Floral Cohorts
It’s been 15 very eventful (and event-filled!) years since I officially launched Love ‘n Fresh Flowers in 2009. I was talking to a dear flower friend the other day and reminiscing about how it felt to open up my heart to a business idea that seemed so exciting and yet so terrifying. 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 naïve promises made therein, and remind myself how very far I’ve come.
Back in 2009, I was a self-declared floral professional stumbling around like a kitten with her eyes only half open. 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 15 years, including being president of that very same ASCFG. I’ve gone back and been a teacher for floral design classes at Longwood Gardens. And I’ve taught thousands of students at workshops, classes, clubs, and conferences of all kinds. And yet, I never felt like I matched what was given to me. I 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 63 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 a little 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 Halloween 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.
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 just stay behind a glowing screen. I’m not going to be a static picture on the dust jacket of a book. Frankly, I’m not overly interested in helping everyone with broad strokes of advice. I want to make this personal and powerful.
I wanted to help a select few right here in my own region by building incredibly transparent 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.
So I launched a whole new way of learning at Love ‘n Fresh Flowers back in 2019 – FLORAL COHORTS!
If you have dreamed of entering the floral industry as a professional 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 professional path. This is the perfect learning experience in particular for aspiring floral freelancers and small event design start-ups. It’s raw and intensive floral instruction for professionals, not hobbyists.
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 adopted this same format for a small-group learning experience based out of our flower farm in Philadelphia. Each Floral Cohort is capped at 10 students who complete the program together over the course of six months. These 10 students become peers; flower friends for life, I hope! 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 and with the farm. 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 “kindred spirits in stems” so we can foster a healthier and more sustainable floral industry in our region.
Sure, there are plenty of ways to learn many of these lessons online! 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.
Have I piqued your interest? I truly hope so! This concept is one that I feel fervently is needed right now, more than ever! 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!
So here’s how it works:
Not everyone who submits an application will be invited to join the Cohort. After you submit the application online, you’ll get a personal note letting you know the status of your application in a few days once we’ve had a chance to review it. Those invited to the Cohort will be able to register for one of the 10 spots available on a first-come-first-serve basis on March 15th. There are only 10 spots in each Cohort. Once it fills, the next opportunity will not be until the Spring of 2025.
The upcoming 2024 Floral Cohort will begin their education process in May and it will continue through October. Members of the cohort will be expected to complete over 30 hours of hands-on learning at our farm and apprenticing at an event during this time. Members will also be expected to complete a few practice assignments outside of class time. Most cohort sessions this year will be on select Fridays and Mondays.
Anyone is welcome to apply, but Cohort Members must be able to travel to Philadelphia for all the in-person training sessions AND must have taken at least two floral workshops with Love ‘n Fresh Flowers before applying. Truly beginner flower lovers are encouraged to consider taking a few of our singular Floral Fundamentals workshops to start prior to applying for the Floral Cohort program.
On-Farm Floral Learning
The format of the in-person, hands-on classes at our farm will be streamlined and straightforward. These are not fancy luxury workshops (though there will be heaps of our farm’s gorgeous flowers, of course). These are down-and-dirty, figure-this-shit-out, chin-up-when-getting-critiqued sessions. You’re paying us to make you successful as a floral professional. We are going to take our job seriously! The in-person sessions will typically run from 11AM to 4PM once a month on select Fridays or Mondays, May through October. We understand that some members of the Cohort are likely to have full time jobs. We are hopeful that taking a few vacation days from your job to pursue your dreams will be worth the extra effort!
Our flower farm is located in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia, about 20 minutes from center city.
Floral Homework
Members of the Cohort will be asked to complete a few homework assignments and journaling. The purpose of these assignments is to be sure students practice and also to create an opportunity to learn what it takes to create a good work space and vessel library of your own as well as proper flower pricing. It’s one thing to work on flowers at our farm in the barn literally built around the business of professional floral design. It’s another thing entirely to bootstrap your operation out of your dining room. Cohort members can share tips and tricks with each other as they gain experience, problem-solving and putting together solid game plans for how they will launch themselves as a home-based professional.
Floral Event Apprenticeship
Love ‘n Fresh will assist Cohort members with setting up a one-time apprenticeship opportunity with event florists in the region. During this apprenticeship, the Cohort member will work on-site with a design team, executing a real event (wedding, corporate party, or bar/bat mitzvah) using skills learned during our training sessions. This is an excellent chance to see the real-life hustle of professional floristry and see how another designer works.
Perks
In addition to gaining a professional-level floral education and a new community for support and friendship, members will also be given on-going access to our farm’s wholesale availability list so they are able to order beautiful and sustainable stems for practice and their own professional gigs going forward.
As much as possible, Love ‘n Fresh will assist students with making connections throughout the floral industry. We’ll share our favorite suppliers for tools, vessels, garland, and much more. We’ll also suggest professional organizations to join. We’ll talk about how we grow our flowers and why locally-grown is better. We’ll help you take photos of your designs and start building your portfolio. We’ll support you however you need.
Because we intentionally keep these cohorts small, each cohort will be tailored to the leading interests of the group. This is no YouTube video. After all, this is personal!
If you’d like to be sure to get notifications about Floral Cohort announcements in the future, please join our mailing list!
