It’s been 10 very eventful (and event-filled!) years since I officially launched Love ‘n Fresh Flowers in January of 2009.  I was talking to a dear flower friend the other day and reminiscing about how it felt back then to open up my heart to a business idea that seemed so exciting and yet so terrifying without any solid florist training or experience.  I just had a dream back then.  I knew essentially nothing about the floral industry. What I did know was that I wanted change.  I knew I wanted to get back to something more tactile than the paper-pushing I had been doing as a corporate cog.  I wanted to do work that mattered.

I saw a niche that begged to be filled in the floral market (making blooms grown right here in Philadelphia elegant and desirable for weddings), and I decided to just go for it.  I quit my corporate job and started a flower farm (waaaaay before that was a trendy thing to do).  Almost immediately I got asked to do flowers for a wedding.  I’m not going to lie here: I had no idea what I was doing for that first wedding.  None!  I have the proposal for that very first wedding laminated and tucked in my bookcase at my office.  I pull it out on occasion, glance over the numbers and the naive promises made therein, and remind myself how very far I’ve come.

A Need for Professional Florist Training

Back in 2009, I was a self-declared floral professional stumbling around like a kitten with her eyes only half open.  I really should have gotten more professional florist training before launching my business, but I was a) in a hurry and b) couldn’t find a program teaching sustainable design techniques and on-trend styles.  Instead, I poked and prodded wherever I could, trying to get more knowledge specific to the immediate marketplace here in Philly.  I even pretended to be a bride and visited one of the big shops to ask about pricing, something that bothers my conscious to this day.

I got lucky though and pieced together enough information to bootstrap my way to running a successful floral business.  The key was to connect to experienced pros on a personal level via two great organizations. At Longwood Gardens, I was able to take floral design classes that taught the fundamentals and mechanics of solid design.  And through the Association for Specialty Cut Flower Growers (ASCFG), I learned a lot about business and managing events through informal mentors like Neil and Carol Caggiano and Mike and Polly Hutchison.  Through my membership in the ASCFG, I’ve also fostered utterly irreplaceable friendships with flower farmers and florists across the country that have fed my soul and been a critical sounding board when shit hits the fan in my flower dream machine.

These connections, the generous transfer of hard-won knowledge, the occasional moment of tough love, and the shared tears have made Love ‘n Fresh not only possible, but a highly successful business pioneering a new way of doing that business.  In 2009, the floral trends seemed stacked against me (farm flowers were relegated to mason jars and considered as cheap as the dirt they came from), but my hodgepodge cohort of floral colleagues that were willing to equally exchange best practices and anecdotes meant I could gather what I needed to buck the odds.

I’ve had a lot of leadership roles in these past ten years.  I’ve just started my tenure as President of the very same ASCFG.  I’ve gone back and been the teacher for floral design classes at Longwood Gardens.  And I’ve taught hundreds of students at workshops, classes, clubs, and conferences of all kinds.  And yet, I’ve never felt like I’ve matched what was given to me.  I’ve wrestled with how to send out into the floral world what was so generously imparted to me.

At the same time, I’ve watched this once stuffy and FTD-infused industry evolve and transform into a vibrant, animated, but often chaotic whirlpool that churns with the latest list of the Top Ten Pinterest Worthy Bouquets per The Knot or Our Favorite Florists on Instagram per the NY Times or the Top 62 Floral Designers in the nation per Martha Stewart Weddings.  Not to mention the latest podcast or online course giving glossy generalizations to inspire more creatives to take the leap into flowers.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been honored and humbled to be included on some of these lists, podcasts, and courses!  But what these all have done is create a frenetic pace in our industry that can’t be sustained.  There’s a race to get noticed – to be part of the trend – to glean just enough soundbites – to grab market share at dire costs – rather than build a solid foundation for this new floral revolution.  It’s like a 9-year-old kid in a Spiderman costume running around the living room at 11 PM on a sugar rush.  Ironically, while the focus in the floral world here on the East Coast has shifted noticeably toward more sustainable flowers since I started (hooray!), we’ve somehow managed to lose sight of how to build sustainable businesses and, more importantly, an industry that can sustain us all for the long haul.  There’s a decided lack of professional florist training.  The existing florist training options are generally still part of that old guard, focused on foam and ratios.  I can understand why there’s not a stampede to join AIFD for florist training.  

