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A bouquet at the door has one weak point: somebody has to be in to take it. Letterbox flowers get round that. The stems travel in bud, flat in a slim box that goes through the door, and open in a vase over the next day or two. When the point is to thank someone you can't see in person, that quiet arrival is often the nicer gift.
In October 2026 a letterbox bouquet costs about £25 to £35 delivered. BunchesBunches.co.ukBunches is a family-run flower delivery business that has been sending bouquets by post since the early 1990s. Its range covers hand tied bouquets, letterbox-friendly arrangements,2 current offers · View store → gives the most for the money and the longest vase life,
Arena FlowersArena FlowersArena Flowers sells hand-tied bouquets and flower subscriptions with a strong focus on ethical sourcing and sustainable packaging. Whether you want a next-day bouquet for a birthda2 current offers · View store → takes next-day orders until 9pm,
InterRoseInterRoseInterRose sells fresh roses by the single stem, bouquet or petal, with colours ranging from classic red to black, lilac and gold. It is an online arm of an independent high street 1 current offer · View store → posts a single long-stemmed rose from £19.95, and
Appleyard FlowersAppleyard FlowersAppleyard London is a boutique florist that sells hand-tied bouquets, plants, hampers and gift sets for delivery across the UK. Its range leans towards seasonal blooms and occasion2 current offers · View store → has a dried box guaranteed for a year. The catch is the fit. Most boxes are about 4cm deep, and not every letterbox is that generous.
The letterbox florists side by side
The table sets out what each florist sends, what it costs and how long it says the flowers last, using prices from their own sites in October 2026.
| Florist | What arrives | From | Delivery | Florist says it lasts | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 to 16 stems, mostly carnations, in a plastic-free box | £21.85 + £4.99 | Royal Mail Tracked 24, order by 5.15pm on weekdays | 7 days, carnations 14 | Value and vase life | |
| 12 to 15 stems from a seasonal menu | £29, delivery free two days ahead | Courier, seven days a week; next day £5 by 8pm | Up to two weeks | Grower-direct flowers | |
| Three designs of woody stems | £28 + delivery | Courier, next day if ordered by 9pm | 5-day guarantee | Late orders | |
| One to three long-stemmed roses in water tubes | £19.95, standard post free | Free post isn't date-specific; Tracked 24 £5 | 5 to 7 days | A single rose | |
| About 14 stems and a hand-written card | £27 + £4 | Royal Mail Tracked 24, Monday to Saturday | At least 7 days | A personal note | |
| Roses, mixed stems or dried flowers | £26.99 + £5.99 | Tracked courier, Monday to Saturday | 5 days; dried guaranteed for 365 | Roses and dried flowers | |
| 16 roses or 16 mixed stems | £19.95 | Standard post, 2 to 3 working days | 5-day guarantee | The most stems for the least |
Before the detail, two quick questions. The answers build a picture of what readers send flowers for and what they care about most, and I'll share it here once enough people have replied.
What actually comes through the door?
It helps to know what the person is unpacking, because it isn't a finished bouquet. Every florist here sends the stems flat and in bud, wrapped in paper or a sleeve, with a sachet of flower food and a care card. None of them includes a vase. The flowers open over a day or two once they're in water, which is also why they tend to outlast a bouquet that arrives in full bloom.
How the stems stay alive in transit varies. InterRose puts each rose in its own water tube with rose food. Arena sends woody stems dry, after hydrating them before dispatch. Good Housekeeping's testers found hydration pods on Appleyard's roses. However it's done, the flowers need water within a few hours of landing, which is why Good Housekeeping advises against sending them to someone who's away.
The format isn't new. Bunches has posted flowers with the Post Office since 1990, and Bloom & Wild, which isn't one of the florists I link to here, says it pioneered the slim letterbox box when it launched in London in 2013.
For a sense of how much of the finished look happens at the kitchen table, florist Julie Davies unpacks and arranges a letterbox delivery in this review.
Will it fit through their letterbox?
Usually, but not always, and the difference comes down to a few millimetres. Royal Mail's size guide caps a Large Letter at 2.5cm thick, so letterbox flower boxes travel as parcels. InterRose's box measures 61 x 11 x 4cm and Appleyard's 60.3 x 18.2 x 3.9cm. A manufacturer's summary of the European letterbox standard, EN 13724, puts the slot in a door letter plate at 30 to 35mm high. A 4cm box gets through a flap with some give, and struggles with a stiff or narrow one.
