Garden sales have been absolutely wild here (mid-sized city in the Canadian prairies). In 2020 my main supplier smashed their previous record for mail orders by 300%. In late January this year they had *15,000* more orders than they'd had at the same time last year. Currently they've suspended phone orders, instituted a daily quota on online orders and are frantically hiring more full-time warehouse staff.
oh man, this is fascinating to hear; cool because of how notoriously hard greenhouses are to keep afloat financially, and fascinating from a garden industry perspective.
for those not acquainted with the really interesting world of garden and flower industries, most (ornamental flower) greenhouse and florist sales in recent years come from valentines’ day and mothers’ day alone, as opposed to several decades ago where flowers (in floral arrangements at least) were considered a thing you got on a regular basis without any special occasion needed. the turnover rate for retailers selling flowers for planting in gardens is really high unless you’re a big chain that sells flowers/florist services on the side, or you expand to include garden equipment, landscaping, houseplants, etc (my fave book on the flower industry and how this all goes down is called Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart, for anyone interested).
that aside, this feels like the other side of a new york times article i saw last month called We’re Saying it with Flowers. Loudly and Repeatedly, by Carly Lewis (which to be fair is specifically about florists, not greenhouse or houseplant sales; i’d assume gardening is way up too for similar reasons, though). it was really conflicting for me to read, because like...it’s a horrifying set of circumstances where this huge influx is happening, but it’s happening for really human reasons. excerpts for those who dont have access, although the whole article is really cool:
Three weeks ago, Julia Gray, a florist, delivered a bright bouquet of flowers to a customer in Queens — spring colors, by request. Judging by the accompanying card, which the sender had carefully dictated to Ms. Gray by telephone, a familial falling out had taken place. The flowers were sent as an apology.
“It was this young woman, sending flowers to her aunt,” Ms. Gray said. “She hadn’t seen her family for a year and a half.” When Ms. Gray told the recipient the flowers were from her niece, her face lit up. “People are realizing that time is of the essence,” Ms. Gray said. “You can’t hold a grudge.”
Spending the past 11 months in various states of lockdown has inspired many a soul-searching expedition. It’s been a period of perhaps involuntary rumination, during which many people have had no choice but to be alone with their thoughts. And when those thoughts sometimes become softhearted mea culpas, florists get the call.
Mr. Harkins estimates that his business is up 50 percent compared with this time last year. “My father told me when I was a young man that the flower business is recession proof,” he said. “He started during the second dip of the Great Depression in 1937. He said, ‘When things really get bad, a guy can’t go out and buy his wife a new car or a mink coat, but he can buy a dozen red roses and feel like a big shot.’ It’s kind of a denial of the hard times. That’s where the florist steps in.”
According to a recent survey conducted by the Society of American Florists, over 80 percent of respondents reported an increase in holiday sales compared to 2019. In January, 1-800-Flowers, a leading e-commerce retailer, announced what it said was the company’s highest quarterly revenue and profit in history, with a total net revenue of $877.3 million, an increase of 44.8 percent compared with the same quarter last year. Chris McCann, the president and C.E.O., estimated that approximately 22 million stems, including about 14 million roses, were delivered by the company for Valentine’s Day.
“It’s wrenching to know that the reason someone is sending flowers is because otherwise they’d be there in person,” said Whit McClure, who runs the floral design studio Whit Hazen in Los Angeles. “I get choked up thinking about that.” Ms. McClure also noted that, given the staggering number of Covid-19-related deaths in Los Angeles, she has been receiving a significant increase in condolence and sympathy orders.
“We’re getting more deliveries just to say hello and check in,” Ms. Gray said. “There’s this one couple we just started taking orders from during the pandemic. He lives in Brooklyn and she lives in Queens, she’s taking care of her elderly mother. He sends flowers to her every two weeks — beautiful arrangements, always decadent, gorgeous long-stem roses. Had the pandemic not happened, he could have been seeing her and not sending her flowers. You should see the cards he writes. He is madly in love with her. They actually got in a fight, I think they broke up at one point. But they got back together. He kept sending flowers.”
Emily Scott, who owns Floriconvento Flowers in Harlem, said that customers and florists alike are mindful of exacerbated sensitivities amid the pandemic. “There have been so many deaths, and that is such a touchy subject,” she said. “But whether it’s a death or a great, positive occasion like a new birth, there’s still so much love that needs to be expressed.” As well as less clear emotions: “There’s a lot of nuance that can be acknowledged through flowers.”
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