Sunday 26 March 2028. Nineteen days later than 2027, which is close to the
full swing this date is capable of, and there are three things about that
particular Sunday worth knowing before you plan anything around it.
Three things that make 2028 awkward
The clocks go forward that morning. Irish summer time starts on the last
Sunday in March, and in 2028 the last Sunday in March is Mother's Day itself. At
1am the clocks jump to 2am, so the Sunday morning is an hour shorter than
anyone's body clock expects. Breakfast bookings, Mass times and any delivery
window on the day are all shifted against a household that has lost an hour.
St Patrick's Day is the Friday before last. 17 March 2028 falls on a Friday,
which makes it a three-day weekend and a public holiday on which most Irish
flower services do not deliver at all. That takes a working day out of the
run-up and pushes a chunk of ordering into the following week.
It is late enough to feel far away. An early Mother's Day gets people
organised because it arrives right after Valentine's Day. A 26 March date sits
five weeks after Valentine's and lets everyone forget about it until the middle
of the month.
The Lent working for 2028
Ireland keeps Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent, and Lent is anchored
to Easter. The whole calculation is Easter Sunday minus twenty-one days.
Easter Sunday 2028 is 16 April, which is on the later side of its range. Count
back three weeks and you land on 26 March.
The long way round agrees. 2028 is a leap year, so February has twenty-nine days
and Ash Wednesday lands on 1 March, forty-six days before Easter. The Sundays of
Lent then fall on 5, 12, 19 and 26 March. The fourth is 26 March.
If you ever need to check a year we have not written up, that is the entire
method: find Easter, count back twenty-one days. It gives the same answer in
Ireland and in the UK, every year.
Ireland, the UK and the US in 2028
| Country | Date in 2028 | Gap from the Irish date |
|---|
| Ireland | Sunday 26 March | Same day |
| United Kingdom | Sunday 26 March | Same day |
| United States | Sunday 14 May | Seven weeks later |
The American date is fixed to the second Sunday in May and never moves out of
that month, so the gap between the two dates is different every year: nine weeks
in 2027, seven weeks in 2028. There is no year in which they coincide.
Most of continental Europe follows the May pattern rather than the Irish one, so
a French, German or Italian shop will show you a May date too. Set the delivery
country before you judge the calendar.
Week by week, going in
Two weeks out, Saturday 11 March. The date for letterbox flowers. They post
in bud, in a flat box, and they need a day or two in water to open properly.
Aiming a letterbox order at Friday 24 or Saturday 25 March gives it the time it
needs. Aiming it at the Sunday hands over a box of buds.
Ten days out, Wednesday 15 March. Order a florist arrangement here and you
get the one in the photograph, in the delivery window you asked for. This is the
useful deadline. Note that it sits two days before the bank holiday, which is not
a coincidence you should ignore: order before St Patrick's weekend, not after it.
Friday 17 March. Public holiday. Assume no deliveries and a lot of closed
shops.
Monday 20 to Wednesday 22 March. The busiest ordering days of the year for
Irish florists, along with the Valentine's run-up. Guaranteed morning and
afternoon windows start selling out for the Saturday.
Thursday 23 March. The last comfortable day for a nationwide order well
outside Dublin.
Friday 24 March. Next-day delivery for Saturday is still available at
several services, with a narrower choice of what to send.
Saturday 25 March. Same-day only, in whatever areas each service covers on a
Saturday, which is a much shorter list than the weekday one.
Sunday 26 March. Delivery is possible but limited and dearer. One relay
network publishes a nationwide Sunday option, one online florist covers Dublin
on Sundays, and everything else is closed. Both of the Sunday options are worth
booking well in advance rather than tried on the day.
What the cutoffs really mean in that week
A same-day cutoff is the last minute an order can be placed, not a promise about
what time it lands. In the last week of March 2028 every florist in the country
will be working a queue, so an order placed close to a cutoff should be expected
in the evening rather than the morning.
The gap between counties widens too. Dublin holds the latest same-day cutoffs;
the counties around it close around the middle of the day; much of the rest of
the country is a next-day proposition on the Saturday, if it is offered at all.
The Where to order module below shows each service's own published cutoffs with
the date they were read, which is more use than a number written into a sentence
that ages.
What is in season on 26 March
A late Mother's Day is a better one for flowers. By the end of March the Irish
tulip season is at full stretch, ranunculus are good, and the first alstroemeria
and early greenhouse-grown stocks are around. Daffodils are going over in
sheltered parts of the country by then, so a bunch bought on the Saturday will be
past its best faster than the same bunch three weeks earlier.
Still no peonies, still no garden roses, and anything advertised as either in
March has come a long way to reach you. There is a month by month picture on our
in-season page.
For 2027, when the date is 7 March and the season is entirely different, see
Mother's Day 2027.
