Seasonal Flower Guide

What "in season" actually means when you are buying

Most of the cut flowers sold in American shops are grown near the equator, in Colombia and Ecuador, where the day length and the temperature barely change across the year. They are cut, cooled, flown into Miami and trucked out from there. That is why a florist can sell you roses in January and lilies in October without thinking twice about it.

So the calendar is not the hard limit most people expect it to be. What it still decides is three things, and those three are the ones worth knowing before you order.

The flowers you cannot get out of season

Everything below is either impossible or ruinously expensive outside its window, whatever a stock photograph on a website suggests. If you want one of these, the date decides, not the budget.

• Peonies. Roughly six weeks, moving north with the warmth from late April into June. Alaska's crop stretches it toward the end of summer, and a small, costly window arrives from the southern hemisphere around the turn of the year. Outside that, no.
• Dahlias. July until the first frost. They bruise if you look at them the wrong way, so they are grown close to where they are sold and almost never imported.
• Garden roses and sweet peas. The scent and the softness are exactly what a long cold chain destroys. Spring and early summer, and worth waiting for.
• Lilac. Two or three weeks in spring, and it wilts quickly even then. Buy it the day you want it.
• Lily of the valley. May, briefly, and expensive whenever it appears at all.
• Sunflowers and zinnias. Available for longer than the others, but at their best from local fields in high summer, when they are also at their cheapest.
• Tulips. A special case. Glasshouse tulips are around for much of the year, but field tulips in spring are a different flower: taller, stronger stemmed, and cheaper.

What actually moves the price through the year

The seasons matter less to your bill than four or five specific dates do. Knowing where they fall is most of the saving.

February, and red roses in particular

Growers plan the Valentine's crop months in advance and the whole supply chain prices accordingly. It is the steepest week of the year, and it applies to red roses specifically. That same week, tulips, alstroemeria, and roses in almost any other color are close to their normal price. If you want value in February, buy anything other than a dozen red roses. There is a full guide to Valentine's Day flowers covering what to send and when to order it.

May, and Mother's Day

For most shops this is the biggest week of the year by volume. It behaves differently from Valentine's Day: instead of one flower spiking, everything gets squeezed at once. Delivery slots run out first, then the best stock goes. The gap between ordering ten days ahead and ordering two days ahead is real, and it is mostly a gap in quality rather than price. The Mother's Day flower guide goes into what to send and why the carnation started all of it.

Late spring to early fall

Wedding season quietly competes with you for the same peonies, garden roses and hydrangea, every weekend, for months. It rarely shows up as a headline price rise. It shows up as your first choice being unavailable on a Saturday.

The quiet weeks, which are the ones to aim for

Mid-January, late August, and the first half of November. Nothing is competing for the stock, the farms are producing normally, and this is when your money buys the most flower. If the date is flexible at all, put it there.

And the thing nobody can plan around

Weather at the farm, and freight. A cold snap in the growing regions or a few disrupted days of air freight through Miami moves prices faster and harder than any season does. It is also why a florist will sometimes tell you a flower is unavailable in a week it should be everywhere.

Buying in season from a shop near you

Seasonality is easiest to use in person, because a local florist is buying from the same market you are reading about and can tell you what actually arrived this week. Three things worth asking:

• What came in this morning? Most shops take deliveries two or three times a week rather than daily. Buying on a delivery day, or the day after, is the single easiest way to get a longer vase life for the same money.
• Can you do a designer's choice? Letting the florist build the arrangement from whatever is best in the buckets that day is usually both cheaper and fresher than naming flowers from a photograph. Give them a color, a budget and the occasion.
• Is any of this grown locally? In summer the answer is often yes, and a flower that traveled hours instead of days behaves completely differently once it is in water.

Our directory lists flower shops in every state, by county and town, so you can find the ones close enough to be buying from your local growers. Find a florist near you.

Common questions about seasonal flowers