The florists hedge accordingly. Blossoming Gifts, which uses the same box as Appleyard, says it may not fit the smaller letterboxes in post rooms and apartment lobbies. In Good Housekeeping's test, one Appleyard box didn't fit a tester's door and some of Arena's weren't posted through. On r/CasualUK, people compare notes on why the postie so often hands the box over anyway.
When it doesn't fit and nobody's in, what happens depends on the carrier. Royal Mail tries again the next working day, then leaves a red "Something for you" card and holds the parcel for 18 days, which is far too long for flowers. Arena's courier leaves the box in a safe place the recipient can set in the tracking. For a flat with a shared post room, a courier with a named safe place is the safer bet.
Which florist suits which thank-you?
The florists differ less in how the flowers look than in price per stem, how long the stems last and how late an order can go in. These are the ones I'd look at first, and what each does best.
Best value and the longest vase life: Bunches
BunchesBunches.co.ukBunches is a family-run flower delivery business that has been sending bouquets by post since the early 1990s. Its range covers hand tied bouquets, letterbox-friendly arrangements,2 current offers · View store → is a family business that has sold flowers since 1989. Its letterbox range is mostly carnations and spray carnations with alstroemeria, freesias and wax flower, 11 to 16 stems for £21.85 to £29.50 plus £4.99 Royal Mail Tracked 24. That carnation-heavy mix is the point: Bunches rates carnations for 14 days in the vase, against seven for roses. Good Housekeeping's testers scored it 95 out of 100 and named it best value, with some bunches lasting up to two weeks.
The letterbox range is plastic-free, Bunches says it gives at least 10% of its profits to work with the poor, and it delivers to the Highlands and Islands, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, which several others don't. Florist's Choice packs the most stems in the range, and Autumn Warmth is the cheapest.
Bunches letterbox flowers
Grown to order: Freddie's Flowers
Freddie's FlowersFreddie's FlowersFreddie's Flowers is a flower retailer whose programme description centres on a box-based offer rather than a single purchase. Its description frames flowers as a mood boost, so itBuying guide · View store → is a B Corp that buys from growers to order rather than holding stock, and its letterbox box holds 12 to 15 stems for £29. Delivery is free on orders placed two days ahead, or £5 for next day if ordered by 8pm, by courier seven days a week. Each box comes with two sachets of flower food and an illustrated arranging guide, and Freddie's says most varieties last 10 to 14 days.
The menu changes every few weeks, so the bunches on sale now won't be there next month. Some of them include lilies, which matters if the recipient has a cat (more on that below). Freddie's doesn't say which postcodes its gift boxes reach, though its subscription boxes don't go to the north of Scotland.
For a late order: Arena Flowers
Arena FlowersArena FlowersArena Flowers sells hand-tied bouquets and flower subscriptions with a strong focus on ethical sourcing and sustainable packaging. Whether you want a next-day bouquet for a birthda2 current offers · View store → keeps its letterbox range to three £28 designs of woody stems chosen to travel dry, and takes next-day orders until 9pm every day, the latest cut-off of any florist here. It pays the Fairtrade Premium to certified growers and cites a top score on The Good Shopping Guide's Ethical Company Index every year since 2018. Sunrise mixes yellow and pink roses with blue irises and solidago. Fields of Gold is all yellows, with solidago, craspedia and carnations.
The guarantee is five days, and Good Housekeeping's testers found some boxes weren't posted through the letterbox. The Guardian's tester, on the other hand, found an Arena bouquet still looking good after seven days in a warm kitchen.
Arena's letterbox designs
One rose instead of a bunch: InterRose
InterRoseInterRoseInterRose sells fresh roses by the single stem, bouquet or petal, with colours ranging from classic red to black, lilac and gold. It is an online arm of an independent high street 1 current offer · View store →, an independent florist that has sent roses online since 1999, posts one, two or three long-stemmed roses in a narrow box, each in a water tube with rose food. A single rose costs £19.95 to £24.95, in about 14 colours. The free postage isn't date-specific; Royal Mail Tracked 24 costs £5 and guaranteed slots £8 to £25, including Saturday and Sunday by DPD. It doesn't deliver to much of the Highlands and Islands.
One rose is a smaller gesture than a bunch, and that's often the right size for a favour. InterRose expects five to seven days from each stem.
