The sourcing conundrum | Where have all the flowers gone?
Sourcing is just another way to say product discovery and purchase. It’s about finding the right ingredients and that can mean a lot of different things depending upon your taste, style, access, location, etc. One common through line, no matter what kind of designer/creator/floral artist you are, is that sourcing can be challenging.
Even when I was a project manager in research and development for a large herbal products company, sourcing was always a process of vetting, trial and error, and long lead times. It’s a game of patience, experimentation, testing, and repetition.
Finding a stellar ingredient and its subsequent source was reason to celebrate. But before you threw the party you wanted to make sure the supplier could provide the ingredient for a while. Longer than a while. You really didn’t want to make a product only to find out that you could no longer secure a key ingredient.
When you find what you like there are more detailed questions you could and should ask because it’s also important, fantastic even, if the supplier has transparent pricing, clear communications, and a respectable moral compass.
But that’s a topic for another conversation. Instead, I want to drill into some overall patterns I’ve noticed in sourcing specifically as it relates to flowers.
I recall something a florist once said decades ago when I was supporting my friend with her wedding details. Friend: Well I’m having a summer wedding but want these types of flowers. They’re definitely not ‘summer’ flowers. Florist: girl, you can get any kind of flower you want, no matter when your event is planned.
Take this with a grain of salt because weddings are notorious for being over the top when it comes to pricing and it’s not just because you can get sunflowers in December or ranunculus in September. Forget about waiting for your peonies until May. You can get them whenever, from god knows where, likely the global south.
Sourcing flowers, food, and herbs
To a large extent this is how flower sourcing works. It’s what we’ve become accustomed to expect. Dare I say oblivious. The same applies to our food system. True local seasonal driven systems would look very different and that’s okay. What we’d eat would just be different. Our floral arrangements would reflect the surrounding landscapes. We’d have to get a lil’ creative.
Weddings aside, the demand sets the tone for the market, which then leads to sourcing becoming a global scrambled web.
Recently I purchased some flowers and realized that unless I grow my own flowers, forage wild and local ingredients, support local growers (I’m one myself) and take a creative approach to flower arranging I’m likely to end up with the same ingredients a large percentage of the time.
Premade market bouquets* seem to use less than 10 varieties. It’s the same rose, sunflower, chrysanthemum, aster, evergreen juniper or eucalyptus twig combination. Granted this is the result of multiple variables, some of which are how tough the flowers are and as a result can handle the crazy travel and handling, ease of growing, consumer familiarity and hence demand, and trend.
All of which leads me to why I’m wrestling with a few things regarding sourcing and ingredients. When it comes to flowers and in turn the arrangements I can make, I’ve come to appreciate being able to grow and harvest from my own yard or wild spaces as well as making the arrangements a total mash up.
It may not be a ton, I’m presented with restrictions. Restrictions that inevitably make my arrangements totally unique, seasonal dependent, and super fresh. The best part, it adds a nuance that is pretty special. All of which translates into a more dynamic and interesting arrangement style.
Generally when I buy a premade bouquet or single varieties I always deconstruct them and then subsequently rearrange them. So when I’m looking for flowers I generally focus on styling elements that are distinctive. Colors and shapes that are unique and intriguing. Height or movement as well as interesting textures or structural components. If the roses have no fragrance, I find something that does.
Like I mentioned earlier, sourcing your key ingredients comes down to patience and experimentation, so keep your mind curious and approach open. It’s likely something extraordinary will surface.
*refer to the premade bouquets one can purchase at most grocery stores. More commonly found than single varieties. Unless it’s roses, tulips, or perhaps a seasonal showstopper.