Housewarming in Melbourne

Housewarming flowers: the gift that asks nothing of the person receiving it

Every housewarming present carries a hidden cost to the person opening the door. A framed print has to match walls nobody has painted yet. A set of glasses needs a cupboard that has not been assembled. Even a very good bottle of something becomes one more object competing for the two clear square metres left in the kitchen.

Flowers are unusual in that the cost is close to zero.

What each option commits the recipient to

A cut bouquet lasts a week or two and then leaves without a trace, which sounds like a weakness and is actually the point. Nobody has to find a permanent home for it, justify it to a partner or feel bad when it goes. The one obligation it does impose is a vase, and in a flat where half the boxes are still taped shut that vase is nowhere to be found.

A potted plant runs the opposite way. It can outlast the tenancy, and for someone who wanted greenery it is the better present by a distance.

The trouble is that a plant is a small ongoing responsibility handed to a person who has just taken on a very large one. It needs a position with the right light, watering on a schedule nobody has established yet, and repotting at some point. If it dies, and in the chaos of a move plants do die, the person feels quietly guilty about a gift they never asked for. Orchids are the usual choice and the usual casualty, because they drop buds when moved between temperatures and a flat mid-move is all draughts and open doors.

Preserved roses in a box sit between the two. They need no water and hold for a year or more, so they behave like an object rather than a plant, and they take up roughly the space of a hardback book.

Arrangements that carry their own water

A basket or a hat box holds soaked floral foam under the flowers. The person receiving it puts it down and does nothing else, which is worth more on moving day than any upgrade in stem count.

Top the foam up with half a glass of water every couple of days and the arrangement runs its full life without a vase ever being located.

There is a stability argument too. A tall vase on a half-assembled side table, in a flat where people are carrying furniture past it, is a spill waiting to happen, whereas a low box stays where it was put.

Timing

Bringing flowers on the day of the party is the obvious move and not always the best one. The host is cooking, greeting people and looking for somewhere to put five bouquets at once.

Sending them a week later, once the boxes are gone and the shelves are up, lands in an empty room that is finally ready to be looked at. It also arrives when the visitors have stopped coming, which is when a new flat feels quietest.

Size, scent and colour

Keep it compact. Horizontal surfaces are the scarcest resource in a new home, and a windowsill is often the only one free, so an arrangement that fits there and still lets the curtain close is doing its job.

Heavy perfume is worth avoiding in a flat that has just been decorated, because fresh paint and lilies together make a room genuinely unpleasant to sit in for the first fortnight.

Colour is a guess, since the interior does not exist yet. White with foliage, ochre and terracotta against wood, soft lilac against pale walls: these sit quietly and let the room finish itself later. Housewarming flowers delivered in Melbourne are usually best sent to arrive mid-morning, when someone is home and the day has not yet been swallowed by furniture assembly.