Birthday in Barcelona

Birthday flowers: the hour they arrive decides half of it

A bouquet that lands at nine in the morning and the same bouquet that lands at eight in the evening are two different presents. The first stands on a desk or a kitchen table for the whole day and everyone who walks past sees it. The second reaches someone who has already had the day, in a room where the table has been cleared.

Most of what goes wrong with an order like this is a timing problem rather than a flower problem.

Sending to an office

A delivery to a workplace is partly a public gesture. It arrives at reception, it gets carried past desks, and it stays in view until the person goes home. That is exactly what some recipients want and precisely what others would rather avoid, so it is worth knowing which kind of colleague you are sending to. There is also a practical tail to it: whatever arrives at eleven has to travel home on a bus or a crowded train at six.

Size is the thing people misjudge. A tall wrapped bouquet is awkward to carry and needs a vase the office does not have, while a low arrangement built on wet foam in a box sits on a desk all day, travels flat on a lap and asks nothing of anybody.

Sending to a home

Here the risk is simpler and harder to fix. Nobody is in.

An evening slot solves it when you know the person will be there, and a morning slot solves it when they work from home. If neither is certain, a neighbour, a concierge or a family member who is in on the plan makes the difference between a present and a courier standing on a landing with a phone that nobody is answering.

Surprises that survive contact with reality

Give the courier a second number, ideally of somebody at the address. Say in the order that the recipient does not know a delivery is coming, because a driver who calls ahead ruins the surprise in one sentence. If the flowers are for a partner and the two of you share an address, sending to the workplace removes the problem altogether.

What the stems have to put up with

Between the workroom and the table a bouquet spends time in a warm vehicle without water, sometimes twice in a day if it goes on to a party. Roses, chrysanthemums, carnations and eustoma take that well. Hydrangea, tulips and sweet peas do not, and they are the flowers that arrive looking tired through no fault of the florist.

Whoever receives it should trim a centimetre off each stem at an angle and get the flowers into water within the hour. Cut ends seal themselves with air, and after that the stem drinks badly no matter how fresh it was on the bench.

Choosing for someone you do not know well

This is the common case with colleagues and with the parents of friends. Say what you know and let the florist do the narrowing: the room the flowers will stand in, whether there is a vase, and anything you have heard about scent.

• Age and relationship, in one line. It sets the palette faster than any colour name.
• Scent tolerance. Lilies and freesias fill a small flat within an hour.
• Vase or no vase. No vase means a box, a basket or a potted plant.
• Whether the recipient will be travelling home with it.

Red roses on their own carry a meaning that a colleague did not sign up for, and a birthday is the wrong day to be explaining that. Warm mixed shades, garden roses, eustoma and seasonal stems do the job without a second reading.

Birthday flowers in Barcelona bunch into narrow evening windows, when half the florists nearby are out on deliveries at the same hour. A day of notice keeps the composition open. An hour of notice narrows it to what is already made up and standing in the cold room, which on a busy evening is not much.