Every peony in Los Angeles is imported, in every month of the year
This is the one that starts arguments at the counter. There is no commercial peony grower in California. Not a large one, not a boutique one. I have looked, our suppliers have looked, and nobody has produced one yet.
Every peony sold in this city has arrived from somewhere else — most often Alaska, the Netherlands, Chile or New Zealand — in January, in July, and in every month between. The Northern Hemisphere field season runs roughly May and June, and the Alaskan crop lands from late July into August. Outside those windows peonies come out of cold storage, and how good they are depends on the shipment rather than on the calendar.
I am not telling you to avoid them. I sell them, and when they are right they are the best thing in the room. I am telling you that the month on the calendar tells you nothing about a peony, so ask what has actually just landed instead of assuming.
Petal Glacé
These flew here, like every other peony in Los Angeles, and I would rather tell you that than let you assume they were cut down the road.
Pink Veil
Blush peonies are the ones people ask for out of season, which is exactly when the answer depends entirely on which shipment landed.
Ranunculus is a real California crop, and it has a real season
This is the other side of the same coin, and the part people are usually pleased to hear.
Ranunculus is grown here properly, in the fields inland from the coast, and it runs February through May with its peak in March and April. In those weeks California ranunculus is better than anything flown in and often cheaper, because it has travelled a few hours instead of a few days.
In July it is a different flower with the same name, out of storage or off a plane. I will say so if you ask me in July. The honest version of the sentence is that you should buy ranunculus hard in spring and not be disappointed when it is unremarkable in high summer.
Épure Rose
Ranunculus with eucalyptus, and in March and April the ranunculus in it will have been cut a few hours away rather than flown in.
Blush Ranunculus & Eucalyptus
The small version of the same argument: buy ranunculus between February and May and you are getting the best of what California grows.
Stock runs January to May, and it is my own favourite
Stock is the flower I would keep if I had to give up the rest. It runs January through May, at its best from February to April, and it is the only thing I know that makes a room smell like a room rather than like a shop.
It is also the flower most people walk straight past, because in a bucket it looks like nothing very much. Put it on a table in a warm house and it takes the room over. If somebody is choosing between stock and a rose for a kitchen, I will push them towards stock every time, and roughly half of them do not believe me until the second day.
Pink Muse
Stock on its own, which is how I would send it — this is the flower I keep for myself when there is one bunch left at the end of a morning.
Pastel Harmony
Three tones of the same flower, and the reason to buy it is not the colour but what it does to a room by the second evening.
The flowers I will not print a season for
Freesia, hydrangea, tulips, lisianthus, anemone and carnations are on the Los Angeles market every week of the year. You will find florists publishing confident California months for all six.
I will not, because no California grower publishes a season for any of them, and year-round supply is an import story rather than a local one. What I can tell you truthfully is that they are here every week, and that their quality is a question about the shipment and not about the month. Carnations in particular are a far better flower than their reputation suggests, and they outlast nearly everything else on the bench.
What is genuinely in season here, and when
These dates are the growers' own published ones, not ours. We buy against them.
- Stock — January through May, best February to April.
- Wax flower — December through May.
- Ranunculus — February through May, peaking March and April.
- Pincushion protea — February through April.
- Sunflowers — March through October, with the novelty varieties from July.
- Field-grown garden roses — the middle of April to the end of November.
- Kangaroo paw — May and June.
- Dahlias — June through October, at their best in August and September.
- Leucadendron Safari Sunset — September through November.
- Snapdragon, and the California greens — eucalyptus, myrtle, rosemary, salal and olive — all twelve months.
The long version, with every grower named and linked, is in what is actually in season in Los Angeles. Weather moves all of it. A heat wave shortens a ranunculus season; a cold spring pushes the dahlias back. Treat every range above as a strong expectation rather than a promise.
Why I say any of it out loud
Saying it costs us an order now and then. Somebody wants peonies for a birthday in December, I explain where they will have come from and what that means, and they go to a shop that does not mention it.
Not saying it costs a customer. The flowers arrive, they are a disappointment for reasons nobody warned anybody about, and that person never orders from anyone again — and they are right not to.
There is a longer list of conversations I would rather have early than late. Hospitals have rules about flowers that most people discover at the ward door; we wrote them out, quoted from the hospitals' own pages, in how to send flowers to a hospital in Los Angeles. Funeral flowers have conventions that nobody explains to you at the worst possible moment, and those are in sympathy flowers in Los Angeles.
Ask me the awkward question
Call +1 (626) 888-8449 or use the contact page and ask what is actually good this week. If you would rather browse, start with our bouquets, or everything under $110 if there is a budget. Ready Now is built from what came back from the market that morning, which is as close as a website gets to standing next to me at the bucket.
We deliver from Glendale, Downtown LA and Pasadena, across everywhere we cover. If the flowers arrive and they are not fresh, we replace them or refund you.
More in the same register: why I still buy the flowers myself, the mono-bouquet and why it is harder, and why flowers for a shop are not flowers for a person.