Much like us, flowers are happier with clean water. Provide fresh water rather than a top-off of the old.

A clean snip, just a quarter inch from the bottom is enough to help your blooms continue drinking beautifully. Cut at a 45 degree angle to increase the surface area.

A bright room is perfectly fine. After all- is there anything more cheerful than fresh flowers in a room warmed by natural light? Avoiding direct sunlight, like a sunny windowsill, will extend the vase life.

As fruit ripens, it releases natural gases that can shorten the life of your flowers.

When refreshing the water, you may add a commercially available floral preservative (brands such as FloraLife are commonly used) to the water. These typically contain three key ingredients: sugar to feed the flowers, an acidifier to help stems continue drinking properly, and a biocide to keep bacteria from forming in the water.

A simple at-home alternative is a tiny drop of bleach with a pinch of sugar mixed into fresh water. And for a more natural approach, skip additives altogether and simply embrace the fleeting beauty of the flowers as they are— meant to keep us in the present moment. This is the route we tend to prefer in our home.

Our flowers are harvested only during the coolest parts of the day—dawn and dusk—when blooms are naturally at their most hydrated. This is one of the most effective natural methods to achieve a good vase life.

Additionally, each flower variety also has its own ideal harvest stage for maximum vase life. Some flowers are harvested in tight bud before pollination can occur, while others should only be harvested once fully mature, or once their stems become rigid. We cut every variety during its peak harvest window. Because there is limited postharvest research available for native flowers, we’ve spent multiple seasons testing harvest timing and vase life for our featured native species.

What we don’t do is equally important. Imported flowers are treated with postharvest preservatives, fungicides, and transport additives designed to help them withstand lengthy shipping and storage periods. These treatments allow imported flowers to brighten grocery store displays weeks after they were harvested.

Our approach is different. Because our flowers are grown locally, we choose not to use unnecessary postharvest chemical treatments. Flowers are a luxury, and we prefer to keep them as natural as possible in our own homes—even if that means they won’t last for weeks the way imported flowers are often treated to.