How to Choose and Preserve Flowers in Winter

Winter is a hard time for flowers. The majority of them tolerate the cold weather badly, so it often happens that a presented bouquet loses its beautiful, presentable appearance within a few hours. To avoid such unpleasant situations, it is necessary to know some rules of purchasing and storaging of flowers in winter.

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What flowers to buy and where

If you want your gift to last longer for the person to whom it was presented, it is best to buy seasonal flowers, they are more adapted for cold. Of course, there is no definite answer, what flowers are considered to be winterly. But most often, it is roses, lilies, sunflowers, anturium. A branch of a guelder-rose or a pine looks great in a winter bouquet. Color of a bouquet has to be bright in order to be featured against gray weather. Some flowers, such as callas and irises, having been exposed to a frost, blacken and become limp indoors. Therefore it is important to choose a bouquet with winter seasonal flowers.

Only heated shops have necessary conditions for the storage of flowers in winter. Buying a bouquet in a tent or at the market, you can't be sure that they aren't frozen and won't lower their heads as soon as they get to heat. Even if at first glance the bouquet seems fresh and alive, you risk to spoil the impression of a gift. Also, be aware that flowers live longer individually, rather than in a bunch of different plants. So if you decided to buy a bouquet on the street, ask them to put it together especially for you. On sales, where prices are much lower for the unpresentable appearance, an experienced person can find flowers not worse than on market. If, for example, the place where rosebud is attached to the stem is juicy and strong, it can be saved by cutting off the faded petals and a little hold in a basin of water.

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Nowadays, a good alternative to flower shops is an online store. Flowers are also always fresh and kept in proper conditions, but their main advantages are:

• you can buy a bouquet without leaving the house;
• the delivery is carried out in every corner of the world;
• the courier will pass your gift quickly, therefore the time of exposition of your flowers to cold will be minimal.

How to store flowers

Bouquet that you brought in from the cold shouldn’t be put into the water at once. Let it get used to the room temperature for 40 min. Then gently remove all wrinkled and flabby leaves, cut the stem (professionals recommend doing it in the water, so that air does not penetrate the vessels) and put in the water so that it covers the stems down to the head, and cover the buds with paper  for a few hours. After this procedure, you can be pretty sure that the bouquet will revive and have a fresh look long enough.

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If you are buying flowers as a gift and you need them to safely survive the night, remember the following:

• tulips and irises are well preserved on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator;
• roses need to be wrapped the paper and also put in the refrigerator with stems in water;
• water should be not filtered but boiled;
• for maintaining the freshness of flowers you can also use different specialized formulations available in every household: aspirin and absorbent carbon. You can even put a coin in a vase!

Choose winter flowers for your loved ones, and then the joy of your gift will last longer!