Doesn’t the time fly? No sooner have we finished with Valentines Day, then Mothers Day (Sunday 14th March) is upon us. Mothers Day usually does fall pretty soon after Valentines, this year it’s exactly 4 weeks after Valentines, but we have known it to be 2 weeks after! Anyhow, 4 weeks gives us just enough time to prepare for what is the busiest trading period of the year for floristry.

Of course, we are open on Mothering Sunday itself and we will be delivering that day. We won’t be charging extra to deliver flowers on a Sunday (our normal £4.99 flat rate applies), we did hear of other local florists charging £12.99 for a Valentines Day delivery!! Outrageous and ultimately self defeating behaviour in my opinion and totally undermining what should be a good and trusting relationship between a florist and their customers.

Anyhow, here is a few samples of our Mothers Day range, you can find them all in our Mothers Day Flowers section at www.raysflorist.co.uk. Let’s hope Mothers Day ushers in the spring and says a welcome goodbye to the long and bitterly cold winter we’ve had!

Now Valentines Day is over, our new Romantic Flowers range is now live. We believe we have something for everyone, from single red rose displays, rose and lily hand tied bouquets and of course red rose bouquets.

As ever, if you can’t find the exact product you require, we can always create your bouquet to your specifications if you call us direct on 0800 0372025.

We’ve added a lower postage rate for floristry supplies. The new rate for any items up to 200g in weight is just £1.99 for standard service and £5.99 for next day delivery.

All other postage rates remain the same, for a list of our floristry supplies P&P prices, please see our delivery page on our website. We deliver to the whole of the Uk for the same standard prices, there are no surcharges for delivery to Northern Ireland and Scottish Highlands and Islands.

You can search for products in any category, such as Valentines, search for any product, such as Grave vases, or simply enter the code (AQP0927) if you know it.

We will be making the search facility more accurate over the coming weeks, including adding an advanced search facilty. We’ll also be adding new product lines…but in the meantime we’ve updated our sitemap which will automatically be updated every time we change or add something.

Hopefully we’ve now seen the back of the winter, which means that English and Dutch flower growers start concentrating on Spring flowers.

Commercially, the most popular spring flowers are tulips, which are available all the way through the peak trading periods of Christmas, Valentines Day, Mothers Day and Easter and generally lasting through until mid April.

Other popular Spring flowers include Iris which are available to buy commercially in the standard purple colour as well as yellow and white. Anenomes are grown in a wealth of bright spring colours as are gerberas which are always popular because of the pleasing shape and collage of colours.

We’ve managed to add images for all the individual colours in the Ribbons and Bows category (30mm Pull Bows, 50mm Pull Bows and Floristry Ribbon) and also the decorative wire category (Aluminium wire, bullion wire and metallic wire)

Hopefully this will make choosing the colours a lot easier as it’s always beneficial to see what the colour looks like before buying. These aren’t official Smithers Oasis product images (they won’t for some reason produce more than a generic product picture, rather than a proper image for each colour variation). However, we’ve done the best we can for now, I hope it helps.

Some examples of colour images are:

Baby Pink Floristry Ribbon, Yellow Floristry Ribbon, Lime Green Florist Ribbon

30mm Hunter Green pull Bow, Lavender Pull Bow 50mm, Gold Aluminium Wire

Black Aluminium Wire, Turquoise Bullion Wire, Mint Green Metallic Wire.

Our new and exciting range of Christmas flowers is now on sale.

Flowers for the home and Christmas flowers for gifts all feature heavily seasonal themed flowers and colours.

The ever popular poinsettia plant is always a popular gift as well as Christmas door wreaths and Christmas table centres for the home. What better way to say Merry Christmas than with a beautiful Christmas hand tied bouquet!

We’ve decided to have a major update / upgrade to our website. As ever, this decision has been customer driven, we’ve listened to you and come up with a brand new concept and design for www.raysflorist.co.uk.

We’re aiming to be live with the new site at the mid/end of September.

Here are some of the major changes to be seen on the new site:

1. Fully integrated payment options by Sagepay and Paypal.
2. The site will be fully W3 compliant.
3. Once you have registered and logged in, your address details and other info such as past purchases will be remembered for future orders.
4. Many new lines will be added to the floristry supplies area of the site.
5. New ‘Add on Gifts’ section of gifts to go with your floral gifts.
6. New Flower categories including a ‘VIP’ range
7. Newly designed wedding flower section (including a national wedding flower section)

We’re very excited about the new site, we’ll be able to update you more effectively about products and services that may interest you and hopefully make your online experience more enjoyable and easier to navigate. We’ve cut out the unnecessary and added things that we know you like!

I’ll keep you updated as D-Day approaches!

Best regards,

Gareth & all at Rays Florist Ltd.