How to get more days out of cut flowers here

Do this as soon as the flowers are indoors, before anything else.

• Fill a clean vase with cool water — not cold, not warm — to about a third of its height.
• Add the flower food sachet we tuck into the wrap. Without one, half a teaspoon of sugar and a single drop of household bleach in a litre does most of the same job: the sugar feeds, the bleach stops the bacteria that block the stems.
• Strip every leaf that would sit below the waterline. A leaf underwater rots within a day and turns the vase cloudy, and cloudy water is what actually kills the arrangement.
• Re-cut about two centimetres off each stem at a sharp angle, with a knife or sharp scissors. Blunt scissors crush the stem shut; an angled cut keeps the end off the bottom of the vase so it can drink.
• Put them somewhere shaded and cool for the first few hours while they take up water.

Air conditioning is the single biggest thing you can do. A bouquet in an air-conditioned bedroom overnight and a sunlit sala by day will comfortably beat one that sits in the sala all week.

• Out of direct sunlight, and away from a window that gets the afternoon sun.
• Out of the direct blast of an electric fan or an aircon vent. Moving air dries petals out faster than still heat.
• Away from the fruit bowl. Ripening bananas and mangoes give off ethylene gas, which makes cut flowers age in days rather than a week — this is the mistake almost everybody makes.
• Away from the top of the fridge or a television, which are warmer than the room.

Tip the water out, rinse the vase properly, refill with cool water and fresh food, and take another centimetre off the stems. Pull out anything that has gone over — one collapsing stem spoils the water for all the others.

It takes about three minutes and it is worth two or three days.

• Roses — if a head droops at the neck, re-cut the stem under running water and stand it in deep water for an hour. It often comes back.
• Sunflowers — thirsty and heavy. Keep the water level high and check it daily; they drink faster than anything else in the vase.
• Tulips — they keep growing after cutting and will lean towards the light. Turn the vase daily, keep the water shallow, and expect the bend. It is not a fault.
• Gerberas — a heavy head on a hollow stem. Shallow water only, three or four centimetres, or the stem softens and folds.
• Carnations and chrysanthemums — the toughest things in the shop. Little needed beyond clean water.
• Eustoma (lisianthus) — arrives with buds shut and opens over the week. Do not pull the closed ones off.
• Hydrangea — drinks through its petals as well as its stem. A light mist of water on the head in the morning revives a droopy one.

A hand-tied bouquet's wrap is packaging, not a vase. Take the flowers out, cut the tie, and put them in water — the paper holds moisture against the stems and rots them if it is left on for days.

Preserved and dried arrangements need the opposite of all of this: no water at all, ever. Keep them out of direct sunlight so the colour holds, keep them out of the bathroom because humidity softens them, and blow the dust off every few weeks with a hairdryer on the cool setting. A year is normal and two is common.