Best Pet-Friendly Spring Flower Bouquets

Never realised flower bouquets could be highly toxic?

Spring is an invigorating time when our gardens, parks and open spaces start coming alive after cold and miserable winter months with an explosion of brightly coloured new blooms. It’s also a time for a number of events traditionally known for buying flowers as gifts, Valentines Day, Mothering Sunday, and Easter.

What are the best flowers to send a pet household?

Does it really matter?

The cut flowers and plant UK market is worth, astonishingly, more at retail value than the music industry according to the UK Flower industry with 60% of that figure spent on ourselves. That leaves more than 0.8 Billion British pounds being spent on cut flowers and plants for family, friends, colleagues ad workplaces. That is a considerable amount of flowers being sent regularly up and down the UK.

With our increasing changes to online shopping habits, partly due to the pandemic, we shop regularly sending bouquets to all parts of the UK using the many, and increasing, online flower bouquet companies.

Companies provide enticing pictures of floral arrangements of seasonal flowers mixing all kinds of flowers with foliage but very few provide any information as to what is pet-friendly and what isn’t.

The latest yearly figures have just been published by the PMFA, the Pet Food Manufacturers Association, who monitor the pet market and report that more than 3.2 millions new pets were bought during the lockdown year, with around 12 million dogs and 12 million cats now residing in UK homes.

With so many more new pet owners, it’s important to send the ‘right’ flower bouquets to pet households. Many flowers and plants are simply toxic, particularly to cats more so, but this doesn’t mean dogs escape toxicity problems.

Floral bouquets are beautifully colour co-ordinated, wrapped in paper or foils, some have additional trimmings, all of which are very dangerous if your pet tries to swallow these, if left lying around.The best way to ensure a toxic-free pet-friendly bouquet arrives is by sending specific instructions for the contents of the bouquet to a floral retailer that doesn’t offer only pre-arranged bouquets, sourcing bouquets that are pet-friendly or by dropping off the flowers yourself!

There can be conflicting information even being offered between the flower companies, vets, animal charities, insurers, and horticultural establishments as to what are and aren’t toxic and the side effects of flowers and plants for pets. Some organisations stating that side effects can be ‘moderate’ where others state they are ‘mild’ and others ‘severe’ for the same flower.

The Royal Horticultural Society website provides a list of those plants that may give humans allergies or worse effects and provide the following links as their dedicated websites where their readers can consult for pet toxicity matters –

RSPCA (dogs, cats and horses)
Dogs Trust
International Cat Care (cats)
British Horse Society

The Best Bouquet

Our 5 stars have to be awarded for buying a floral bouquet of lovely roses. This is the most popular flower grown worldwide, available all year round and is toxic-free for pets. Most florists sell bouquets or single stems of roses, even supermarkets, petrol stations and 24/7’s, and these roses are commercially grown with little or free of thorns.

Roses are grown in a vast colour palette so there’s something for everyone and prices start for a single stem to huge bunches of 40 or more stems. Don’t ask for any additional foliage, in fact to stay safe, remove it, and don’t waste your money buying flowers that have added embellishments, such as glitter as this is likely to upset any cat or dog that accidentally may chew and ingest them!

In our opinion, roses are the best flower to provide a pet-friendly household anytime of the year.

According to online florists Direct2Florist their top ten most bought flowers are

Top 10 Flowers in ranked order are 1 Roses – 2 Lilies – 3 Daffodils – 4 – Sunflowers – 5 Orchids – 6 Carnations – 7 Bluebells – 8 Freesias – 9 Poppies – 10 Sweet peas.

The ‘safe’ flowers for a pet-friendly household from their top ten list are ROSES – SUNFLOWERS – ORCHIDS – FREESIAS.

ROSES are pet-friendly and make a gorgeous and safe bouquet anytime of the year. This 50 head bouquet by Appleyard Flowers.

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

SUNFLOWERS Whilst in abundant during the summer, Spring bouquets can include imported sunflowers. By Post A Rose.

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

ORCHIDS are just so delicate looking, flowers can thrive for around 8 weeks available from Crocus.

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

FREESIAS- So pretty looking and perfect for springtime occasions. Bouquet by Guernsey Flowers.

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Rating: 5 out of 5.