‘We help our customers feel’: The retiring owners of Spokane’s oldest florist shop reflect on decades of service for Valentine’s Day

A bouquet, in any form, is an expression of emotions, said Susie Matteson, former owner of Peters and Sons Flowers and Gifts.

“I always tell people, ‘We don’t really sell flowers,’ ” Matteson said. “We help our customers feel, and through very important, emotional periods of their lives. That has always been our purpose, and now we have to find a new purpose.”

Susie and Ray Matteson owned and operated Peters and Sons, Spokane’s oldest floral shop, for 33 years. Newspaper archives state the shop first opened in 1910, although Susie said 1905 is more accurate, citing Peters family records and an old sign in the basement.

At the start of the month, the Mattesons passed the baton to Caitlyn Collins, a former healthcare worker. Collins said she’s ready for a less stressful and emotionally taxing line of work, while Matteson said she and her husband are ready for some rest.

“I call it our big adventure,” Susie Matteson said.

The Mattesons were the first longtime operators of the shop outside the Peters lineage but not the first owners. They took over in 1992 after another local business owner, John Van Voorhis, decided to sell the shop a year after he bought it from the Peters family.

Ray Matteson was working in a wholesale florists shop when Van Voorhis approached him with the offer. Susie Matteson was pursuing a masters in agricultural sciences at the time. While she did not complete it, she said she ended up earning a “masters of hard knocks” through joining her husband at the shop.

“It’s been an experience like no other,” she said. “Having the ability to serve others is such a huge enjoyment in my life. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Running a small business is a full-time affair, filled with early mornings, late nights and some weeks of long stints without a day off. It’s been tough at times, Susie Matteson said, but she reflects fondly on the opportunities and memories tied to the work.

“We have so enjoyed getting to dedicate our lives to our customers,” Susie Matteson said.

Christmas, in particular, was one of her favorite seasons to work. She enjoys the festive displays, well-wishing spirit and the business bump it provides in the winter. Completing all of the orders for Valentine’s Day is always a sprint, but Susie said she enjoys getting to see their returning customers, some of whom have been patrons of the shop for generations.

It’s also allowed the Mattesons to give back to the community that’s supported the business for more than a century, like when Susie was asked to touch up the flowers accompanying four crew members from Fairchild Air Force Base who were killed in a crash over Germany in 1999.

Susie Matteson was one of few in the region experienced with the European approach to floral design and ensured the arrangements were in proper order before the services.

They’ve seen Spokane and their business change a lot over the years, “in a number of good ways,” Susie Matteson said. They took over the shop while it was still at what is likely the best known former location, at the intersection of Riverside Avenue and Lincoln Street.

They had a few different locations in and near downtown Spokane before arriving at their current home of 10 years at 314 E. Sprague Ave.

While still downtown, Susie Matteson said the business saw tons of sales driven by the Beanie Baby craze of the ’90s. Eager customers learned how to spot new deliveries from UPS, down to the boxes the plushies were in, which led the Mattesons to strategically horde new shipments for a few days before restocking the shelves.

Their clientele has also included a few celebrities over the years, including Neil Diamond, who sent flowers to the staff of Spokane Arena for a job well done, as well as “The Fonz,” Henry Winkler, who would send flowers to a friend of his wife’s who lived in town.

“Always enjoyed talking to him on the phone,” Susie Matteson said of Winkler.

After meeting on a blind date, the couple will celebrate their 50th anniversary this year. They’re parents to two children, one since deceased, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Susie Matteson said they’ve had their own share of adventures outside of work over the years, including visits to all lower-48 states, trips to the coast and more than a few journeys down back roads just to see where they lead.

Driving has always been a part of their relationship. They met through a mutual friend in the rally car scene, at a time when Ray, who was recently divorced, was in need of a navigator. Susie filled that role for years as they competed in sports car rallies around the Northwest. She said they were about to go pro before the gas crunch of the ’80s made it too costly and time consuming to travel around the region.

“We had a great time,” Susie Matteson said. “That was our time to go and be and do. It was a lot of fun.”

As for their next chapter, Susie Matteson said they’re mostly looking forward to having nowhere to go, and nothing to do. They’re ready to relax and spend more time in their backyard, which they’ve converted into a wildlife sanctuary, while being able to visit more with family and their kitten, Brownie.

