Well, when I have given flowers I usually have timed it for when the actor friend is just finished the bow, caught their eye and tossed the flowers.  For a friend with a smaller part, shorter "bow time", I laid them on the edge of the stage and let him sweep them up when his turn came.  On the other side of the curtain we try to make our curtain calls a little less formal than the "march, march, bow quick and get the hell out of the way" routines you see so often.  Particularly on closing night  when all of the hugging and crying and so forth is about to take place anyways.