Over the years, I’ve contemplated many different ways to potentially grow our little flower business. For a long time, I thought the answer would be to buy more land and expand our production in a big, big way. We were selling every stem we could produce on our tiny two-acre farm and still had a waiting list a mile long of customers eager to buy our flowers. I was constantly getting messages from designers literally begging me to ship our blooms to them. What should have been a “good” problem to have, sure didn’t feel like it at the time. I was constantly having to say no and then dealing with very disappointed customers whose only other option, at that time, was to buy imported blooms.
Expanding our acreage seemed like it would be a solution. When our plan to purchase more land fell through a few years ago, there was a part of me that was secretly relieved. In hindsight, the timing wasn’t right. Plus, the prospect of shipping our flowers to far flung places seemed like a contradiction of what I’d been saying for years: that using local flowers when they’re in season and at their most abundant will give you the most luscious, beautiful bouquets. So, rather than expanding Floret’s fields, I expanded Floret’s focus.