Roses in the City of Roses — is that a cliché or the right call?
+
The right call, and Portland is one of the few places where that is genuinely true rather than a florist's line. The International Rose Test Garden has been in Washington Park since 1917, the Rose Festival since 1907, and the flower is civic furniture here. Nobody will read roses as unimaginative. What they will read is quality, because the recipient has probably walked through thousands of good ones for free. Worth knowing: the test garden is a public park, not a supplier, so the stems in our catalogue come through ordinary wholesale channels like everywhere else. What Oregon actually grows in quantity is peonies in late spring and dahlias in late summer.
The address is a tower in the Pearl or South Waterfront. Does that work?
+
It works, but it is the one place a surprise can be spoiled by the building itself. Towers in the Pearl District and South Waterfront have staffed lobbies, key-fob access and package rooms, and the default behaviour is to log a delivery and telephone upstairs. If the point is that she does not know, say so in the notes and ask the desk to hold rather than announce. Give the recipient's name exactly as the building has it on the buzzer or the resident list, and add a mobile number for yourself, not for the recipient, so the driver rings you if the lobby refuses to take it.
What about the close-in east side — Ladd's Addition, Laurelhurst, Sellwood?
+
These are the easiest romance deliveries in the city and the most likely to be misrouted. Easiest, because the housing is largely pre-1930 with deep covered porches, which means an arrangement can wait out of the rain for a few hours. Most likely to be misrouted, because Ladd's Addition is a diagonal wheel of streets laid out in the 1890s around a central circle and four diamond rose gardens, and satellite navigation loses its nerve in there — give a cross street, not just a number. Everywhere on this side of the river, write the sector prefix; Portland has six and the numbered avenues repeat across them.
Can you deliver to a downtown hotel or set flowers at a restaurant table?
+
To a hotel front desk, yes — the long-running downtown houses such as the Benson on SW Broadway and the Heathman a few blocks south take deliveries for guests in the ordinary way, and Flowers Tommyluke at 906 SW Taylor Street is inside walking distance of most of them. A restaurant table is different: it needs the restaurant's permission, not ours. Ring them, get the name of whoever agreed, put that name and the reservation time on the order. We claim no standing arrangement with any venue in this city, and you should distrust any florist who does.
I am proposing. Where do people actually do it here, and what should I order?
+
Cathedral Park under the arches of the St. Johns Bridge is the most photographed spot in the city for it. Council Crest and Pittock Mansion both sell the same eastward view on the days the weather allows one, the Rose Test Garden and the Japanese Garden share Washington Park, where parking is tight and the walk in is longer than people plan for, and Lan Su Chinese Garden in Old Town is the sheltered option. For any of them order a hand-tied bunch that can be carried and photographed rather than a tall vessel needing a surface, and ask for a sleeve.
How far ahead should I order for Valentine's Day in Portland?
+
Several days, for two separate reasons. The first is volume: 14 February is the heaviest day of the year across all ten shops and the best stems are committed early. The second is weather, and it is the one people forget. Valentine's Day here falls in the middle of the wet season, when it rains most days, so an arrangement left on an uncovered step is ruined within the hour. Name a covered porch, a lobby desk or a workplace reception when you order. If the delivery is to a house on the east side, the porch is almost always there — you just have to tell us to use it.
Is anything actually grown near Portland, or is it all imported?
+
Both, by season, and it is worth timing an anniversary around. Peonies out of the Willamette Valley run roughly late May into June, which catches a lot of June dates. Dahlias come in from August into September, and Oregon grows them at a scale nowhere else does — the country's largest dahlia farm is at Canby, about half an hour south of the city centre. Greenhouse and nursery stock is Oregon's biggest agricultural sector generally, so a living plant here is a local product rather than a consolation prize. From October to May the roses are imported, the same as everywhere, and the wrapping matters more than the origin.