The hack I learned from a florist that has changed how (and when) I buy flowers

Who knew light had such an impact on blooms, even after they’ve been cut?

One of the best parts of my job as a freelance writer is that I’m often in the position of “sitting at the feet of the master,” so to speak. I get to interview so many folks who are experts in their field, and always come away adding their tips and advice to my oft-used bag of tricks.

One such interview took place with Libby Endry, the owner of the legendary Asheville plant shop The Gardener’s Cottage (as of June 2026, rebranded under new ownership as The Boxwood Cottage), who shared with me all her best plant tips.

A few were relatively standard in the flower world: cut stems on an angle, great advice about how to best keep the water in your flowers’ vase clean and fresh, etc. But one piece of advice was brand new to me: Depending on temperature, you can actually control the openness of the blooms in a vase of cut flowers.

“If you want a flower to open more quickly, use warm water instead of cold,” says Endry. “If a flower is opening more quickly than you’d like, place the cut stems in cold water and away from light as long as possible.”

Game. Changer.

The Science Behind Why It Works

As we all learned in middle school science class, molecules in warm things are moving away from each other, while molecules in cold things are moving toward each other. I always remembered this by imagining that the molecules themselves were hot and needed space, or cold and wanted to huddle together for warmth.

The actual science, not the Mary Catherine-as-a-7th-grader rationale, is that when heat is added into a molecular system, the molecules pick up a ton of kinetic energy as a result. This new influx of energy causes the molecules to bang into each other, causing the substance containing those molecules to actually grow in size.

The opposite is true in cold temperatures: Cold environments cause molecules to act sluggish, so they move more slowly, and the object containing them physically shrinks.

SCIENCE!

How To Put This Science Into Practice

According to Endry, the timing and temperature of how you display cut flowers actually makes a difference in how they look.

Her best tip: Think about temperature in every aspect of displaying cut flowers–both the temperature of the water and the temperature of their environment.

For a dinner party I threw a few months ago, I purchased beautiful open blooms at my local farmers’ market (my own flower garden hadn’t started blooming yet). To my horror, the blooms that were beautifully open two days before my party had actually started wilting and dropping petals by the time the day of the party arrived.

Endry’s tips could’ve fixed that, as storing cut stems in cold water would’ve slowed their blooming process and ultimately lengthened their lifespan.

“Some varieties of flowers, such as peonies, typically open faster than others,” she says. “Generally, you will want to process those stems with cold water.”

It’s as simple as remembering this tip from her: warm = open, cool = closed.

“Warmth in general–warm light conditions, warm water–cause flowers to open more quickly, whereas cool, dark places do the opposite,” Endry says.

So now you know! If you’ve cut or purchased flowers that are on the more open side but don’t need to be at their “best” until a certain event, store them in cool, dark place until showtime. Then bring them into the sunshine and fill the vase with warm water, and you’ll have blooms for days!

Read the original article on Southern Living