When you buy a floral bouquet, do you ever wonder where those beautiful blossoms come from? For those buying from me in our Eastern Washington area during the winter and early spring months, I’m purchasing most of my flowers through our local wholesaler. Here in the Spokane area, we are lucky to have two fabulous wholesalers who not only provide florists with cut flowers, but they are also our go-to place for plants and all the various supplies, materials and containers we need for doing our business well. Some of my flowers I purchase directly from growers. When I need tropical flowers or garden roses, I have accounts with the grower so I can buy directly from their farm. From time to time, I buy flowers on the flower auction when I need large quantities of any one particular flower or boxes of greens for a wedding. Most of my weekly purchases this time of the year come from my local wholesalers.
The wholesaler buys flowers from growers all over the world. And as consumers ask for more locally sourced flowers, they work hard to provide those when they are available. In the summer, they work with local growers. Purchasing their flowers not only makes it easy for us to have a one stop shop saving time, but it also adds more variety to what they have to offer us. For this time of year, the end of January, there are some things coming in from California, Hawaii and Florida, but a lot more come from South America, Holland, and some from Canada. When I pick up my order on a Monday, the variety of different flowers I’ve ordered can easily consist of flowers grown at more than a dozen different farms across the world. My suppliers also purchase supplies from a variety of companies who sell glass, ceramic, cement and wooden containers. For a florist tapping into their local wholesaler, it saves a lot of time to be able to place an order for all the various materials and supplies needed and then pick it all up in one place. Working with a local wholesaler is a real time saver for a florist. Please note that not all towns are as lucky as we are in Spokane. Many areas don’t have a local wholesaler and they depend on wholesalers like ours to ship their orders to them.
There are a lot of people involved in the flower supply chain. From the folks at the farms growing and harvesting the flowers to the employees at the distribution and processing centers who wrap, bundle, package and box the flowers to the transportation of the product be it by airplane, truck, or van. Flowers are then delivered to wholesalers who have to unpack, process, hydrate and prepare individual florist shops orders and send them out for delivery. If you’re a local floral shop you may choose pick your orders up yourself. Our Spokane wholesalers are getting flowers from growers all over the world and then taking those boxed bulk orders, opening them, sorting and filling individual shop orders and shipping them out by truck/van to shops in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana. It’s pretty amazing how much traveling a cut flower does before it ends up on your table in a centerpiece.
During the early summer through early autumn, our local community has a wide variety of local flower farmers who are providing us with an amazing variety of flowers and greens to design with. Each year there seem to be more new growers providing locally grown flowers which I think is really exciting. I personally buy from about ten different local growers but know there are more available to us here in the Spokane County area. All of these flower farms grow beautiful flowers, I just tend to buy mostly from those closer to my studio. Either they will deliver to my studio or I will take the time to go to them and pick up my orders. Sometimes we meet in the middle somewhere too. One mixed flower bouquet in the summer may be made up of flowers from one farm or blossoms from all ten farms. I love being able to purchase flowers in the summer from our local growers to use in my designs. Not only is it a way for my business to really support businesses locally, but each farm tends to have their own special varieties they like to grow which gives me more variety to work with. The flowers are fresh and fragrant and come in a variety of vibrant colors! I can often have flowers that are cut and processed one day and designed and delivered on the second day to. This means you’ll enjoy them for a longer period of time on your table. Local growers are able to offer us varieties that our wholesalers can’t simply because not all varieties have a super long vase life. As such, they just don’t make the cut for being a flower to be grown and shipped from somewhere that takes several days to arrive before being designed with. Locally sourced flowers add so much unique beauty throughout the summer that I always encourage people that if they’re only going to buy someone flowers once of twice a year, they should wait until sometime between May and September when there are so many lovely locally grown flowers to enjoy.
Keep in mind though that just because the flowers are grown locally, it doesn’t mean they are less expensive than those grown in some other part of the world. Our local growers work hard all year round to be able to provide us with these beautiful flowers to work with. Here it is the end of January and those growers are putting in long hours planting seeds and getting those plants started so we can have beautiful blossoms to enjoy this summer. It takes a lot of time, organization and prep work even before seed planting happens to grow flowers for designers.
Since we are buying our flowers in 5 to 25 stem bunches, and every florist is purchasing anywhere from a few bunches to 100’s of bunches a week, that’s a lot of flowers to be grown. When you have a a flower like a Lisianthus that is a super tiny seed and a rather tricky one to germinate and grow that makes just one or two stems of flowers, you need to plant 100’s or 1000’s of seeds. I spent 3.5 hours this week planting seeds at the Snapdragon Flower Farm and I only got about 750 seeds planted. Of course some of my time was spent learning how to figure out how many plants I wanted in each of the rows I will be planting, in order to know how many plants I would have the space to grow. Once I had my plan mapped out, I was shown how to do it and how to record what was planted in each tray. So much more goes into the art of being a good flower farmer than most of us realize. These people work hard and certainly deserve the profits they make from the sales of their flowers. I know I’m proud to tell customers that I’ve used locally grown flowers in their bouquets. Yet I’m also proud to support growers across our nation and use vases and materials made in other parts of the U.S. too.
If you want to support the businesses of florists/designers who use locally grown flowers, please buy more bouquets in the late spring through early autumn season when we are using some really gorgeous blossoms. Each season has it’s own variety of beauties for you to enjoy so consider buying one every week or two or at least once a month from May to September. One thing you might consider for a holiday like Christmas or Valentine’s Day, is buying a single rose or tulip with a gift certificate for local fresh bouquets in the summer. I have customers who will prepay for several arrangements at Christmas or early in the New Year and then spread them out for delivery throughout the spring-autumn when we are able to share more from our local growers.
I hope this information helps you to understand a little better how many people and businesses are involved in bringing us beautiful flowers to work with. If you have a garden and grow a few flowers, I hope you will take time to cut a few stems and bring them into your home to enjoy throughout the summer too. They will brighten and lift your spirits and are always such a delight to look at.
