What do florists do with unsold flowers? - The simple truth from a professional florist

A common question concerning floristry, the art of flower design, online is: "What do florists do with unsold flowers?" This question also comes up frequently from customers in the shop. Most responses online talk about florists discounting flowers or donating flowers. Bloomstall Flower Boutique doesn't do either of those, and here's why.

We work very hard to order the correct amount of flowers for any given week. We receive fresh flowers from growers and wholesalers 3–4 times per week and can adjust the number of flowers we order as we need to. Our best-case scenario is to sell out of our weekly flower purchases by Saturday, as we are closed on Sunday. More often than not, we hit this goal and start fresh the next Monday.

All unsold flowers on any given day are checked to make sure they are still fresh and then placed into our floral coolers that keep them around 45 degrees. This ensures they stay fresh for as long as possible. We never leave flowers out over night at room temperature unless it's something that needs the warmer air to open up, like a rose.

Flowers are checked again in the morning for freshness, and any that don't make the cut are thrown away. That's right, thrown away. When we tell customers this, many want to know why we don't discount them or give them away. The simple answer is that we don't want ANYONE to have subpar flowers. Flowers that we throw away won't last more than a few days and may already be starting to wilt. They've reached the end of their vase life. We don't want anyone to have a bad experience with our blooms, so they are thrown out.

We don't donate them for the same reason; we wouldn't want to give them to a nursing home only to have them wilt and die on a front desk counter two days later. Cut flowers have a natural shelf life, and there's really nothing that can be done once they start to go.

Our best tactic for keeping our flowers fresh all the time is to order correctly from our wholesalers and flower growers and to create as many beautiful flower arrangements and bouquets as possible.

If you are in the Columbia, Tennessee, area and would like to send flowers with Bloomstall, you can do so here.