The bucket by the back door fills with chrysanthemums in the first week of November, bronze and rust and a deep wine red, and the cold coming in off the yard keeps the stems stiff and the heads lasting. By November the workroom changes temperature. The orders come in clusters, and they pull in three directions at once. There is the quiet weight of Remembrance Sunday, the brightness of Diwali, and the first careful customers already thinking about Christmas.
This year two of those land on the same day. Sunday 8 November 2026 is Remembrance Sunday and Diwali both, which makes it one of the busiest dates in our calendar and one of the most tender. One occasion asks for stillness. The other asks for colour. We do both, often within the same hour.
Remembrance Sunday and the flowers that hold their meaning
Red is the obvious answer, and for once the obvious answer is the right one. The poppy carries the day, and arrangements around Remembrance lean into that single deep scarlet rather than fighting it. I tend to build with red roses, a few stems of chrysanthemum for body, and rosemary tucked through the greenery, because rosemary has meant remembrance for longer than any of us have been arranging flowers.
What I steer people away from is fuss. A Remembrance tribute does not need seven contrasting colours and a ribbon the width of your hand. It needs to look like it was meant. For wreaths laid at the war memorial on Epsom High Street, or sent across to family in Ashtead or Banstead who will be standing at their own services, simplicity reads as respect. The most moving piece I made last November was red roses, ivy, and three sprigs of rosemary, nothing more, ordered by a woman whose grandfather had served. She didn't want it to be clever. She wanted it to be true.
Sympathy and memorial tributes, and the difference your Epsom florist makes
November brings sympathy orders too, and these are the ones I take most seriously. A funeral tribute is the one arrangement nobody wants to need. A generic bunch from a supermarket shelf, wrapped in cellophane and gone limp by the graveside, is the last thing a grieving family should have to look at.
When you order funeral flowers from a florist who actually conditions the stems, you get flowers that have spent two or three days drinking cleanly before they go anywhere. That matters more than people realise. A coffin spray made the morning of a service, from flowers cut and cared for properly, holds its shape and its colour through a long day in a cold church. We can match a coffee-and-cream palette, recreate a favourite garden flower, or spell out a name in chrysanthemum if that is what comforts the family. None of that happens from a forecourt bucket.
I will always tell you honestly what is in season and what will travel well. Lilies in November are reliable and generous. Roses hold beautifully in the cold. If someone asks me for peonies in the second week of November, I tell them the truth and offer something that will be at its best instead. Trust is the whole business when you are arranging flowers for a funeral.
November holds all of this at once. The workroom does not flinch between one kind of order and the next. The same hands that tied the Remembrance wreath at nine in the morning might be cutting marigold stems by eleven. That is not insensitivity. It is what a working florist actually does: you give each occasion the full attention it deserves, and then you turn to the next one with the same care.
Diwali, and flowers that match the light
Then the same week turns, and the orders go gold. Diwali is the festival of light, and the flowers that suit it are the ones that look lit from within: marigolds in hot orange and yellow, deep pink roses, ranunculus with their layered petals, and anything that carries warmth into a dim afternoon.
Marigolds are the classic, strung into garlands or massed in low bowls down the centre of a table laid for family. I love making these. After a fortnight of restrained reds and whites, a Diwali order is permission to be loud, and there is real joy in handing over an armful of flowers that look like a celebration before they have even reached the door. For homes across Epsom, Ewell, and the wider Surrey area marking the festival, vivid is exactly right, and the warm tones hold their cheer even when the sun has gone by half past four.
Why your Christmas flower order belongs in November
Every year I have this same conversation in November, and every year people are surprised. The good Christmas flowers run out.
From the last week of November, orders for December delivery start filling our slots fast, and the most-wanted stems tighten first. Amaryllis, scented narcissus, ranunculus, the proper deep-red Naomi roses everyone wants for a Christmas table: these are not endless. Dutch supply through December is busy, and prices climb as the month goes on. The customer who books a Christmas centrepiece or a wreath in mid-November pays a fairer price and gets first pick of the season. The one who rings on 22 December gets whatever is left, and there is far less of it than they imagine.
Booking early also means I can plan properly rather than improvise. Tell me now that you want a hand-tied bouquet delivered to your mother in Ewell on Christmas Eve, and I can book it in for that day. Tell me on the day, and I am doing my honest best with a van that is already full. Ordering ahead isn't me being pushy. It is the single kindest thing you can do for your own December.
So if there is a wreath you want on your door, a centrepiece for the table, or flowers to send to someone you won't see this year, the time to place that order is now, while the choice is wide and the slots are open.
There is a particular quiet in the workroom on the evening of 8 November, after the last Remembrance wreath has gone out and the first marigold garland is drying on the bench, the cold air thick with chrysanthemum and rosemary. Two occasions, one day, both held with the same pair of hands. That is November in an Epsom flower shop, and I wouldn't have it any other way.