March's Bunch Club Bouquet | Flowers & Notes 🌸

March is one of the months I look forward to most as a florist. The market starts shifting, the Dutch auctions fill up with colour again, and there's this collective exhale after the long stretch of winter stems. This month's Bunch Club bouquet captures exactly that feeling. Peach, warm pink, soft violet, a hit of yellow, and eucalyptus that echo the bare branches outside just starting to bud. 

Here's everything you need to know about what's in your vase.

 

🌸 The Flowers 

 

Light Pink Bellflower 

Campanula, with that characteristic bell-shaped bloom and a soft, papery delicacy you don't often see in cut flower arrangements. I chose it for this bouquet because it brings an airy, meadow quality that I love this time of year.

Vase life: 5 to 7 days.

Fun fact: Bellflowers get their name from the Latin campana, meaning bell, which also gives us the word campanile for a bell tower. In the language of flowers, campanula traditionally represents gratitude and constancy.

How to trim: Cut at a 45-degree angle with a clean, sharp blade and get it into water immediately. Bellflowers are sensitive to being out of water, so don't leave them sitting while you arrange everything else. Strip any leaves below the waterline. If the blooms look slightly closed on arrival, they'll open up within a few hours in a warm room.

 

Carnation Yellow Hermes

Carnations have had an unfair reputation for years - I can't get enough of them! The Hermes variety is a modern, refined bloom with a warm buttercup yellow and that characteristic fringed petal edge that gives carnations their texture. In this bouquet it provides the brightness that pulls the whole palette together.

Vase life: Up to 3 weeks. Carnations are the longest-lasting flower in this bouquet by a significant margin, which is a big part of why I include them in subscription arrangements.

Fun fact: The fringed petal edge on carnations is called serration, and it's a defining characteristic of the Dianthus genus. The name Dianthus comes from the Greek for "flower of the gods." They've been in cultivation for over 2,000 years and were used in garlands in ancient Greek and Roman ceremonies.

How to trim: Always cut between the nodes, the small raised joints you can feel along the stem. Cutting directly through a node restricts water uptake. A clean diagonal cut between two nodes, every time you change the water, is all this flower needs.

 

Clem Amazing Kyiv

This is a cut clematis variety, which you don't see in many bouquets, and that's exactly why I love working with it. Soft violet petals, a slightly wild growth habit, and a quality that makes an arrangement feel less like a supermarket bunch and more like something gathered with intention. It's the stem that changes the character of the whole bouquet.

Vase life: 4 to 6 days. Clematis is the most delicate flower in this arrangement. Get it into water as soon as your bouquet arrives.

Fun fact: The Amazing Kyiv was developed by Ukrainian breeders and named as a tribute to the city. Clematis as a genus produces feathery seed heads when it goes to seed, which is where the common name "old man's beard" comes from.

How to trim: Give it a long, clean diagonal cut and get it straight into deep water immediately. Unlike woody shrub clematis, these cut varieties don't need stem crushing. What they do need is not sitting out of water for any length of time. Prioritise this one when you're arranging.

 

Eucalyptus Pop & Berries

Pop eucalyptus is a smaller-leaved, more textural variety than the seeded eucalyptus most people know. The silvery coating on the leaves, the compact clusters, and the berries alongside it give this foliage real visual weight. It's doing structural work in this bouquet, framing the flowers and stopping the arrangement from looking too neat.

Vase life: 1 to 2 weeks. The eucalyptus and berries will outlast most of the flowers in your bouquet. If you want to dry them, hang them upside down once the flowers are finished and they'll keep for months.

Fun fact: Eucalyptus contains cineole, the compound responsible for that distinctive camphor scent. It also has mild antibacterial properties, which is one reason foliage-heavy arrangements can have slightly cleaner vase water than all-flower arrangements.

How to trim: Strip any leaves that will sit below the waterline before arranging. Cut the stems at an angle. If the eucalyptus arrives looking a little flat, a long drink in deep cool water for an hour before arranging will revive it.

