Graveside Services in Bakersfield: What Flowers Actually Work Outdoors

A graveside service is a different job from a service in a chapel, and most florist websites treat them as the same thing. They are not. One is an arrangement in a climate-controlled room for forty minutes. The other is an arrangement standing on open ground, in Bakersfield, sometimes in August.

If you have already read our guide to sympathy flowers, this is the part it does not cover. Here is what actually changes when the service is outdoors.

First, what kind of graveside are we talking about

There are three versions and they need different things.

• A committal after a chapel service. The family goes from the funeral home to the cemetery, usually within the hour. Flowers from the chapel are often moved across by the funeral director, so you may not need to send anything separately - ask them first.
• Graveside only. No chapel, no viewing. Everything happens at the plot, often in twenty minutes. This is the one where what you send has to work outdoors from the start.
• A later interment. Ashes placed weeks or months after the service. Small, quiet, usually a handful of people. Something restrained is right here - a large standing spray would feel wrong.

If you do not know which one it is, the obituary usually says, and the funeral home always knows.

The heat is the actual problem

This is the part we wish more people asked about before ordering. From roughly June to September a Bakersfield graveside can sit above 100 degrees, in full sun, with no shade and nothing to hold water. An arrangement built for an air-conditioned viewing room will start to go over within the hour.

Flowers that hold up in that: carnations, chrysanthemums, alstroemeria, gladioli, statice, leather leaf and most heavy greenery. They have thicker petals and they are used to it.

Flowers that do not: hydrangea, garden roses, tulips, lisianthus, sweet peas, anything with a soft or papery petal. Hydrangea in particular will collapse in about twenty minutes on a hot morning, and it is expensive to watch that happen.

We build differently for a graveside without being asked, as long as we know that is where it is going. That is the single most useful thing you can tell us when you order.

Wind, which nobody thinks about

Open ground and a tall easel piece is a bad combination. We have watched sprays go over on a perfectly ordinary spring afternoon. For a graveside we either weight the easel, build lower and wider, or steer you toward something that sits on the ground or on the lowering device rather than standing up.

If someone has already sent a standing spray and it is going outdoors, tell the funeral director. They deal with this constantly and they will have it handled.

What to send to a graveside

• Casket saddle. Sits directly on the casket, built low and secured so it travels. This is the family's piece, same as a casket spray indoors. From $199.99.
• Standing spray on a weighted easel. Still the right answer for friends, coworkers and neighbours. We use a heavier base outdoors. From $324.99.
• Wreath or cross. Traditional, and they handle heat better than most because they are built tight. From $299.99.
• Cemetery vase arrangements. Built for the cone or vase at the marker, so the family has something there after everyone leaves. From $89.99.
• Loose stems for mourners. A bundle of single stems, so people can place one on the casket as they pass. It costs very little and it gives everyone standing there something to do with their hands. Almost nobody thinks to order this, and it is the thing families thank us for most.

See sympathy flowers for the service · See sympathy flowers for the home

Timing is different too

A chapel service wants flowers two to three hours ahead so staff can set the room. A graveside is tighter and more particular.

• Most cemeteries want graveside pieces delivered 45 minutes to an hour before the service, not earlier. Left out longer than that in summer and you have paid for flowers nobody sees at their best.
• Some cemeteries take all deliveries at the office rather than at the plot, and their staff carry them out. Others want you at the graveside. They are not consistent, so we ring ahead.
• Tell us the plot or section if you have it. A large memorial park is a big place and "the Ramirez service" is not always enough to find it.
• For a morning service, we are building it the afternoon before and keeping it cold overnight.

Our same-day cutoff is 12pm for delivery that afternoon. For anything tied to a graveside time, call the shop instead of ordering online - we will want the cemetery, the time and the family name before we start.

What happens to the flowers afterwards

People are often surprised by this, so it is worth saying. Cemeteries clear graveside flowers after a set period, and that period varies - some leave them a few days, some clear the next morning. Most have rules about what can stay permanently at a marker, and many only allow flowers in the cemetery's own vase or cone.

If the family wants to keep a piece, someone needs to take it with them when they leave. And if you want something to remain at the marker afterwards, ask the cemetery office what they permit before you order it. We would rather you asked than had a piece removed a day later.

Where we deliver

We deliver to every cemetery and memorial park in Bakersfield, and out to Shafter. The ones we visit most:

• Hillcrest Memorial Park - 9101 Kern Canyon Road, Bakersfield, CA 93306
• Greenlawn Memorial Park Northeast - 3700 River Boulevard, Bakersfield, CA 93305
• Greenlawn Memorial Park Southwest - 2739 Panama Lane, Bakersfield, CA 93313
• Union Cemetery - 730 East Potomac Avenue, Bakersfield, CA 93307

See every Bakersfield funeral home and cemetery we deliver to

If it is a chapel service and a graveside

Send one piece, not two. The funeral director moves flowers from the chapel to the cemetery as a matter of course, and a second arrangement waiting at the plot is money spent on something the family will not register. The exception is the cemetery vase arrangement, which is genuinely a separate thing - it is what stays behind.

Just call us

Graveside is the category where a two-minute phone call saves the most. Tell us the cemetery, the time, whether it is outdoors start to finish, and roughly what you want to spend. We will tell you what will still look right when everyone is standing around it.

(661) 588-7997 - we are on Brimhall Road, and someone who actually builds the arrangements will pick up.