InterRose single letterbox roses
A note in someone's handwriting: The Blossomist
The BlossomistThe BlossomistThe Blossomist sells hand-tied bouquets, letterbox flowers and subscriptions, with delivery across the UK and next-day options for London. Its delivery costs, cut-off times and refBuying guide · View store → writes your message by hand on the card in every box, which matters more than it sounds when the flowers are standing in for you. Its letterbox bouquets are mostly roses with seasonal stems such as stocks, snapdragons and British-grown alstroemeria, about 14 stems for £27 to £34 plus £4 for Royal Mail Tracked 24. Royal Mail can't promise the day; DPD next day costs £6.95. The packaging is recyclable down to the tape and ribbon, and the guarantee is seven days. Its Trustpilot record is small, at 62 reviews.
Something that lasts: dried letterbox flowers
Dried flowers make sense for someone who travels a lot, or who'd rather not refresh a vase every few days. Appleyard's "Beautiful for a Year or More" range comes with a wooden test-tube stand and a 365-day guarantee, for £29.99 plus delivery. Blossoming Gifts sells the same arrangements, since both shops are run by the same company, Ecomnova, but guarantees them for seven days. Appleyard is the one to buy them from.
Both shops pay their guarantees in store credit rather than refunds, and Appleyard adds £10 to the value of the affected flowers.
Dried letterbox flowers from Appleyard
The most stems for the least: Flower Station
Flower StationFlower StationFlower Station is a London florist that grew from a 24-hour drive-through shop into an online retailer sending bouquets across the UK. Its bouquets are hand-tied to order, and it s1 current offer · View store → sends 16 roses, or 16 mixed stems, for £19.95 through its partner Letterbuds, the lowest price per stem I found. The trade-off is time: standard post takes two to three working days, so it suits a thank-you without a deadline. Nearly one in five of its Trustpilot reviews gives one star, so recent reviews are worth reading before ordering.
How long do letterbox flowers last?
Most florists promise five to seven days, and independent testers often get more. The guarantees run from five days at Arena and Appleyard to seven at Bunches and The Blossomist. Good Housekeeping's panel found most brands' flowers lasted more than ten days, and The Guardian's tester got about 16 days from a letterbox bunch, because stems that arrive in bud have their whole vase life ahead of them.
What happens in the first hour matters most. The RHS advice is to strip any leaves that would sit below the waterline, re-cut each stem at an angle with a sharp knife or secateurs, and use a clean vase with flower food. After that, the water wants changing and the stems re-cutting every two to four days, in a cool spot away from radiators. Most of the florists suggest taking about 2cm off the stems. Chrysal adds that ripening fruit gives off ethylene, which ages flowers faster, so the fruit bowl makes a poor neighbour.
What if they arrive looking sorry for themselves?
Flowers don't come with the usual 14-day right to cancel an online order. Regulation 28(1)(c) of the Consumer Contracts Regulations excludes goods "liable to deteriorate or expire rapidly", and Citizens Advice names flowers as an example.
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 still applies, though. Flowers must be of satisfactory quality and match their description, and for goods that perish quickly the short-term right to reject ends sooner than the usual 30 days (section 22). In practice that means complaining on the day, with photos.
The florists' own guarantees ask for much the same. InterRose wants photos within three days of delivery. Bunches wants to hear if the flowers still look poor after 24 hours in water, and The Blossomist after 48. Arena will redeliver or refund some or all of the order, while Appleyard and Blossoming Gifts pay in store credit. Since the photos have to come from the recipient, it helps if they know a box is on its way.
Flowers, cats and the doormat
Lilies are the one stem to avoid in a home with a cat. Cats Protection says every part of the plant is dangerous to cats, including the pollen and the water in the vase, and International Cat Care warns that eating any part can be fatal. Lilies do turn up in letterbox bunches, including some on Freddie's current menu, so the stem list is worth reading first. Cats Protection's plant list counts roses, freesias and snapdragons as safe, which makes InterRose's single roses an easy choice. For dogs, Blue Cross warns that even the water from a vase of daffodils is poisonous.
The letterbox adds a risk of its own. On r/CatAdvice, a cat owner points out that the box lands on the mat, within a cat's reach, while nobody's home.
