Prestige Flowers is an online UK company specialising in flower arrangements. Alongside more traditional bouquets, Prestige Flowers also offers a range of hampers (including picnic hampers) and gifts (including chocolate bouquets!).
Prestige Flowers kindly sent me one of their Turner Bouquets to review. I talked about flowers before when I wrote about hygge and about edible bouquets and I welcomed the opportunity to talk in more detail about flowers, because they can really brighten up your day and give a room a beautiful accent of colour.
The Turner Bouquet is inspired by a painting by William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, from 1839. The painting is displayed at the National Gallery, and the Prestige Flower website features flower arrangements inspired by the National Gallery (for example, the Gainsborough Bouquet or the Monet Bouquet). The Turner Bouquet features colours such as orange and blue, which also appear in Turner’s painting.
The orange/pink accent in the flower arrangement comes from choosing roses, which are called Miss Piggy (cute name!), while the purple is from a flower called Lisianthus (prairie gentian), blue from Eryngium (sea holly, part of the carrot family) and white from Bouvardia (a flower similar to jasmine). The roses have a delicate scent and their colour has nuances of pink and yellow.
To ensure the flowers arrive intact and well protected, they are packed into a large cardboard box, which also contains a vase and a gift bag.
When you order a flower arrangement, you can choose next day or same day delivery and write down a personalised message to appear on a card.
Say It With Flowers
I had a browse around the Prestige Flower website and stumbled upon a fun infographic with facts about flowers. I think we are risking to forget the art of buying flowers – each flower symbolises an emotion, and when you receive flowers you feel special and valued.
I then couldn’t help looking into the meaning and origin of the expression “say it with flowers” and came across this wonderful blog by the Oxford Dictionary.
Each flower has its unique expression: for example, roses can represent freshness (“fresh as a rose”). If you then look at the meaning attached to different coloured roses, you have:
- Red = passion
- White = purity
- Yellow = friendship (I always thought yellow roses represented jealousy, go figure)
- Pink = gratitude
- Orange = energy
It might be a good idea to have a colour chart inside a bouquet if you ever want to say something to someone with flowers…
So, if you are not sure what to buy as a Christmas present, you can’t go wrong with flowers and chocolates (have a look at Christmas Flowers : flower bouquets come with free chocolates).