Behind the Bouquet: Local florists prep for year’s busiest day

In early January, I was visiting local florists just as they came out of what they all agree is their busiest season of the year. Without exception, their shops looked slightly disarrayed, as the florists were in the process of un-decking the halls of local businesses they had decorated, and inventorying and packing up any Christmas-themed gifts that remained in their shops.

Even as florist focus shifts toward the next holiday, Valentine’s Day, the busiest single day of the florist year, the everyday orders churn on. There are always birthdays and anniversaries to celebrate, get-well and sympathy arrangements to prepare, church altars and banquet tables to decorate, and wedding flowers to design. 

“You don’t know what each day is going to bring. It’s never a mundane job where you have to do repetitive work over and over and over again. Each day is entirely different; it switches up, so there’s always some excitement built in,” says Daniel Vaughn, owner of Daniel Vaughn Designs at 355 Colonnade Boulevard.

This is a common sentiment among the three florists I spoke with, although their styles, shops, and experiences differ. 

‘Selling emotion’

Daniel Vaughn 

Daniel Vaughn Designs

Vaughn started working in his grandmother’s flower shop when he was just thirteen years old. He attended design school after high school, and now the third-generation florist has been in business for himself for 47 years, owning two flower shops—one in Mount Union and one in State College, near Wegmans. 

Vaughn has four full-time employees and several part-time employees who handle everything from prepping flowers to taking orders to delivering the finished products.

“Every job is equally as important, and I really mean that,” he says. “When the flowers come in from the market, they have to be processed correctly in order to drink, hydrate, take water, and become a good flower. If that’s not handled properly, then we don’t have good flowers to work with. That’s the beginning. The person taking the order has to be knowledgeable and take good care of the customer; the designer has to make it; and the final person is the person who delivers the flowers to the door. You know, it doesn’t matter how pretty a designer makes something—if the driver doesn’t get it there in one piece, it was all for nothing.”

Vaughn is a stickler for quality, and he buys his flowers directly from farmers, as well as through wholesalers in New York and Philadelphia. He also has relationships with buyers in Holland.

“I can go online and see exactly what the flowers cost on the Dutch market, what the weight is of the flower stem itself so you can tell what quality you’re buying, and then I place my order. … Then it is shipped to New York and we have it the next day,” he says. “It’s amazing. I often wish my grandmother were alive to see all this. She closed her store in 1972. As a kid, I can remember going to the train station with her to meet the train and get flowers from the wholesale market in Pittsburgh, but this—she wouldn’t believe it.”

As far as Valentine’s Day, Vaughn says while it’s the single busiest day for his shop, it’s not the biggest holiday. Christmas is bigger, and Mother’s Day comes close, he says. Still, to prepare for the big day, he brings in extra freelance staff, including some designer friends from New York and Reading. 

Unsurprisingly, traditional Valentine’s Day roses are the biggest seller, he says, but, “I always try to offer something a little different; I don’t want to be cookie-cutter. … We do some pretty lavender roses called ‘Moody Blues.’ I always get this beautiful apricot one too, called ‘Free Spirit.’ It’s a beautiful rose; it opens gorgeous.”

Although he considers weddings to be his shop’s specialty, Vaughn finds fulfillment in all of the work.

“I like the fact that we are involved in moments in people’s lives. Whether it’s a happy occasion, or a somber occasion like the passing of a family member, it’s something that touches somebody in some fashion. It’s a good thing to be that. I’ve often said we sell flowers as a product, but more so, I think we’re selling emotion. I think that’s the most rewarding part,” he says.

‘Controlled chaos’

Allen Baney

Avánt Garden

After 24 years at his shop at 242 East Calder Way, Allen Baney knows what to expect on February 14: a constant stream of male Penn State students lined up out the door, most of them last-minute shoppers with little knowledge of flowers, and even less of an idea about what their girlfriends like. 

Because of its location so close to campus, the shop gets an unusually high amount of walk-in traffic that day. Avánt Garden will prepare by setting up displays of ready-to-take arrangements, he says, and besides roses, they’ll sell hundreds of stuffed bears as well as candy and balloons. 

“When you’re dealing with a man-based holiday, it has to be a no-brainer. We try to make it as easy as possible so they can come in and see something and say, ‘I’ll take it,’” he says.

The store will also be making hundreds of deliveries, many to campus dorm rooms and university offices.

Baney prepares for the holiday by recruiting friends and family members—including his wife, mother, sister, and two sons—to supplement the shop’s regular workforce of four. Some will work the front counter, some will wrap orders, some will handle paperwork, some will organize the routes for the delivery drivers, and some will deliver orders. 

“It’s a big operation in a small store. A lot of controlled chaos,” he says.

Meanwhile, Baney will mostly be in the back room, designing arrangements along with one other designer.

“It’s more important that I’m designing that day, versus worrying about drivers,” he explains. “We try to work a day ahead. Drivers can’t be waiting for flowers if they’re doing routes, and we try not to double routes, especially with the price of gas. You don’t want to be going from here to Port Matilda two or three times a day. So the logistics are very important.”

Although he says the Christmas season is busier, “I would rather do Christmas than Valentine’s Day, because it’s so crazy, chaotic, and jammed into a one- or two-day period. And the weather plays a factor. Dealing with a perishable product, you have to be aware of temperature. If it’s very cold, we have to wrap everything, or even double wrap. It’s just another logistic you have to add into the mix. You have to get hundreds of arrangements wrapped, carted, routed into trucks, and if you’re trudging through snow, it’s not fun. We’ve pushed vans that were stuck in snow.” 

