Everything else we deliver is harvested and finished. Mums are alive, and they're the only piece of the display that will look worse in a week if you ignore them.
They're also the piece that does the most for the arrangement, which is the trade.
What they do for a display
Pumpkins, straw, and corn stalks are all texture in a narrow band of warm color. Mums bring saturated, living color and a completely different form — soft and mounded against everything else's hard edges and vertical lines.
They also solve a problem that shows up at the bottom of most displays: the transition from the walkway to the arrangement. Hard materials meeting hard ground looks abrupt. A mum at that seam softens it.
Where they belong
Low and forward. Mums work at the base of the arrangement, at the foot of a straw bale, or flanking the bottom step, where they bridge the ground and the display.
Set them where the eye enters the arrangement rather than where it ends up. The door is the focal point; mums are the on-ramp.
Two of them flanking the steps reads as formal. One placed off-center reads as gathered. Both are fine — pick one deliberately rather than distributing them evenly and hoping.
Water starting the day they arrive
This is the whole care instruction, and it starts immediately.
Mums are shallow-rooted and they're in a pot, which means they dry out faster than anything in a bed. Check the soil daily; if the top of it is dry to the touch, water it. Heat, wind, and direct sun all push that toward daily, and in Phoenix it will be daily.
Water the soil rather than the blooms. Wet flower heads hold moisture and go brown at the edges.
A mum that goes dry can wilt in a day and decline within about a week, and mums that decline after delivery aren't replaced. If your delivery window overlaps a trip, arrange for a neighbor before the truck arrives rather than after.
Keep the shade in mind
Full afternoon sun is hard on potted mums everywhere and punishing in the desert. Morning sun with afternoon shade is the ideal, and a covered porch usually provides it.
If your only good design position is also the sunniest, you have a choice to make between the look and the lifespan. Worth making it consciously.
Deadheading
Pinch off spent blooms as they brown. It keeps the plant looking maintained and directs energy toward the buds that haven't opened.
Buying mums still in tight bud rather than full bloom buys more weeks, though what arrives depends on the season and the grower.
Which packages include them
The Manor includes 4 and The Estate includes 6. On any package they can be added at $50 each.
Colors and varieties vary; we style to whatever the growers have looking their best that week, so a specific color can't be reserved.
The honest version
Mums are the highest-maintenance thing on your porch and the first thing to look bad if the maintenance doesn't happen. They're worth adding if someone will water them.
If nobody will, the display works without them, and the money goes further as an extra straw bale and an extra corn stalk bunch.
Fresh seasonal mums are $50 each, included with The Manor and The Estate.