Running a Sustainable Florist Business

Gorgeous organic, locally-grown garden roses

February 18, 2022

“Organic,” “Sustainable,” or even “Naturally Grown” aren’t terms that a lot of people take into consideration when purchasing flowers. I think this is because we don’t eat flower bouquets so the thoughtfulness regarding herbicides, pesticides and Fair Trade goes out the window.

I’m on a mission to create more awareness around the importance of buying flowers that have been organically and locally grown. << I wrote this post all about why the traditional floral market is harmful for people and planet, and why supporting local flower growers makes such a big difference in your community.

The other thing I’m on a mission to do, is run my own floristry side of my business in the most sustainable, earth-loving way possible. Every step we make in our floral businesses, from where we source our ingredients to how we package our end-products, makes a difference. If each of us took a few steps to run our florist businesses more sustainably, there would be an enormous, positive shift in our industry!

Here, I’ll delve into everything we do to mitigate waste, chemical usage, and the hidden costs of worldwide shipping of flowers. Hopefully you might see yourself adopting some of these practices, too.

10 steps to sustainable floristry

1) source local flowers whenever possible

The biggest way we can make a positive difference in our businesses is painfully obvious: Buy locally-grown flowers whenever possible!

When you buy local flowers, you’re slashing the negative impacts of the traditional floral wholesale market, including: the carbon impact of worldwide air freight and cross-country refrigerated truck freight; the ridiculous amount of plastics and cardboard used in packing; fungicidal dips used prior to packing; greenhouse chemicals (herbicides, fungicides & pesticides) used during the flower growing process; exploitation of farm workers; and the overall perpetuation of a system that is completely unsustainable.

When you buy local, organically-grown flowers, you’re instead adding to positive impacts: pollinator habitat restoration (everyone’s favorites: Bees and Butterflies), land conservation, topsoil regeneration, providing habitats for local wildlife, spending your dollars within your local community, and spreading beauty and joy in a healthy way.

To find locally-grown flowers and flower farms across the world, visit: https://localflowers.org/find-flowers/ and Floret Farmer-Florist Collective.

If you can’t find what you need locally, consider sourcing from a small, organic farm in your country that offers shipping. Garden Roses are a great example of this: Rose Story Farm and Grace Rose Farm (both in California, USA) grow coveted garden roses with shipping and wholesale prices available to the trade. Sunny Meadows Flower Farm (Ohio, USA) also ship their flowers across the country. I’m sure there are others you can find by doing a simple Google search.

2) figure out a way to Compost your floral waste

Please, please stop throwing your living green waste in plastic garbage bags. This may be difficult for the many florists located in urban areas without a proper area to create their own compost pile. In that case, I encourage you to look into your local municipal compost collection. Municipalities may charge a fee for this service. In that case, you can figure that cost into your sales in some way — spread over a multitude of clients, it will turn out to be a small amount per transaction. You could also search for any local farms to see if they will take your floral waste (however, they may be reluctant to accept imported floral waste as this material is covered in chemicals). If it’s feasible for you to divert your floral waste from the landfill, try to do so!

We compost all of our own-grown floral waste back onto our flower farm. Imported flower waste gets raked to the curb on our residential street to be picked up and composted by the municipality.

3) no heavy chemical usage in the floral studio

Chemical bucket cleaners. Floral hydrators. Finishing sprays. There are tons of chemicals used in the traditional flower shop that, in our opinion, are completely unnecessary. Floralife’s D.C.D. bucket cleaner is one of the worst, and most unnecessary, chemicals in the floral studio. One way you can stop using these is by simply doing that… stop using them!

We use a small amount of bleach to sanitize our flower buckets. We use floral preservative in water for retail arrangements and bridal/bridesmaid bouquets only. We’ve never once used chemical floral hydrator nor finishing sprays on our flowers.

4) no spray paints

There’s been a recent trend in brightly-colored, spray painted floral — dried floral in particular. It can be tempting to want to achieve this fun look; however, if you are committed to composting your flowers, you cannot do so when flowers are spray painted. Spray paint is, essentially, micro particles of plastic that will never decompose. As such, all spray painted floral must go straight into the trash. There may be some alternative, eco-friendly spray paints on the market that are worth looking into. I’ve never used any of them so I cannot recommend any.

5) reuse wedding vessels

One of the biggest sources of waste in our floral studio are the boxes, tape, bubble wrap, and freight shipping of vases. Most of our floral work we perform is for weddings and each weekend we’re using 20-30 vessels per event. From the beginning, I decided it made the most sense to offer our vessels as rental items rather than having the client purchase them. This means we have a collection of vessels specifically for weddings that get reused over and over again.

The benefits of renting wedding vessels are incredible… it has cut the enormous cost of purchasing new vessels; we’re not taking the time to place new orders for every event; we don’t have to worry about whether something will arrive on time and in tact (ie. not broken); we’ve developed floral recipes for each type of vessel which makes floral harvesting/sourcing more organized; and we’re not having to break down boxes, bubble wrap and accept shipments all the time. We are also able to slightly reduce the cost of the floral arrangements for our clients since we’re getting the vessels back. We’re also able to reuse any liners and chicken wire mechanics inside the vessels, which saves a ton of time and materials!

