Hudson Valley Wedding Flowers: What Is Actually in Season

Most couples come to a florist with a color. Most florists answer with a question about the date, and they are not being difficult. In this valley the growing season does more to decide what is in your hands than any palette does.

Here is roughly what is available, and when.

Late April into May

Tulips, ranunculus, anemone, narcissus, lilac and early flowering branches. This is the season of soft, papery flowers and bare branches still coming into leaf, and it photographs very differently from high summer. Lilac in particular has a short window and does not travel well, which is why you rarely see it in a shipped arrangement.

June

Peonies, and everything else is competing with them. The local window is short, usually the last week of May through mid-June depending on the year, and a warm spring shortens it further. Garden roses, sweet pea, foxglove and early hydrangea overlap.

If peonies are the whole reason you love a certain photograph, say so early. A florist can plan around a three week window; they cannot invent one.

July and August

Dahlias begin, zinnias and cosmos are at their best, and lisianthus does the work that roses do at twice the price. Hydrangea is everywhere, and this is the moment it is at its fullest. Heat is the real constraint here: anything cut for an August wedding wants to be handled late, kept cold, and set out as close to the ceremony as the venue will allow.

September and October

Dahlias at their peak, chrysanthemums that look nothing like the supermarket kind, celosia, amaranth, grasses, seed pods, and foliage that is doing something none of the other months can. This is the richest month for a florist working from local fields, and it is also the busiest wedding stretch of the year here, so it books first.

The season ends at the first hard frost, usually somewhere in mid-October, and a florist who grows will tell you plainly that a late October date is a gamble on the weather.

November through March

Greenhouse and imported. Everything is available and nothing is local. That is not a criticism, it is simply the trade: a February wedding can absolutely have peonies, they will have flown in from Chile or New Zealand, they will be priced accordingly, and they will have spent time in a box.

Growing here, not just arranging

Several florists on the list grow at least some of what they use, which changes the conversation from ordering to planning. Brittany Hollow Farm in Rhinebeck, Preston's Flower Farm in Cairo, Chicken Dreams Flower Farm in Pine Bush, Heart and Soil Flowers in Newburgh and Field Trip Flowers in Chester are five places to start if that appeals to you.

If you would rather work with a studio that sources widely, Blooming Visions Hudson Valley in Tivoli, Dark and Diamond Floral Design in Ancram and Flower Blossom Design in Hudson are on the list too.

Five questions worth asking on the first call

1. What is actually in season the week of our date? 2. How much of this can you grow or source locally, and how much is shipped? 3. What would you do differently if we moved the date by two weeks? 4. What happens to the arrangements between the ceremony and the reception, and who moves them? 5. What is the plan if the weather that week is thirty degrees off the average?

A florist who answers the last two without being prompted has done this here before.

The full list is at florists, sorted by county.