How to Receive Your Wiggly Wigglers Bouquet


What could be better to receive on a gloomy, rainy November day than a lovely big seasonal bouquet of fresh British flowers courtesy of Wiggly Wigglers via Fuelmyblog? Here are my top tips to get them from box to vase and ensure the resultant smile stays there as long as possible...

Find a big space to open the box and process the flowers. Keep the box upright just like the delivery man did.

Open the lid and look at what's packed inside. Smile. A lot :D


I was curious to see how the packaging was holding the bouquet in place, so placed the box on its side and opened the bottom of the box. There's a reason for that big This Way Up arrow I showed you earlier: it stops the water from the bouquet's pouch spilling all over the place.

Here you can see how well wrapped and tied the bouquet is, plus the pouch of water to ensure it stays fresh. And yes, those dots on the tissue paper are there to tell you it was raining when I took these photos...

Remove all the protective wrapping carefully. NB there's 3 lots of garden string in strategic places to keep the bouquet together as well as the raffia, plus a staple holding the tissue and paper in place.


Find a wide necked vase to hold everything and add a small glass of lemonade to the water to keep the flowers looking at their best for longer (florist and Wiggly Wigglers top care tip).

Plonk the bouquet in the vase (because I liked the way it's been arranged, though there's enough for several vases if you prefer) and admire for many days - 6 days later and the irises and lilies are yet to open :)

Reuse and recycle the packaging - the raffia will come in handy for hanging up my outdoor Christmas decorations and extra garden string is always useful. I even have a use in mind for the plastic film. There were a few Pittosporum leaves to compost. Just the water retaining pouch went into the rubbish bin, though I have tweeted @Wiggled and asked if this can be recycled in any way (see update below - it can be composted - yay!).

I've also asked about the seasonality of the bouquet: I'm intrigued about the availability of British grown irises and lilies (though they're lovely) in November. From past experience @Wiggled is very good at replying, so I'll update this post as soon as I have the answers. I'm expecting to hear they're grown under glass as the blurb I have says their flowers can be sourced in this way, so the bouquet stays British and those air miles are kept down.

Update 9.44am: Just found @Wiggled's reply to my questions:
nappy compostable, iris from cambridge and lilies from cornwal (under glass) - plastic recyclable - thanks lots x

The number of times NAH has bought me flowers is minimal, so receiving these was a treat :)

Have you had a nice surprise recently?

Comments

  1. Esther Montgomery4 December 2011 at 10:08

    Oh, I'd love a bouquet. It would be the best thing in the world at the moment - and yours looks lovely. I can imagine how happy you felt when you opened the box!

    Two practical things:-
    One. The 'Fuelmyblog' link doesn't work.
    Two. Did you know you can tick a box for links so they open in a new window? If you tick that when adding a link, your blog page won't close. (I find where people don't tick that, I lose track of what I was reading and have to go round in a circle to go back to the blog. Not everyone might bother.)

    Esther

    ReplyDelete
  2. VP4 December 2011 at 10:14

    Hi Esther - I'm still feeling very happy :D

    Thanks for letting me know about the link not working, now corrected. I'm still using the old editor, so wasn't aware of the tick box. I find the new editor is awful for arranging the photos the way I want them and wants to randomly rearrange my text too, hence my sticking with the old one. I keep on meaning to add the HTML for opening in a new window, but keep forgetting. Epic edit fail on my part :(

    ReplyDelete
  3. Esther Montgomery4 December 2011 at 10:47

    I keep meaning to get back to you about the html for putting the . . . oh, what do you call it? . . . the hover and see the name of the picture thingy . . . on the new version of the editor.

    Apart from that, you might find it's worth testing out again. Perhaps there was a problem before that has now been solved with the text etc. because, now I am used to it, I find it easier to place images where I want them than with the old version. (As long as you take the pictures out and put them back in rather than slide them around on the page but, as this is very quick with the new editor (because they stay available until you sign out or shut down) this is not a challenge).

    The only annoying thing about it (for me) is that picture quality is reduced (significantly, I reckon) if you use the 'extra large' option - but as 'extra large' wouldn't fit on your page width (because of two margins) you wouldn't be using it anyway so that wouldn't be a negative.

    ReplyDelete
  4. VP4 December 2011 at 10:58

    Hi Esther - I have to use the new editor for any Page changes or new ones and sadly there's still a problem with the text moving randomly :(

    And taking pictures out and putting them back in again potentially uses up the memory allowance (depending on how large the images are to begin with) unless you use the extremely slow to access web option when loading them up. So yes, I slide them around and that is sooooooo irritating to do in the new editor.

    I haven't noticed much of a drop off in image quality with bigger sizes - I'm using 512 x 384 for my images, so they're not much smaller than extra large.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lu4 December 2011 at 13:12

    well fancy that! lovely bouquet. perhaps I will send a link to SS and see if he might take a hint...don't hold your breath...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Zoë4 December 2011 at 13:53

    They are very gorgeous - well done NAH!

    ReplyDelete
  7. petoskystone4 December 2011 at 16:07

    Such a lovely bunch :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Arabella Sock4 December 2011 at 17:33

    Don't want to rain on your bouqet but I actually hate cut flowers particularly lilies which I can't bear the smell of indoors. That having been said, in days of yore when the Bedsock came a'courtin he had a huge bouqet sent to me at work on my birthday! This had the result of a lot of male colleagues suddenly showing more interest than usual in me presumably thinking if someone cared that much about me it 'upped my value' so-to-speak. Hmmmm.. don't get bouquets or male interest these days(apart from the taken for granted Bedsock ) :(

    ReplyDelete
  9. Year Round Vegetable Gardener5 December 2011 at 17:20

    Gorgeous bouquet! I'm jealous! :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Dobby5 December 2011 at 19:36

    I'd never heard about adding lemonade before. Aspirin and sugar yes, but not lemonade. Your bouquet is gorgeous. What a lucky girl.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Gail5 December 2011 at 23:54

    They're beautiful and I sure wish I was able to order them. VP, your doppelganger was in a local restaurant! For just a few seconds I was excited to think you were in Nashville! xoxogail

    ReplyDelete
  12. VP6 December 2011 at 07:56

    Lu - it's worth a try, send away!

    Zoe - they're still flowering away :)

    Petoskystone - it is!

    Arabella Sock - these lilies don't have any scent, so no problems there. We had a GNO weekend in Dorset in September and had to ask for the table flower arrangement to be removed so strong was the scent. The Bedsock sounds lovely - long may he lavish attention on you.

    YRVG - welcome and congratulations on your new blogging gig with Proven Winners!

    Dobby - I'd forgotten about the aspirin trick. I woner if its about altering the pH of the water rather than the actual additive used?

    Gail - my doppelganger gets everywhere! I wish it had been me in Nashville though. One day...

    ReplyDelete

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