday costs the grower less to produce. And looks better because it hasn't spent a week in transit.
Local peonies start late October to November. Short, glorious, expensive season. Imported ones exist but arrive tired; we usually steer you to ranunculus instead, which scratch the same itch.
Roughly monthly, when the market actually shifts. The fastest version is to call the studio. Whoever answers has just come back from the market.
Daniel Mercer
Head florist — Choice Action Grid, Camden Park
Head florist — Choice Action Grid, Camden Park
Ask for 'whatever's best this week'.
It's the highest-value sentence in flowers. Say it, set a budget, done.