6) no floral foam

Floral foam, despite the negative awareness it’s received for being a petroleum-based product that never breaks down, is still a popular mechanic in floral studios. Admittedly, we use floral foam for two of our designs — A La Carte arbor decorations that are transported/installed by the client and tall arrangements that sit on top of metal stands on a lomey dish. We do, however, reuse the foam at least two times if it’s returned to our studio.

For large overhead table installations, arbor installations, vase arrangements and all other floral designs, we use chicken wire as the main mechanic. The beauty of chicken wire is that it can be reused over and over again. For installations, we use water tubes on the ends of the flower stems and stick them into the chicken wire so they stay fresh for the entire event. It sounds like a lot of plastic, but our water tubes are used over and over again. I anticipate the box of 1,000 water tubes I bought to last my entire floral career.

The last note about not using floral foam: In my opinion, the flowers look much more natural when arranged without it. Floral foam tends to make an arrangement look stiff with all of the stems coming at you at one angle. This look might work for a lot of florists, but it’s not the look I’m trying to achieve. Designing without floral foam allows a much more natural, whimsical look, so I’ll never look back from using it on arbors, installs and vase centerpieces.

7) use paper wraps instead of cellophane

For wrapped bouquets, try using paper wraps that can be recycled or composted. Most people do not realize that cellophane, or any sort of thin plastics like that, cannot be recycled. Paper wraps will even accept a cute ink stamp of your logo, unlike cellophane.

I source my paper wraps for CSA/retail bouquets from A-Roo. When delivering retail arrangements, I deliver them in the vase as-is with no cellophane or wraps of any kind. I don’t find it necessary to wrap the flower arrangement in plastic for deliveries. The plastic tends to smash and bruise the flowers during transit.

8) turn your cooler up a few degrees

This might sound blasphemous to some people in the floral world. I don’t find any need, whatsoever, for my cooler to be lower than 40 degrees Farenheit. Most of the time it’s set at 45 degrees F. That being said, I am not holding flowers for a week or more in my cooler, rather, I am holding wedding flowers for a maximum of 4 days prior to the event. Most coolers are powered by an electricity grid that is supplied by the burning of coal. Turning your cooler up a notch will not only help lower your electric bill — it will also lower your carbon output.

We had solar panels installed in 2019 so our entire operation runs on solar power. Even though we’re running entirely on renewable energy and don’t pay an electricity bill, I don’t feel the need to turn the cooler temp lower than 45 degrees F. Call me crazy but this is what works for us!

9) source second-hand or locally made vessels

A big impact we can have is by not introducing more new stuff into the world. Sourcing second-hand vessels won’t be feasible for a flower shop that sells dozens of retail arrangements per day; however, for a business like ours that sells a lesser amount of retail arrangements, it may. I’ve sourced all of our brass candlesticks, many votive holders, and many bud vases and statement vessels, all of which we use for weddings, from thrift shops. Not only are thrifted vessels less expensive than buying retail, you can get lucky and find really unique or vintage pieces that bring a sense of specialness to your work.

I will also always accept used vases from clients, neighbors, friends and family. If there’s anything we won’t use, we donate it.

A great source of inspiration for designing in second-hand vessels is Handpicked: Simple, Sustainable and Seasonal Flower Arrangements by Ingrid Carozzi of Tin Can Studios in NYC.

An even better way to allow your flowers to shine, and help lift another small business in the process, is to order your vessels from a local ceramicist. This can, however, be expensive and challenging depending on your market and how much people are willing to pay for floral arrangements.

10) dry flowers to be used later on

Drying flowers is a process that takes time but if you have the space and patience to do it, it’s worth the effort. If I know I’ll have a need for a particular type of dried flower for a future event, I’ll remove it from used wedding arrangements and hang it to dry until needed. Roses are a perfect flower for this purpose.

For example, last year I knew I would use limmonium in my holiday wreath workshops. I ordered it in advance, in October, to use as a filler in tall centerpieces for weddings. After two wedding uses it was still usable for wreath workshops. Not only did this save a ton of money on filler flowers for the weddings; it diverted all of those flowers from being shipped and tossed after each event. Admittedly, I did not need to dry the limmonium myself, but I purposely ordered that flower knowing it would last indefinitely.

Another great example is when I had bunches upon bunches of baker fern leftover from an event. Rather than tossing to the curb, I let it dry out in a pile in the sun for about a month. It dried into a gorgeous burnt copper color that I continued to use in all types of wreaths, bouquets and vase arrangements.

11) educate your customers

Once you’ve adopted any sustainable floristry practices you must share this wonderful news with your customers! Shout about all the great things you’re doing from the rooftops (ie. post about it on social media, explain it in an email, design a poster and hang it on the wall in your shop)

Lets normalize sustainable floristry! Once everyone else knows how great it is to shift our businesses and make more sustainable decisions, they’ll want to hop on board and be a part of your mission. Make it easy for people to want to buy from you — share your sustainability story!

If there’s any other sustainable floristry tips you have, please share in a comment so we can all learn together.

peace, love, plant magic.

Fran Parrish