Every spring, our lead florists travel to wholesale markets and grower farms across Lebanon, the Netherlands, and Turkey to select the stems that will fill our arrangements through April and May. It is not simply a buying trip — it is a long negotiation with the season itself.
The first thing we check is the bud stage. A peony should arrive tightly closed, almost cabbage-like, so it has room to open in the studio or in the recipient's home. Buy a fully open peony at market, and it will be spent within two days of delivery. We want petals still cupped around the centre, sepals still green and protective.
Ranunculi are our second benchmark flower of the season. They are deceptively fragile — the stems bruise easily and the blooms sulk if their water is changed carelessly — but when they are right, there is nothing more layered or painterly in an arrangement. We look for tight, multi-petalled buds in soft cream, coral, and dusty rose, avoiding anything with translucent petals that signals over-development.
Garden roses differ from standard hybrid tea roses in their petal count and fragrance. A good David Austin variety might have sixty or eighty petals where a standard rose has thirty. That density holds longer under Lebanon's spring heat, and the scent carries into a room in a way that spray roses never do. We source primarily from Dutch growers whose stems are flown in on the same day they are cut — freshness over local proximity, always.
The cold chain from grower to studio is where most flower quality is lost. We work with a temperature-controlled logistics partner and condition stems immediately on arrival — removing foliage below the water line, making a fresh diagonal cut, and hydrating for a minimum of four hours before any arrangement begins. By the time a bouquet leaves our studio, the flowers have been rested, not rushed.