“We’re just enjoying the moment right now,” Susie Matteson said.

Ray Matteson said they’re still figuring out what to do with all the newfound freetime.

“I’m still in the planning stage,” Ray Matteson said while juggling tasks at the shop, bustling ahead of Valentine’s Day.

“I’ve got a wood workshop that I built 10 years ago on the end of my garage,” he added. “I’ve used it, but because in those days, we were working six days a week, Sunday afternoon’s all I really had.”

Collins said she’s already enjoying being able to wake up and spend her days at the shop. She’s excited about the opportunity to carry on its long legacy.

“We’re still the same shop that’s been serving everybody for 120 years,” Collins said. “There’ll be maybe some cosmetic changes, but yeah, come down and see us.”

A business with deep roots in Spokane

Spokane, known as the Lilac City, has a lengthy history as a hub for flower production.

The first lilacs arrived in Spokane and the Inland Northwest in the late 1800s, though the first official recording of lilacs being planted was in the Browne’s Addition in 1906, according to Spokane Historical Society.

This account includes the procurement by John Duncan of 128 cultivars from Rochester, New York in 1912, for what would become the Lilac Garden in Manito Park.

William E. Peters, a railroad boilermaker who founded Peters and Sons, arrived in Spokane around the same time as the city’s namesake flower.

An opportunity with the Great Northern Railway brought him to Spokane, but he quickly turned his passion for gardening into a full-time affair. By his death in 1932, Peters had established two flower shops, a wholesale operation and a 15-acre nursery with multiple greenhouses in Hillyard.

By 1940, Spokane was considered the fourth-largest hub for flower production in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River, as reported by The Spokesman-Review.

Peters and Sons were a large part of that success, with their crops that same year consisting of 12,000 rose bushes, 30,000 carnation plants, 65,000 chrysanthemum plants, 600,000 annual plants and 20,000 geraniums. That’s on top of 3 acres devoted to cut flowers like asters, zinnias, lilies and gladiolus, 5 acres of shrubs, evergreens, trees and perennials, and large patches of tomatoes, squash, cabbages, peppers and more.

Aubrey L. White, former garden editor for The Spokesman-Review, wrote fondly of his visit to the facility in 1943, when “Victory gardeners” across the country established their own vegetable gardens to help bolster food supplies during World War II. The company grew more than 400,000 vegetable plants that year, on top of their flower production.

White, called the “father of Spokane’s Parks” by the Spokane Historical Society, was the first park board president of Spokane and played instrumental roles in establishing Mt. Spokane, Bowl and Pitcher and several other parks, parkways and playfields.

“The gardeners buy only from 12 to 18 plants each of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc., so one can readily see the thousands of Victory gardeners who could secure their supplies from this one greenhouse,” White wrote. “Yet Walter Peters of the company informed me the other day they were virtually sold out.”

The 15-acre facility was sold during the war, according to newspaper archives. The land, bordered by Havana Street to the east, Florida Street to the west, and Wellesley and Queen avenues to the north and the south, is now empty, with a few commercial businesses in the area.

Shortly after sons Walter and William F. Peters inherited the business, they opened a third location in downtown Spokane, which would become the most recognizable location for longtime Spokanites. The shop operated on the corner of Lincoln Street and Riverside Avenue for more than 70 years, furnishing generations of locals with Valentine’s Day bouquets, homecoming corsages and funeral arrangements.

Later, William F. Peters’ son Robert “Bob” Peters would oversee the opening and closing of a location within the large skywalk system that once bustled a few floors above downtown Spokane. The ’ 80s brought a slate of new business for the shops, with Bob Peters telling the newspaper in 1985 that foliage had become an essential element of interior design.

“In your better magazines, you’re seeing much use of plants – foliage plants, tropical plants and blooming plants – as well as cut flowers,” Bob Peters said.

As the founder’s grandson, Bob Peters was the last family member to own and operate the facility. He was elected president of the Deaconess Medical Center Foundation’s board of trustees in 1988, just a few years before he’d sell the business to the owners who passed the baton to the Mattesons.