Flowers for a New Home in London: What to Send, and When

The worst possible moment for a bouquet to arrive at a new house is moving day. There is no vase, because the vases are in a box marked "kitchen" under four other boxes; there is no surface, because every surface has something on it; and there is no one with a free hand to take it. The flowers end up in the sink.

Flowers for a new home are one of the kindest things you can send, and one of the easiest to get wrong. Here is how to get them right.

Send them on the right day

Completion day is the day the keys are collected and the house becomes theirs. It is often a day or two before the removal van, and the house is empty, clean and quiet. An arrangement waiting in the hall on that day is the first thing they see in their new home, and it is theirs. If you do not know the completion date, ask; people are delighted to tell you. If it has already passed, wait a week until the boxes have gone, rather than adding to the pile.

Send something that needs nothing

This is the rule that matters. No vase, no arranging, no water for the first two days. A velvet box arrives finished and sits wherever it is put; it needs a teacup of water every other day and nothing else. An orchid bowl goes further: it lasts for weeks and looks like something that was bought for the house rather than sent to it. A bouquet, however lovely, needs the one thing a new house does not have, which is somebody with time.

Choose for the house, not the person

A new home is the one occasion where the flowers are for a place. White, cream and green suit almost any interior and will not argue with the colour they have not chosen for the walls yet. A larger, quieter arrangement suits a hall or a kitchen island; a small one gets lost. If you know the house — a garden flat in Notting Hill, a mansion block in Kensington, a new-build in Nine Elms — choose the box colour to sit in it: white for the flat, navy for the mansion block, green for the new-build.

If you are the agent or the developer

Completion gifts are remembered when almost nothing else about a purchase is. The rule for a company is discretion: an arrangement that could have come from a friend, a handwritten card with a person's name rather than a firm's, and no branding on the box. We deliver on the completion date to the property, coordinate with the concierge or the site team where there is one, and can hold a standing arrangement for agencies that complete every week. One invoice a month, one named contact, and a photograph of every arrangement before it leaves.

Three for a new home

The card

"Welcome home." It has never been improved on. Add the date if you like; people keep these cards, and in ten years the date is the part they will look at.