5 Things that Shaped My Path as a Florist
There’s a piece of wall art hanging up in my office that says ‘Webb & Farrer est 2014’. My friend gave it to me as a gift on her wedding day to say thank you for the wedding flowers I created to decorate her farm wedding. It was a wedding full of laughter and delicious food and in a marquee where everyone from our old school days danced until the early hours of the morning.
But back to this year. Reaching the decade change and seeing those digits move into 2020 makes 2014, the start of Webb and Farrer, seem so distant. I’ve looked back on the floristry path that’s taken me all the way from there to where I am now and thought about some of the forks in the road I took and choices I made that shaped the way I am as a florist now.
I’m sure there were many serendipitous moments that were factors in shaping my career that completely passed me by! But below I’ve put together a few decisions that came up for me when it came to defining what kind of florist I’d like to be. I don’t think I ever neatly ticked off any of these choices, I ummmed and eerrred over them for months on end probably, but in the end they’re the choices I made that have laid the foundations I’m on today.
I got very good at balancing flowers and being on the phone or working the till at the same time
Learning on the Job
I went for my first interview in a flower shop in London when I was still learning floristry at college. I’d applied for work experience but at the end of the interview I got told there was a paid position going and it was mine if I wanted it. I couldn’t believe my luck and took the job, feeling on cloud 9 all the way home.
Then, I was thrown in at the deep end. I used to run the shop all on my own on Sundays and looking back at that time the image of my Sundays was hilarious. I was attempting to be like a swan on a lake; serene and calm on the surface but underneath paddling away like there’s no tomorrow. I’m sure my serenity was nowhere to be seen as I dashed downstairs to find a vase for an order, ran back up to answer the phone and balanced a half made bouquet in my hand as I took the change for a plant someone wanted to buy.
Not everyone needs to go through that ordeal to become a good florist but it definitely shaped me and built up my strength and resilience. From my experience at the start of my florist life: the florist shop industry is fast paced, one where my hands were in cold water a lot, I repeated lists over in my head to remember everything and my mental maths needed to be on point.
2. Self Belief
I truly know that I’d have taken the leap and become a self employed florist sooner if I’d believed in myself more. At that time, the thought of meditating or mindfulness was far beyond and over the horizon.
Thanks to a combination of things, including: hypnosis, tapping, meditation, going on a retreat, podcasts, therapy, and speaking to friends, I have got the ball rolling with self belief. It will always be something that’s a work in progress but small steps each day (when I remember/have time) have made such a big difference to me.
I’ve had a couple of break throughs in the self belief department. One of them is that failure isn’t always right round the corner. Instead, there are lots of tests if things will work, lessons to be had and reversing back down a path that’s a dead-end. The perfectionist part of me still sometimes clings to the ‘oooh what if it’s a big failure’ tune, but the more chilled out part of me knows that if it doesn’t work out then I’ll try another door (and it probably will work out if I have a strategy and a good mindset).
If I could say anything to my younger self when I was about to create Webb and Farrer in 2014, I’d say:
You have a strong gut instinct, find it and follow it every time you need to reach a decision. Believe in yourself and trust the knowledge that you already have.
3. Breaking the Rules
Some ‘rules’: Always use odd numbers of flowers, never mix pink and red, and refer to your colour wheel to choose your colours.
Now it’s time to break these rules. Having learnt these rules from the floristry school I went to in London, it took plenty of time for me to realise that this didn’t have to be the way. I liked the way that 2 things looked in a bouquet, but that was an even number and not an odd number. I now never use floral foam and use chicken wire and more traditional techniques instead. And colour is something I like to choose using my instinct and what works in nature - my colour wheel from flower college is now filed away in a memory box.
It’s always great to know the rules so you can feel confident when you break them and create your own style. Standing out with a particular look that you’re known for will mean that you get to create weddings that you love the look of.
as you can see in this wild flower meadow, pink and red look great together
4. Not Having a Shop
If I meet someone new and they find out I’m a florist, quite often I get asked: do you have a flower shop? For ages when I got asked this I felt like I’d made a big mistake not aiming to have a flower shop and working from my studio at home instead. But I’ve come to realise that it wasn’t a mistake, it was a path I chose not to step onto because having a flower shop isn’t the floristry branch for me. I absolutely love coming across flower shops in new places and it’s such a treat to see the way everything is beautifully laid out and the creativity in these places. There’s such an art to running a flower shop.
I’ve always felt more drawn towards teaching flower workshops and this part of floristry doesn’t always need a flower shop. I chose to work from home to keep overheads down at the start of my business and I’ve absolutely loved working this way ever since.
A collaboration with Sophie Carefull Photography and Hannah from Rambling Rose.
5. Collaboration
With my cat Leo snoozing under my desk, it’s easy to stay in my work from home bubble. But taking part in styled shoots, networking events, talking to people on Instagram and working alongside creatives setting up weddings, I’ve met so many amazing creative people.
We’ve shared advice, said ‘oh my god I feel exactly the same too!’, and gone for coffees and it’s made the journey into floristry as a solo entrepreneur, one that hasn’t been on my own at all.
Looking back down the path I took to become a florist, it seems winding and a bit hilly but I know each turn and each choice has got me this far. I always say I’m like a cargo ship turning in the night -haha whaat I hear you say- if I want to achieve something I’ll set a course but it might take me a while to get that ship turning and heading on over to the new destination, but I’ll get there in the end.
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