For some Cheney High School students, agriculture wasn’t it. Then they joined the school’s floriculture team

A meander through Cheney High School’s halls means passing by dozens of classrooms to entertain the senses: like the dissonance of band class or the squeaking of sneakers on the gym floor. But only one amuses the olfactory system with an enticing aroma of eucalyptus, flowering stock and roses.

The floral scent hits immediately upon crossing the threshold into Agriculture teacher Heather Nelson’s classroom, identified as the “floral classroom” by a sign at her door.

Inside, greenery coats each table where students work assembling a vase arrangement at the instruction of Allen Skoog in a flower arranging, or floriculture, class. Two of the students are also in the FFA club, not because they fancy themselves future farmers.

“I’m here because I like flowers,” laughed sophomore Sage Knight. “I’m not here because I own a farm, unfortunately.”

The FFA club includes a floriculture team seven students strong. They work in the school’s greenhouse, vie in intense knowledge-based competitions and, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, arrange a bouquet with a dozen roses framed by meticulously placed baby’s breath and foliage.

Knight and senior Rylei Covey compared their arrangements, with Covey eventually adding stems of purple and yellow alstroemeria to compliment the bright red roses.

They’ll sell these to staff around the school on Valentine’s Day, offering a convenient option for staff who procrastinate buying their sweeties a gift. They’ve already got a taker: a student in class asked to buy a rose bouquet as a gift for his mom. They also sell smaller, more affordable vases to their peers.

To qualify for the floriculture team, kids must take an associated flower arranging class originally taught exclusively by Nelson, though this year Skoog took on a period because of the high demand from Cheney students. He otherwise teaches welding.

The class is equal parts art and science: kids learn about design elements that make an eye-catching bouquet, as well as plant reproduction, how to classify flowers and why flowers are so enticing to humans.

“Because they’re pretty, insects and people are attracted to them, and that pollinates them and ensures their survival as a species,” Nelson said. “We’re pollinating them accidentally, but then also intentionally planting their seeds and coming up with the hybrids, so we’re perpetuating that.”

Eventually, students are tasked with assembling their own Japanese-style design with greenery that grows outside the school.

“It’s cool because it forces them to look at things that we don’t usually think of as a decorative flower in that way,” Nelson said. “They have to use a lot of grasses and branches and shrubs and stuff.”

While the floriculture team relishes the time spent in the greenhouse and arranging flowers with their friends, the mini florists’ minds are open to the complex world of plant anatomy.

“Learning about the structures, how the inside is and how flowers reproduce and all that, I thought that was really fun to learn about,” Knight said. “I’ve never thought about, like, where the seeds develop.”

While FFA is typically associated with crop science or raising livestock, floriculture is a blossoming sect in its first year post-COVID, Nelson said.

“This is really just one element of a varied and robust Ag. department and FFA program,” Nelson said. “We’re excited about it; there’s something for pretty much everybody in FFA.”