March melts into April, and all of a sudden there’s a subtle change in Edison. A stubborn patch of daffodils is starting to grow in your backyard. The cherry trees lining your path home turn pink. Blue hydrangeas pop up on the corner of your block. All of a sudden, the dreary greyness of winter is gone with vivid colors left in its wake. Flowers are the quintessential symbol of spring, and they can also make the perfect presents for the season. Whether the occasion is Mother’s Day or an Easter potluck, get a little floral with your gifting this year! Here is your foolproof guide to the perfect floral gift.
The first step is to determine your recipient’s favorite flower. Ideally, this is something you can figure out with minimal sleuthing. Maybe they’ve offhandedly mentioned it in a conversation before. You may find clues in their front garden or the pendants on their favorite jewelry. If not, their favorite color might be easier information to obtain, so theme your gift around that. If you truly can’t figure it out, you can always resort to stalking their reposts on TikTok! This trick is especially effective if the recipient is a teenager. If you truly don’t know, it’s always a good idea to ask your special person, or take a chance and guess.
Bouquets take the cake for the most popular choice for a floral-themed gift, and they are thankfully the simplest. It is one of the most thoughtful things you can do for someone, simply because people enjoy pretty flowers. However, there definitely is a lot of room for error in bouquet-making. Here are some suggestions for a gorgeous floral arrangement. First, choose a color scheme. It can be based on your recipient’s favorite color or what shades their favorite flower is commonly available in. If you’re not sure, here is a quick guide: red and white are usually more romantic, while pink is more girly and playful. Yellow and blue work really well as congratulatory color schemes. Once you’ve chosen a main color, you can think of one or two secondary colors—but you don’t have to! Next is classifying your flowers into three categories by size: main, small, filler. If you’re starting your bouquet with someone’s favorite flower already in mind, classify that too! Main flowers are the big, show stopping blooms that are the centerpieces of your arrangement. Some examples are roses, carnations, peonies, tulips, lilies, or sunflowers. You should only have one kind of main flower, and it should make up a majority of your bouquet. Next, choose one or two smaller flowers like pansies, poppies, daisies, zinnias, or chrysanthemums and place a small but even amount of both in your arrangement between clusters of your main blossoms. Both your main and smaller flowers typically should be the same color, but can be different shades. Finally, choose filler flowers in your secondary color (usually white!) These are typically tiny flowers that come in clusters intended to take up space. Baby’s breath, lilies of the valley, lavender, and forget-me-nots are great examples. Buy these in clusters and place them around the edges of your bouquet. Following these instructions will hopefully yield a beautiful Mother’s day, Easter present, or a romantic surprise!
Bouquets may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but not to worry! There are so many other creative uses for flowers. If your loved ones have more of a sweet tooth, make them something they can eat! Some of the most commonly used flowers in cooking are roses, lavender, and sometimes lilac. Desserts can incorporate them especially well. Rose always pairs well with nutty flavors like almond and pistachio as well as more ethnic flavors like cardamom and saffron. Rose flavoring is great in cakes! Rose, almond, and pistachio brittle can be a shareable snack perfect for parties. Crepes can make a fancy breakfast and rose flavoring in matcha tea tastes heavenly. Lavender, on the other hand, is made for vanilla, lemon, and bread or cake type tastes. Madeleines or other baked goods can incorporate these flavors in a unique way.
If you aren’t skilled at baking, you can try floral arts and crafts. All you have to do is press pretty petals between the pages of a heavy book, and from there the possibilities are endless. You can glue them onto glass to make suncatchers, or sprinkle dried petals into melted soap base or candle wax. If you don’t feel creative at all, go to Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy seeds for their garden. New Jersey has planting zones 6a to 7b, essentially catered towards plants that can handle lower minimum temperatures. Spice up someone’s garden this spring!
Now imagine you’ve put all this effort into your present and showed up at a loved one’s Easter potluck after all, only to be met with … sneezing? In all this floral frenzy, don’t forget that the only thing more common than flowers in the spring is pollen allergies! Don’t forget to ask about allergies when gifting these floral gifts!
No matter how you choose to give them, the gesture of gifting flowers shines through regardless. Whether you know plants like the back of your hand or are stumbling in the dark about them, consider giving your loved ones floral gifts for any occasion—they’ll be positively iris-istible!
