Oh Naturel!
Budding Business: Simple Tricks For Flowers That Wow
Christina Stembel declares herself a born entrepreneur. “I was always that dork coming up with a different business idea every week and using my friends and family as a focus group,”
she says. It was while she was working at Stanford University, overseeing events for the law school, that she hatched the plan for San Francisco-based Farmgirl Flowers.
Farmgirl flowers founder, Christina Stembel.
They deliver colorful bouquets of American-grown flowers (a rarity in the industry) across the country.
I wanted something that looked more special than what I'd get in a grocery store.
“It didn’t make any sense to me that I would go to a farm-to-table restaurant, where they would basically tell me the name of the chicken I was eating, and the flowers in the middle of the table would be carnations, which were obviously from South America since there are no carnation growers left in the US,”
Stembel says.
Buying local (the majority of Farmgirl’s flowers come from California) instead of flying in blooms from outside the country also results in a lower carbon footprint. (In another eco-friendly move, bike couriers do the deliveries inside the San Francisco city limits.) But that’s not the company’s only nod to planet Earth. The bouquets come wrapped in 100% biodegradable burlap, repurposed from coffee bags the company gets from roasters in the Bay Area. And the exterior boxes are recyclable in all 50 states.
Colorful bouquets help brighten everyday.
We create everything in-house using seasonal flowers that look the best right when they are supposed to be grown and picked right then.
That’s not all! They also cut down on waste by using all the flowers they buy. “Whereas the industry norm is that 40% of flowers grown are never sold.”
And what’s more, the bouquets are totally gorgeous. “I wanted something that looked more special than what I’d get in the grocery store,”
Stembel says. “We create everything in-house and have talented designers with a high design aesthetic using seasonal flowers that look the best when they’re supposed to be grown and picked right then.”
Stembel gives us some advice on getting the most out of your arrangements:
• Keep blooms out of direct sunlight. Flowers prefer cooler temps and will live longer in them.
• Trim stems at an angle. They absorb more water this way. (A flat cut can actually prevent them from drinking.)
• Flower food can be great—if used correctly. Dissolve it in water before you put it in the vase. Otherwise crystal pieces can clog stems.
• Vary the length of the stems. Go for 4-5 different heights. It looks super elegant.
• Toss browning buds asap. The bacteria will spread and kill the other flowers before their time.