 

Miss Piggy Rose

Warm pink with peachy undertones, a high petal count, and that slightly cupped bloom shape that opens slowly and beautifully over the course of a week. It's a proper long-stemmed rose, bred for the top end of the cut flower market. This is not a filler rose.

Vase life: 7 to 10 days.

Fun fact: Miss Piggy roses are grown primarily at high altitude farms in Kenya and Ecuador, where intense UV light and cooler nights produce the deep, saturated colour you can see in the petals. The name comes from the Muppet character, attributed to that unapologetically bold warm pink.

How to trim: Pull off the outer guard petals if they're bruised from transit. Cut the stem at a 45-degree angle, 2 to 3cm from the bottom, with a sharp blade rather than scissors if you can. Scissors can crush the stem tissue and restrict water flow. Strip all foliage from below the waterline. Roses drink heavily, so check the water level daily.

 

Tulip French En Avignon Peach 

French tulips are a different thing entirely from the standard tulips you'd buy at a petrol station. The En Avignon is a longer-stemmed, more loosely petalled variety with a soft peach colouring and a slightly ruffled, open form as it matures. It will look different on day one than it does on day five, and both stages are worth appreciating.

Vase life: 5 to 7 days. Tulips continue to grow in the vase, sometimes by several centimetres, so leave room for them to move.

Fun fact: Tulips are phototropic, they grow toward light even after being cut. Left near a window, they'll lean into it over the course of a day. You can use this when arranging. Position stems deliberately and let the light do the shaping.

How to trim: Tulips prefer cold water, which is the opposite of most cut flowers. Cut at an angle and place in cool, fresh water straight away. Keep them away from heat sources and direct sunlight to slow the opening and extend the vase life. If a tulip wilts dramatically, wrap the full bunch tightly in newspaper, re-cut the stems, and stand them in deep cold water for an hour. It works almost every time.

 

🌸 My Flower Food Recipe

Your bouquet comes with a flower food sachet, but you may find you want to make more flower food. Make a fresh batch every time you change the water.

You'll need:

• 1 litre of warm water
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar or lemon juice
• ½ teaspoon bleach

Mix in warm water until the sugar dissolves, then let it cool to room temperature before adding to the vase. The sugar feeds the flowers, the acid lowers the pH so water travels up the stems efficiently, and the bleach keeps bacteria from building up and blocking the vascular tissue in the stem. Strange combination, brilliant results.

 

🌸 General Care

Trim all stems at a 45-degree angle as soon as the bouquet arrives and get them straight into your flower food water. Remove every leaf that sits below the waterline on every stem. Change the water every two days and re-trim when you do. Keep the arrangement away from direct sunlight, radiators, and fruit bowls. Ethylene gas from ripening fruit accelerates wilting significantly.

The clematis and bellflower will go first. Pull spent flowers out as they fade and the rest of the arrangement keeps going. Your carnations will outlast everything, and are likely to still look good well into the following week.

 

🌸 About Bunch Club

Bunch Club is a once-a-month flower subscription for Liverpool locals, and the whole point of it is discovery. Every month I choose a bouquet featuring varieties that rotate completely, so subscribers are consistently encountering flowers they wouldn't necessarily pick for themselves or find at the supermarket. That's the part people tell me they love most: building an eye for different blooms, learning what's in season, and getting a genuinely considered arrangement at a price point that makes monthly flowers feel accessible rather than indulgent.

Each month I coordinate collections and deliveries on the last Sunday of the month. You can collect from the studio in L3, or I'll deliver to you across Liverpool and the Wirral. Pause, skip, or cancel whenever you need to.

There are three sizes: Mini, Signature, and Treat Yourself. If you'd like to join, or gift a subscription to someone who deserves fresh flowers every month, you can sign up via the Bunch Club page.

See you in April.

Liz x 🌸

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