Bloom & Wild: Flower Delivery Review

Bloom & Wild are a nationwide flower/gift delivery company that I have seen reviewed and mentioned many (many) times over on other blogs and social media in the past couple of years. When they first started up it seemed they sent gifted bouquets to seemingly every blogger in the land (except me, sob!). I admit I was always a tiny bit sceptical if they were as amazing as everyone said they were, seeing as the majority of reviews/feedback I had seen were based on a gifted item.

When lockdown hit I quickly realized that one of my few indulgences, fresh flowers (mostly bought in person or at supermarkets I admit, other than special occasions), were going to be a hard thing to get easy access to. I realize I am sounding hugely spoiled here, but honestly a £5-10 bouquet of flowers every couple of weeks is one of the few luxury type things I buy and I don't spend much on alcohol or other things. Seeing as we are spending no money going out and I haven't bought any clothes in lockdown I justified getting fresh flowers in every couple of weeks (ish).

Living in a flat in a city and not feeling confident about going outside every day because I have asthma and am trying my best to be as safe as possible, fresh flowers really do make a huge difference to my psyche. I have always loved flowers, but on my walks I do find I am stopping (where possible!) to look at and photograph flowers almost as an exercise in sense memory to keep me going/feeling connected to the outside world.

So yes, I decided to try my first Bloom & Wild bouquet, as a treat, because they run a bit pricier than some other flowers. I was able to secure one of their coveted £10 off coupons, but even then some of their bouquets fell a bit outwith my normal expenditure. I settled on the Harper bouquet because it had stocks, I love the peppery sweet smell of stocks in springtime and hadn't been able to get a hold of any this year.

Bloom & Wild was one of the first companies to provide letterbox flower deliveries, which means you don't have to be home/they can slide the flowers through your door with no contact, which seemed super handy in our current circumstances! They also do hand tied flowers, seemingly there are often two versions of the same bouquet, with the letterbox being slightly cheaper and the hand tied more luxe.

The communication of when my flowers were arriving was good, if not particularly specific in terms of what time in the day they would be arriving. The flowers are not local, so they are packed and shipped via a courier on the same day. And living in the north of Scotland, I have had some bad experiences before with this style of delivery I admit. We seem to be last on the delivery route of most regional couriers, which means there have been more than a few wilted bouquets that have sat too long in a delivery van.

My Bloom & Wild flowers did not arrive until late in the day, and the guy just rang the bell anyway and brought them up despite the letterbox thing (most couriers are ok at social distancing now though).

When I opened the box the flowers had been individually wrapped, something the company mentions on their website. Some of the netting had squashed the alstroemeria/seemed a bit too aggressively packaged for a delicate flower. Unfortunately, as with my experience of other "airlock" packed flowers that have been in transit for too long, they were also a bit wilted. The flowers arrive in bud, so you have to wait a couple of days to see what they bouquet will look like. They started like this:

There was a TON of filler foliage in this bouquet, and while I appreciate having it, it felt like a couple of more stalks would  have balanced it better. The overall effect the first few days looked like I'd just picked some flowers myself, and while I get that is a kind of aesthetic now, it didn't do much for me pre-bloom.

After a couple of days the stalks began to open. I have to say the flower portion of these stalks was much smaller than stocks I have had previously, and unfortunately they had no discernible smell at all.

Bloom & Wild Harper bouquet

This was pretty disappointing as the main reason I picked this bouquet was for that unique stalk scent. The stalks definitely had the most wilting on arrival and I don't think they fully opened/they had brown bits on them within a few days of opening. The alstroemeria were much hardier and outlasted the stalks by a good week, but they weren't terribly exciting colour wise without the pop of pink (the stalks were lavender on the website too so not what I was expecting).

Browned/wilting stalks after 5 days

In full bloom the bouquet was nice, it lacked a bit of wow factor and the main reason I ordered it was for the scent so it was just a bit "eh".

I mean, at this point I think I have to consider admitting defeat with flower delivery that isn't locally sourced. I'm sure if you live in England you will have a better experience of this or other companies of its ilk that are popping up. I wouldn't rule out Bloom & Wild entirely, I would consider sending them as gifts further south perhaps.

At some point maybe I will try them again, as their bouquets are so pretty, but it's always a gamble I guess. I hope I am not sounding too negative but the last two bouquets I had prior to this (from another company) were also a bit of a bust, so I'm just a bit unconvinced all around right now on this sort of flower delivery.

I do wish florists would go back to using actual water to keep flowers fresh, why did they try to "fix" what wasn't broken (grumble grumble), just me?

This is only my experience of one bouquet, so it's not definitive and I do have a discount code for £10 off Bloom & Wild for anyone interested, truly many people seem to love this company so please take my review for what it is, one slightly underwhelmed customer.