My day as a florist

Now I don’t know terribly much about being a florist. From my sadly small experience as a receiver of florist goods, I gather that the basic idea is to arrange flowers for different occasions and sell them wrapped in coloured paper and that ribbon that coordinated people can curl with scissors...
I did however have the idea that the first step in a florist’s day was to acquire the flowers... So to be true to my work experience experiment, I woke up in the morning and headed out to gather some flowers. Unfortunately, as spring hasn’t quite sprung here, I was greeted with a gravelled driveway with barely a blade of grass growing through, let alone a bouquet of flowers just waiting to be arranged. But then I saw him...the faithful dandelion, I’m pretty sure that flower would grow directly out of air given half a chance! And really with a backdrop like that, any flower would look amazing.

I had my work experience teed up for 12 noon so I thought I should spend my time with Google, gleaning everything I could about the world of the florist. So I typed in things like ‘how to be a florist’ and ‘tips for flower arranging’ and got everything from, ‘the use of a floral frog is very important’ to ‘sear the end of your stems on a hot fry pan to lock in freshness’. Now like I said, I’m new to this florist business but since when do you stick flowers in frogs and fry them up?!

There were some consistent tips though like:

1) Cut your stems one inch from the bottom on an angle

2) Arrange the focal flowers first and then fill the arrangement in with filler flowers

3) Remove leaves that will lie below the water line and remove thorns from roses

4) Use room temperature water and a nutrient mix. And my personal favourite

5) Flower arrangements don’t have to be perfect.

So there was hope for the dandelion arrangement yet...

With that last tip in mind I headed to The Green Petal to see what Carmen could teach the biggest work experience kid.

Carmen started off by showing me the cool room. Flowers have to be stored between 4 – 14 degrees Celsius to keep them fresh for as long as possible. Flowers are delivered in boxes 2-3 times a week by truck or in an emergency by air. The flowers are then cut (around an inch off the stem) and placed in room temperature water outside the cooler for around 2 hours, to reduce the amount of shock experienced. They are then grouped and stored in buckets of nutrient water in the cool room ready to be turned into bouquets and arrangements.
                                              

I asked Carmen many questions about flower arranging and was pleased to hear that there really are no hard and fast rules; it’s up to what you like. You are not going to have the petal police on your doorstep if you pair a gerbera with a geranium or combine a carnation with a chrysanthemum. If it looks good then that’s the main thing! She did say there are a few basic design guidelines such as larger or darker flowers should stay towards the base of the arrangement while smaller and lighter coloured flowers should go towards the top. This and the use of the colour wheel help to entice the natural flow of the human eye.

Carmen knew she wanted to work with flowers, so she got a job in a flower shop as an assistant and worked there for 4 years, eventually working her way up to manager. She has taken 2 short courses in floral design and opened her own business less than a year ago. She says a florist is not a business where you will make millions, but it is fulfilling, even when you’re delivering flowers for a sad event, flowers are the happy side of the sadness.

She talked about working with brides up to 6 months in advance to plan their flower arrangements but how it’s nice as a designer to be able to guide people in their choices based on seasonal flowers and additional items such as feathers and natural cotton stems.

I asked her to show me how to wrap a flower in paper and cellophane and was pleased once again that this is largely governed by personal preference and experience rather than a hard and fast handbook on flower wrapping.

She showed me the mysterious florist foam which is used to hold flowers together at the base of an arrangement and showed me how you ‘wire’ gerberas to keep them upright.

She had a book on colours and flower varieties and also says she follows bridal blogs and uses websites such as sierraflowerfinder.com and floralverde.com but apart from that it is basically up to her preference, experience and creativity.

Unfortunately Carmen’s flower delivery was running late so we were not able to do any arrangements. So after learning as much about it from her as I could I headed off to complete my work experience.

Taking on Carmen’s advice that anything goes, I bought some flowers, some fruit and gathered some foliage from the parks in the area. Then I set to work, cutting the stems an inch from the bottom (seeing Carmen hadn’t mentioned it I decided to leave the frogs and fry pans to the more experimental florists...)

So am I a budding florist? The freedom of creativity and the varied work day is definitely appealing and the idea of working to provide joy in people’s life is definitely a worthy investment of time. As working as a florist is not a certified career, it also seems like a job you could master through experience rather than extended education. Whether you could survive on the $10 an hour that you’re likely to be paid for the first few years while gathering experience is another matter... Working as a florist definitely seems like a fulfilling career and one that you would be happy to get out of bed for every day, even if it was just for a dandelion!

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