The Mount Royal Nurses Graduating Class had their graduation ceremony on June 2 and my Horticulture Class did the 35 floral centerpieces and two large presentation vases for their banquet as a school project. In my horticulture class, I have a sixty foot greenhouse where we grow tropical houseplants and propagate bedding plants for sale in the spring. Throughout the year, the class will make floral bouquets and displays as part of the course. Since i have a whole sale license to buy flowers and a commercial flower cooler, I can through word of mouth take floral projects to show students the commercial side of running a flower shop. For the Mount Royal Nurses Graduation, I met with the graduation committee and like a wedding planner I asked them the color scheme and theme of their graduation to make the floral displays and centerpieces match the decor of the banquet hall. I inquired what was their budget for flowers and made an appropriate flower order to match their budget. Running a commercial flower shop is not an easy task because price points are critical and you can easily lose money. My goal was to give students hands on experience in completing a commercial order. However, even though my price for the flowers centerpieces would be half the price of a retail flower seller the expectation on the horticulture class is to provide a professional quality product that would equal a retail flower dealer. In other words, completing a commercial project is highly stressful when showing students how to create a professional product. I had to order the flowers three weeks in advance because the flowers are grown in Ecuador, and Columbia transported to Miami, trucked up to Winnipeg to be inspected and then driven overnight to the Calgary wholesaler for the Monday morning pick up. I turn up Monday morning at 7:00 am with the rest of the flower buyers to discover the transport truck with my flowers has been held up at customs so I have to return Tuesday morning. On Tuesday, i pick up $500 worth of flowers and take them back to the school and place them in buckets of water in the flower chiller to rehydrate the flowers. On Wednesday, I create a sample centerpiece and find that on Thursday, that the flowers have wilted. I thought that I might have placed the finished centerpiece too close to a cooling fan in the chiller but I find that is a false assumption. We make all 35 centerpieces Friday night and just finish the final centerpieces and 6:00 pm and to our horror see that the hydrangea's we have placed in the centerpieces are starting to wilt. By Saturday morning the flowers will be totally wilted and the nurses are going to be arriving at 10:00 am on Saturday to pick up the centerpieces. Panic, Panic, what does one do. I jump in my car and speed down to Cost Co and try to find replacement flowers that can match the color scheme. I manage to buy a $100 in replacement flowers and place them in the school chiller . We are at the school Saturday morning at 800 am redoing the centerpieces and at 10:00 am the nurses walk in to pick up the centerpieces which they just love. The lesson I learned is do not buy Hydrangea's for floral displays because they are just too finicky. On this order , we broke even. It could have been worse if we had delivered wilted flowers.
The Mount Royal Nurses Graduating Class had their graduation ceremony on June 2 and my Horticulture Class did the 35 floral centerpieces and two large presentation vases for their banquet as a school project. In my horticulture class, I have a sixty foot greenhouse where we grow tropical houseplants and propagate bedding plants for sale in the spring. Throughout the year, the class will make floral bouquets and displays as part of the course. Since i have a whole sale license to buy flowers and a commercial flower cooler, I can through word of mouth take floral projects to show students the commercial side of running a flower shop. For the Mount Royal Nurses Graduation, I met with the graduation committee and like a wedding planner I asked them the color scheme and theme of their graduation to make the floral displays and centerpieces match the decor of the banquet hall. I inquired what was their budget for flowers and made an appropriate flower order to match their budget. Running a commercial flower shop is not an easy task because price points are critical and you can easily lose money. My goal was to give students hands on experience in completing a commercial order. However, even though my price for the flowers centerpieces would be half the price of a retail flower seller the expectation on the horticulture class is to provide a professional quality product that would equal a retail flower dealer. In other words, completing a commercial project is highly stressful when showing students how to create a professional product. I had to order the flowers three weeks in advance because the flowers are grown in Ecuador, and Columbia transported to Miami, trucked up to Winnipeg to be inspected and then driven overnight to the Calgary wholesaler for the Monday morning pick up. I turn up Monday morning at 7:00 am with the rest of the flower buyers to discover the transport truck with my flowers has been held up at customs so I have to return Tuesday morning. On Tuesday, i pick up $500 worth of flowers and take them back to the school and place them in buckets of water in the flower chiller to rehydrate the flowers. On Wednesday, I create a sample centerpiece and find that on Thursday, that the flowers have wilted. I thought that I might have placed the finished centerpiece too close to a cooling fan in the chiller but I find that is a false assumption. We make all 35 centerpieces Friday night and just finish the final centerpieces and 6:00 pm and to our horror see that the hydrangea's we have placed in the centerpieces are starting to wilt. By Saturday morning the flowers will be totally wilted and the nurses are going to be arriving at 10:00 am on Saturday to pick up the centerpieces. Panic, Panic, what does one do. I jump in my car and speed down to Cost Co and try to find replacement flowers that can match the color scheme. I manage to buy a $100 in replacement flowers and place them in the school chiller . We are at the school Saturday morning at 800 am redoing the centerpieces and at 10:00 am the nurses walk in to pick up the centerpieces which they just love. The lesson I learned is do not buy Hydrangea's for floral displays because they are just too finicky. On this order , we broke even. It could have been worse if we had delivered wilted flowers.
