Blue Flowers

Almost no flower is actually blue

This is the shortest collection on the site, and there is a botanical reason rather than a commercial one. True blue pigment, in a form that reads as blue rather than as purple, occurs in very few cut flowers. Nearly everything sold as a blue bouquet in Los Angeles is one of three things.

Dyed. White roses, white chrysanthemums and white orchids stood in tinted water until they draw it up the stem. It works, the colour is even, and it is not a natural flower. We will do it if you ask for it, and we will tell you plainly that is what you are getting.

Purple, called blue. Lisianthus, iris, statice, and every rose marketed as blue. Good flowers. Not blue.

Genuinely blue, and there are roughly four. Hydrangea, when the soil it was grown in was acidic enough to turn it. Delphinium, and its smaller relative larkspur. Tweedia, a small star-shaped flower in a pale powder blue and the closest thing to true blue we can buy. Muscari, briefly, in spring.

What that means when you order

If somebody has asked for blue, the honest options are a hydrangea-led arrangement, delphinium for height, or tweedia as an accent inside a mostly white bouquet. All three read as blue across a room. None of them will match a fabric swatch, and a florist who promises they will is planning to dye something. Hydrangea is where to start, and white is the page to pair it with, because blue with white works and blue on its own seldom does.

Lilac and dusty lavender sit next to blue in most people's heads and are far easier to supply honestly: stock, lisianthus, freesia. If the real request is cool and calm rather than literally blue, say that when you order and you will end up with a better bouquet. More of this kind of thing in things I tell customers they do not want to hear.