Flowers are a gift of beauty. It’s been a tradition to give flowers as gifts on different occasions since time immemorial. Sending flowers as gifts can be appropriate for almost any occasion – birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, funerals, new baby etc.
Shipping flowers, either as a business or a personal endeavor, must be properly done to ensure that they arrive fresh and still worthy of admiration and appreciation. Below are helpful guidelines on how to ship fresh flowers properly.
Purchase or cut your fresh flowers.
Cap the end of the stems with small bottles containing a mixture of water and flower food. These are available in most flower supplies stores.
As an alternative to the small bottles, damp sheets of newspaper can be used. Make sure not to get the newspapers soaked. They should not be dripping. Place the damp newspapers on a flat surface. and lay the flower stems 3/4 of the way down the newspapers with the flowers sticking out of the top. Only put 3 to 4 flowers together. Roll the newspaper around the stems; wrapping the stems loosely. Fold up the excess newspaper on the bottom of the wrap. Place the newspaper wrapping in a plastic bag, and wrap the bag up to the top of the newspaper.
Lay the flowers on a plastic film sheet and wrap the bouquet in a cone. Secure with tape. Make sure the flower heads have space to breathe and that they are crushed together.
Put the flowers into a box. If you need to wrap more flowers to make a dozen or so, you can repeat the wrapping process until the box is full.
Make sure to mark your package for details of the flowers, destination, certification that the flowers are germ free and will not cause harm to local flora and fauna of the destination country, insured for all sorts of damage en route. Don’t forget to place a “Fragile” sticker on the box.
After proper packing, ship fresh flowers through a postal carrier such as the United States Postal Service, UPS or FedEx.