Ships taking care of flowers (8)
I believe the answer is:
coasters
'ships' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both man-made objects as well as being plural nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?
'care of flowers' is the wordplay.
'care of' becomes 'co' (c/o can mean 'care of' when addressing mail).
'flowers' becomes 'asters' (aster is a type of flower).
'co'+'asters'='COASTERS'
'taking' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for coasters that I've seen before include "Small mats for Socrates" , "Small table-mats" , "Merchant ships with a limited range of operation" .)