How I became a florist
It all started when I was 17, after leaving school with no clue on my future career my mum spotted a job for a florists apprentice in the local newspaper (the last trainee had left due to hayfever) so I quickly applied for the job. It was a busy florist shop in a busy town. I worked there for a lot of years learning from my fellow florists and my time at college doing 3 years of Floristry. I learnt the latin names of all the flowers and plants and how to put together various arrangements. I will always remember the looks I got coming home on the bus with a giant funeral cross.
I have fond memories of these years in the shop and am still good friends with my fellow florists that also worked there at the time some of which also have their own floristry businesses. I quickly worked my way up through the company to become the shop manager then they asked me to manage a new store they were opening in a nearby town in which I worked for a number of years. After a while I decided to have a break from floristry to work in an office job. I wanted to try something different . Then I left work to start a family.
I always wanted to go back to floristry some day so as my daughter got older I started offering my bouquets for sale on Facebook. My other mum friends got me making bouquets and bunches for their friends and thats how I started my flower business from home. Their friends then told their friends who told their mums about my flowers and word got round that there was a new florist in the village and I gradually started getting busier and busier.
At first this wasn't enough income so I managed by taking on part time evening work at Tesco and I had a cleaning job and had some dog walking jobs just to make ends meet. Floristry is a pretty hard job. Working with fresh produce you are constantly getting wastage so anyone thinking of going into it as a career needs to consider this but its an awesome job in which I get to be very creative meet lots of lovely people and there’s always something different every day so I now I really couldn't even imagine doing anything else!!