While mulling all of this over, a lot of ideas came to my mind.  There’s clearly a problem here.  I’m a natural-born problem solver; nothing makes my brain twitch quite like searching for solutions!  I could start my own podcast and get gritty.  I could create my own online course.  I could write a book.  (Clearly, I like writing…hopefully someone’s still actually reading this!)

But no.  I’m not going to hide behind a glowing screen.  I’m not going to generalize and make sweeping statements in a podcast that can be heard in every time zone.  I’m not going to be a static picture on the dust jacket of a book.  Frankly, I’m not interested in helping everyone with broad strokes of advice.  I need to make this personal and powerful.

I want to help just a select few to start – a select few right here in my own region – and build incredibly honest relationships that support and sustain.  And I don’t want that relationship to be singular.  What made Love ‘n Fresh Flowers successful was the professional friends/peers I gathered around me at the beginning of my journey that have been there every day since when I needed them.  They are my safety net, my sounding board, my hive mind, my drinking buddies, my cheerleaders.   They are my cohort.

Floral Cohorts

In 2019, we’ll be launching an entirely new way to train to be a professional florist here at Love ‘n Fresh Flowers!  We’re calling this new format Floral Cohorts.  If you have dreamed of entering the floral industry or if you have already started but feel a bit lost, joining a Floral Cohort will give you a home base for learning all the fundamentals you need to stride confidently along your creative path.  This is the perfect learning experience in particular for aspiring floral freelancers and small event design start-ups.

So, what is a cohort exactly?  Cohorts are common in graduate school programs where they are used to encourage a more dynamic, collaborative, and supportive learning environment to carry students through their intensive graduate program.  We’ll be adopting this same format for a small-group learning experience based out of our flower farm in Philadelphia.  Each Floral Cohort will be capped at 10 students who will complete the program together over the course of 10 months.  These 10 students will become peers; flower friends for life!  They will be your support network that steers your floral endeavors to success.

While I already teach plenty of dynamic floral design workshops at the farm, they provide only a limited time for students to interact, both with each other and with me.  I  wanted to create a more long-term format that would not only teach critical skills at a professional level and increase knowledge, but also build lasting relationships and a community of sisters in stems so we can foster a healthier and more sustainable floral industry in our region.

Sure, there are plenty of ways to tackle florist training through online videos and courses!  But those online options do not provide you with face-to-face friendships and peer-to-peer support that will last long after the course work is done!  Floral Cohorts are about far more than just flowers.  They are about holding space for one another; for fighting the good fight together to spread more beauty throughout the world in a way that allows you to thrive on a personal level as well.

You’ll earn a Certificate of Completion at the conclusion of your Cohort series to validate your professional florist training.  This certificate carries a valuable stamp of approval to open doors to more freelance design opportunities and full time positions with respected event designers in our region and around the U.S.  And you’ll get street cred with established event florists you may have been wanting to collaborate with or befriend.

Have I piqued your interest?  I truly hope so! This concept is one that I feel fervently is needed right now.  We all need more connections.  We all benefit from training. We all need to learn how to compete fairly.

Oh, yeah, I had better mention right here and now:  this is no #communityovercompetition pitch.  I’m all about competition!  But it needs to be fair competition where everyone got the same rule book in advance and there’s no loaded dice.  Respectful competition that acknowledges how hard we are all working to pay rent.  When customers pick you because you found your niche and you’re making a tidy profit while sticking to your creative guns, that’s when you’ve really got a sustainable business on your hands!  That’s what we’re after here!

To learn more about how a Floral Cohort works, the florist training you’ll receive, and how to apply to join one, click over to the Floral Cohorts page on our website. If you’re serious about your flower dreams and you’re within driving distance of Philadelphia, please consider joining us!