Saying thank you with flowers
Letterbox flowers make most sense as a thank-you, because the favour has usually happened at a distance: the friend who fed the cat, the neighbour who took in a parcel, the colleague who covered a shift. The flowers carry the message, so the card matters as much as the stems.
In four experiments, the psychologists Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley found that people writing thank-you letters underestimated how surprised and pleased the recipients would be, and overestimated how awkward they would feel (Psychological Science, 2018). A line that names what they did and what it changed does more than any stem. The thank-you gifts guide has more on the wording.
On which flowers mean thank you, the Victorians disagreed with one another. Floral dictionaries of the period gave unrelated meanings to the same flower, as the University of Iowa's special collections show. Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers gives gratitude to the small white bellflower and thankfulness to agrimony, neither of which a letterbox florist sells. Her sweet pea means "departure", though sweet peas are now often given to say "thank you for a lovely time", and her hydrangea means "heartlessness". I'd go by colour and the person's own taste: yellow and soft pink feel cheerful without the romance of red roses.
For a cheerful thank-you, Bunches' Pink Parfait mixes pink and white carnations with freesias, alstroemeria and wax flower. Blossoming Gifts' Letterbox Firelight is an autumn mix of 13 stems in oranges, with free tracked delivery at £32.99. A single yellow rose from InterRose is the smallest gesture of the three.
Letterbox flowers for a thank-you
One more question, the other way round.
For sympathy, romance and the big dates
The same boxes work for other occasions, with a couple of things to watch on dates.
For sympathy, white flowers and a card make the gesture without asking anything of the person. The Blossomist's Thinking of You box pairs white roses and British-grown alstroemeria with a sympathy card, Bunches' Especially For You adds an iced "Sending Hugs" biscuit, and InterRose's white rose is the simplest of all. The guide to what to say, send and do when someone is grieving goes further, and thinking-of-you gifts covers the lighter moments.
Letterbox flowers for a thinking-of-you
For romance, a dozen roses fits in Appleyard's letterbox box (Letterbox 12 Red Roses; only the 12-rose size goes in a letterbox), and a single red rose from InterRose is the smaller gesture. Valentine's Day 2027 falls on a Sunday, and so does Mothering Sunday on 7 March 2027. Royal Mail delivers on Sundays only for some business parcels (Royal Mail), so a posted box lands on the Saturday at best. Freddie's Flowers delivers gift boxes seven days a week and InterRose offers guaranteed Sunday delivery by DPD for £10, so they're the ones for the day itself.
Questions people ask
Do letterbox flowers come with a vase?
No. None of the florists here puts a vase in the letterbox box, because one wouldn't fit. The flowers arrive wrapped and in bud with flower food and care instructions, so it's worth knowing the recipient has a vase.
Does someone need to be in for letterbox flowers?
Not if the box fits. If it doesn't and nobody's home, Royal Mail tries again the next working day and then leaves a card, while couriers such as Arena's use a safe place set in the tracking.
How long do letterbox flowers last?
Florists guarantee five to seven days, and Bunches rates its carnations for 14. Good Housekeeping's testers found most brands lasted more than ten days, because the stems arrive in bud.
Can you get letterbox flowers delivered the next day?
Yes. Arena takes next-day orders until 9pm every day, Freddie's until 8pm for £5, Bunches until 5.15pm on weekdays and InterRose until 3pm on weekdays for its tracked and guaranteed options.
How much do letterbox flowers cost?
About £25 to £35 delivered in October 2026. Flower Station's 16 roses for £19.95 is the cheapest per stem, though standard post takes two to three working days, and InterRose's single roses start at £19.95 with free untracked post.
Can letterbox flowers be delivered on a Sunday?
Not by Royal Mail, which delivers on Sundays only for some business parcels. Freddie's Flowers delivers gift boxes seven days a week, and InterRose offers guaranteed Sunday delivery by DPD for £10.
Where I'd start
If the person loves fresh flowers and has an ordinary door slot, letterbox flowers are one of the easiest ways to say thank you from a distance, and Bunches is where I'd start for value. For a flat with a post room or a stiff letter plate, a courier florist such as Arena or Freddie's makes the arrival less of a gamble, and for someone who's away a lot, Appleyard's dried box is the one still standing in a month.
Every letterbox bouquet we list is in the letterbox flowers collection, with today's prices and any codes, and every florist we work with is on the flower stores page. The letterbox gifts guide covers biscuits, seeds and other small things that fit through the door.
