A while ago I stole an idea from our friends Jean and Helen who had discovered Letterbox Flowers: regular delivery of a bouquet packed in a box which will fit through most letterboxes.

So every month we get a bouquet, sent on overnight delivery, beautifully packed and just waiting to spring into full bloom. The packaging is impressive with the flowers picked while still in bud and with the larger, more easily damaged blooms protected with little socks – what a fantastic idea that is! (See right for how the flowers are packed.)

This is our second monthly delivery. To be honest I wasn’t very impressed with our first delivery as the flowers didn’t seem to hold up well (but that may be the way we handled them). But this month’s is just fabulous …

This is 2-3 days after we received them. They look wonderful! Even Noreen is impressed, and that’s from someone who’s parents were florists and who grew up with floristry.

Letterbox Flowers have a variety of options from a selection of one-off bouquets to a year-long weekly subscription. For my money they aren’t out of the way expensive: a decent bouquet from a good florist would cost around the same (at least in London).