A bouquet doesn't begin when I pick up the scissors. By the time the flowers reach someone's front door, they've already had quite a journey. Some may have been growing in a field that morning, others have travelled from a specialist grower, and all of them arrive at the shop needing a little attention before they are ready to become someone's flowers.
There is something rather lovely about that journey. A flower that begins as one stem in a grower's field can, a few days later, be sitting in a vase on someone's kitchen table because somebody wanted to say thank you, happy birthday, I'm thinking of you, or simply I saw these and thought of you.
It starts with the flowers
The first job is choosing the flowers. This is where being a florist becomes rather different from choosing flowers from a catalogue. What is available changes constantly. The season, the weather, the growers and even the day of the week can all influence what arrives at the shop.
I might have a particular colour combination in mind, but then a bucket of flowers arrives in exactly the shade I wasn't expecting and suddenly the whole idea changes. That's one of the things I love about working with fresh flowers. They don't always follow the plan.
We look at colour, shape, size, texture and condition, but also at what the flowers are going to be used for. A bouquet for a birthday can be completely different from flowers for a sympathy order, and neither should look as though they came from the same recipe book.
The flowers need some work before they are ready
Fresh flowers don't simply arrive and go straight into a bouquet. There is quite a lot of preparation involved first.
Stems are checked, leaves are removed where necessary, and each flower is cut and placed into clean water. Some flowers need more attention than others. Roses, chrysanthemums, lilies, hydrangeas and delicate seasonal flowers all have their own little preferences, and part of a florist's job is knowing what each one needs.
It isn't the most glamorous part of floristry, and customers rarely see it, but good flower conditioning makes a real difference. The flowers we use in an arrangement need to be healthy, properly hydrated and ready to perform once they leave the shop.
Then comes the fun part
Once the flowers are prepared, the bouquet starts to take shape.
This is where there isn't really a formula. I might start with one beautiful flower that catches my eye and build around it. Or perhaps the colours suggest the direction first. Sometimes I know exactly what I want before I start. Sometimes I stand at the bench with a bucket of flowers and let them tell me what they want to become.
I look at the balance of the arrangement as I work. Tall stems give height, flowers of different sizes create depth, foliage gives movement and the smaller flowers fill the spaces in between. The aim isn't to make every stem identical. I want the bouquet to have life and movement.
And then, inevitably, I step back.
A florist spends a surprising amount of time looking at flowers from a distance, turning the bouquet around, taking something out and putting something else in. One stem in the wrong place can change the whole shape.
The finishing touches
When the arrangement is finished, there is still work to do. The flowers are given a final check, the stems are prepared and the bouquet is wrapped carefully so that it arrives looking as good as it did when it left the bench.
The card is checked, the order is checked again, and then the flowers are ready to go.
For same-day local deliveries, there can be quite a lot happening in a very short space of time. An order arriving in the morning can mean choosing flowers, conditioning them, designing the arrangement, wrapping it and having it ready for delivery that afternoon.
That's why our 2pm same-day ordering cut-off exists. It gives us enough time to do the job properly rather than rushing something out of the door.
And then the bouquet leaves us
This is probably the strangest part of being a florist. You can spend quite a long time making something that is very personal to you, and then suddenly it is wrapped up and gone.
We don't always know the moment it arrives at its destination. We don't see someone's face when they open the door. We don't hear the conversation that follows or see where the flowers are placed.
But we know why they were ordered.
Someone wanted to make another person smile. Someone wanted to celebrate. Someone wanted to say thank you. Someone couldn't find the right words and decided to send flowers instead.
And that is really the journey of a bouquet. It starts with a flower, but it ends with a feeling.
The next time you receive a bouquet, spare a thought for everything that happened before it arrived. Behind those flowers is a grower, a journey, a florist's bench, a pair of hands and quite a lot of care.
And then, finally, there is you.