Baney began his career as a greenhouse grower after earning a degree in ornamental horticulture. The greenhouse company also owned Davidson’s Flower Shop in downtown State College, and one day Baney was unexpectedly asked to fill in there for a shop employee who was having a baby. 

“I never went back to the greenhouse,” he laughs. 

Instead, he headed to floral design school in Pittsburgh. Eventually he opened a flower shop in Philipsburg, and then a shop in Lemont—The Cat’s Meow—before opening Avánt Garden in downtown State College in 1999.

Today, Avánt Garden is the only remaining flower shop in downtown State College, and as such, students make up a large part of the shop’s clientele all year long, Baney says. The shop also does a lot of work for Penn State itself, including for the alumni association and football recruiting events. 

Baney strives to stock a unique selection of flowers, which he buys through wholesalers in York and Bloomsburg, and he says his shop is most known for its signature contemporary designs. 

“Creativity is my favorite part of the job—designing and making unusual things and forcing myself to be creative,” he says. 

From proposals to funerals

Susan Munnell

A Flower Basket

When you walk in the front door of A Flower Basket at 633 East Howard Street in Bellefonte, there is a good chance you’ll be greeted by Lucy, a friendly five-year-old tabby cat.

“Lucy loves people. She’ll be in the back room and when she hears the bell of the door, she’ll go ripping out front. She loves the attention,” says shop owner Susan Munnell.

Lucy has become a mascot of sorts, appearing in the store’s advertisements and lending her name to the gift shop portion of the store: “Lucy’s Gift Shop.”

The cat has lived at the shop for almost as long as Munnell has owned it; she purchased the business from Faith Miller five years ago. As a former schoolteacher, Munnell is a relative newcomer to the florist industry, but she says Miller has helped her get up to speed on everything she needs to know. 

“Faith has a degree in horticulture and she had this store for thirty-some years. She still works here two days a week, and she has walked me through every step. I couldn’t have done it without her,” Munnell says.

Like other florists, Munnell relies on the help of friends and family for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. They’ll assist with de-thorning roses, handling paperwork, and delivering orders.

“It’s all happening at once, and there are so many extra people; it’s like a little ant farm,” she says. “You just have to plan.”

Munnell’s good friend JoAnn McMinn is a retired banker who works with the shop’s online orders but finds herself helping with deliveries on holidays. Last Valentine’s Day, McMinn made an unusual delivery—a bouquet of white roses to which Munnell had tied an engagement ring at the request of a young man who wanted to propose to his girlfriend.

“I took the flowers into her work, but she didn’t see the ring while I was there. I was so disappointed because I didn’t get to see her reaction,” McMinn says. “We found out later she said ‘yes.’”

Munnell has four designers on staff, most of whom have worked at the shop since before she took over. She expects a lot from them.

“I try to make everything that goes out of here something I would want to receive. I always want it to be something I can be proud of, because my name is on everything,” she says. 

Customer service is also important to her, and she says her delivery drivers often do more than simply drop off flowers. On a recent route, Munnell says, a driver salted a sidewalk for one elderly customer and poured cereal and milk into a bowl for another.

Because the shop is located directly across the street from the former site of the Centre Crest nursing facility, the store has built a strong clientele of senior citizens. 

“I love our older customers. I’ve developed relationships with them and will call them to make sure they’re okay. We have such lovely, supportive customers. When the pandemic hit, they would call and ask us how we were doing, and if we needed anything,” Munnell says.

She says people might be surprised to know that the florist industry actually flourished during the pandemic.

“People would call and say, ‘I haven’t seen my mother in six months; can you take flowers to her house?’ So it was sad, but business was booming. But I would never want to go through it again.”

One of Munnell’s favorite things is designing arrangements for funerals.

“I know that sounds strange, but I like to honor that person who has passed. I think it’s important to take the time and make it beautiful for them, and for the family that’s left behind,” she says.

Valentine’s Day Flower Buying Tips

Order early. Florists do not have an unlimited number of roses stocked in their coolers, so last-minute shoppers might not be able to find exactly what they’re looking for. “There’s always a limited supply of the best flowers,” says Vaughn.

Buy local. For the best bang for your buck, all of the florists say your best bet is ordering directly from a local florist rather than through a wire service. While established, well-known services like FTD and Teleflora can usually be trusted, according to Baney, there are a lot of less trustworthy online “order-gatherers” posing as flower shops. Often, they are not based in the United States, know nothing about flowers, and do not necessarily stand behind their product, he says. These services do nothing more than send the orders to local flower shops anyway, and often they take such a big cut from the price that you will end up getting a much smaller or lower quality arrangement than you would if you went through the shop directly.

Think outside the box. While roses are a traditional favorite, Baney says, “Sometimes we try to steer the boys away from roses, because you can get so much more for your money if you’re getting other flowers, like hydrangeas or tulips.”

You get what you pay for. Yes, “a rose is a rose,” but not all roses are created equal. You may be able to buy a dozen roses from the grocery store for a fraction of a florist’s price, but those flowers have not been cared for the way a florist does. Munnell says, “When you buy roses for $9.99 … they’re just coming into the store in a box and being thrown into a bucket,” making them less likely to look as nice or last as long. T&G

Karen Walker is a freelance writer in State College.