Behind the bouquet: Valentine’s Day takes the work of dozens who build for blooming businesses

It’s mid-February and the flowers are coming in by the thousands. Roses. Lilies. Carnations. Hydrangeas. The boxes of stems are shipped from farms all over. Ecuador. California. Oregon. Florida. The Netherlands.

In Spokane County, they all wind up in the hands of lovers, friends and family members on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.

A YouGov poll from 2021 showed that fewer than one-third of Americans (28%) believe Valentine’s Day is celebrated as a “real” holiday. But for florists, farmers and delivery drivers, the occasion could not be more real.

Jessica Mae, a florist at Rose and Blossom in the Logan neighborhood, is humming to a song playing in the background on a recent day as she cuts various greenery branches and locates them into a new vase, building the lattice work of interlocking stems that form the base layer of an arrangement. Mae then inserts a custom combination of flowers into the greenery, creating a series of overlapping geometric patterns.

At a nearby workstation, Jaisy Hanlon, another florist, gives a freshly completed arrangement a light spritz of floral spray to help the arrangement last longer before it goes out the next morning.

There are deadlines to meet, phone calls to answer, orders to fill, flowers to process, buckets to wash, floors to sweep and so much more that builds up to a fever pitch this time of year.

New faces fill the shop as florists and delivery drivers are hired on a temporary basis for the holiday rush. Buckets of flowers are hauled into the shop by the dozens. The flowers are trimmed and slotted into arrangements before being stored in a climate-controlled staging area before their delivery.

It can be stressful and exhausting but that’s the case for most creative work, Hanlon said. At the end of the day, would she want to do anything different? Definitely not.

“Think about it,” she said. “What we’re doing is giving people happiness. We’re making people’s days.”

Hanlon and Mae are just two people with whom I work at one of Rose and Blossom’s two locations, near Gonzaga on Sharpe Avenue in a former restaurant. When I’m not working at my “day job” as a breaking news and public safety reporter, I am often working at the flower shop.

Occasionally, those worlds collide when our sympathy arrangements begin to reflect the names in the obituary section. It can be a jarring experience, spending part of the day listening to the grim details of a murder trial at the Spokane County Superior Court, only to finish out the evening surrounded by a colorful array of floral arrangements with kind messages attached to them.

I took this job because I was looking for a way to save more money, but it’s much more than an extra source of income to me. It’s fun for me, and the people with whom I work are talented and hilarious.

But it’s even more than that. It’s an art form as old as time.

People have arranged flowers for gifts for as long as they have been banging on drums and beating each other over the head with clubs.

Although Valentine’s Day is commonly understood as a celebration in honor of St. Valentine, the third -century patron saint of lovers, the tradition is thought to predate Christianity. Lupercalia, as it was known in ancient Rome, was a celebration of fertility in mid-February before the Catholic Church later assimilated the celebration into the Christian tradition.

Today, the holiday is a major commercial operation. The never-ending slew of birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, funerals and apologetic boyfriends keeps the floral business relatively steady throughout the year. But Valentine’s Day is where flower shops around their country make their money, followed by Mother’s Day a few months later.

“We are swamped,” said Jo Branson, a manager at Evergreen Florist in Spokane, who said she has hired extra delivery drivers and florists to help with the workload this year.

Pandemic-related, supply-chain issues during the past two years and, more recently, inflation have made business for florists around the country especially challenging.

The florists I work with have said they have seen independently owned flower shops go out of business all over the country over the past 10 years, including in Spokane during the pandemic.

“We have been fortunate enough to survive all of that,” said Chris Dalkey, the owner at Lilac City Blooms, who spoke with me a few days before Valentine’s Day. “Flower prices have went up as well as everything else. Some are more than double pre-COVID prices, and it’s not like we’re charging double. Plus, a lot of people are strapped for cash because everything is so expensive.”

Sabrina Bosch, the owner of Town & Country Floral in Cheney, said the past two years have been especially challenging for her as well.

“The price of flowers went up 30%. Hard goods went up 50%,” said Bosch, who has been working in floristry for 45 years. “Then let’s add labor in there. Minimum wage went up.”

I have also seen those prices continually increase over the past two years since I started working in the business. Customers are often surprised to learn that an arrangement with a dozen roses can cost more than $100, or that a smaller arrangement of flowers can cost anywhere between $50-$100 before shipping and taxes.

You might wonder why anyone would spend so much money when they could easily just pick up a bundle of two dozen roses for less than half that price from a grocery store.

I always tell them you get what you pay for. You’re going to get premium flowers that are going to last much longer than those sitting in a grocery store container.

“You’re getting a better deal at the store, but you’re getting better value at a florist,” Dalkey said.

I never intended to pick up floristry as a side gig or hobby. It came to me almost as a fluke during COVID. Flowers were something I found challenging and interesting. A friend of mine in the business once referred to the art form akin to “found-object sculpture.” You’re forced to create something beautiful out of a pre-existing range of objects, or stems in this case. Although the stems can appear similar to each other, each arrangement takes on its own life as you build it. No two arrangements are alike.

“You’re paying for a professional to design, and you’re paying for quality,” Bosch said. “If there’s a flower shop in your neighborhood, go there instead of going to the grocery store. You’re going to spend a little more money, but they’re going to last a lot longer, and look 100% better.”