Practical Tips to Move the Sustainability Needle in Your Floral Shop
Sustainability has moved from buzzword to business imperative — Vonda opens with a Forbes line calling it "a strategic imperative shaping the practices and priorities of industries worldwide." But what does that actually look like on the design bench of a retail flower shop? This episode condenses a Camp Clique session featuring Bill McKinley AIFD of Texas A&M and Abby Chick, owner of Blakemore's Flowers in Harrisonburg, Virginia and Mayesh's designer of the year on sustainability. You can watch the full session replay here.
The industry's story is better than the headlines
Remember the anti-flowers op-eds before Valentine's Day? Ellie shares facts from SAF's rebuttal: emissions from producing and transporting cut flowers from Colombia to Miami are significantly lower than most foods — comparable to a cup of coffee or chocolate. Florverde-certified farms have cut highly toxic pesticide use by 99.7% over the past decade while increasing biological controls by 600%, and those farms employ hundreds of thousands of workers — many of them women heading households — with education, fair wages, and savings programs. Sustainability isn't only about what you take away; it's about what you build into people and economies. It's also worth vetting your suppliers: Accent Decor, for example, ensures partner factories carry workplace-safety accreditation and uses recycled aluminum and glass.
Design mechanics that move the needle
Bill teaches 120-140 students a week, and his classroom runs on reuse: armatures and structures, containers that must come back (bring back your ceramic or next week you get the 50-cent plastic pot), kubari-style stick-and-twig mechanics beautiful enough to show off, and dish gardens where plants stay in their grower pots — so if one plant dies, you replace one pot instead of tearing apart the whole garden. His team strikes 80-90% of campus events and brings containers and flowers back for reuse, and he forages campus shrubs and cuts from hanging baskets that grow back.
Abby's filter is reduction through better design. Her journey started twelve years ago when Hitomi Gilliam showed her she didn't need a full brick of foam — and progressed to natural armatures: two foliages with good laterals, spiraled and bound with a tiny wire or rubber band into a supportive nest. Her core argument: the more you invest in design principles and color theory, the less product you need. Stop unthoughtfully stuffing greens into a vase to "make it look bigger."
Realistic shop practices — profitably
Abby is refreshingly honest that everything runs through the lens of profitability. She buys only what she needs, sources locally in season from Virginia's farms, and has trained her customers — through designs built on color story rather than exact recipes — to accept seasonal substitutions. Her favorite first step: she stopped buying plastic-handled funeral baskets, selling showy ceramic-container tributes instead that families can keep or donate to a hospital, nursing home, or church. That transition took years, not overnight — "you can be a florist who stands on every principle who's out of business, or you can be a florist who takes her time, keeps the trust of her customers, and helps them grow and change with you."
Bill's advice for the overwhelmed: choose two or three changes, make them work, then choose the next two or three. Even swapping a half block of foam for a third of a block counts.
The foam question, answered honestly
Can a full-service shop function foam-free? Both guests say it depends on your clientele and location. Bill still uses and likes foam — especially now that biodegradable options exist — and doubts going foam-free is practical for most full-service work. Abby has yet to meet a florist doing major funeral work without it, though she met a foam-free full-service shop in Asheville (which simply declines funerals). She also warns against greenwashing: "biodegradable" isn't the gold standard — reusable and compostable are. Even her compostable-packaging experiments backfired; some compostables perform worse than plastic in a landfill. Nobody has the perfect answer yet, and if you're finding this hard, you're not alone — make the best choices you can with the information you have.
Key takeaways
- Start with two or three sustainable changes, master them, then add more — don't try to overhaul everything at once.
- Better design skills are a sustainability tool: strong mechanics, color theory, and natural armatures mean less product and less waste.
- Swap plastic funeral baskets for keepable ceramic containers — an easy first step customers actually appreciate.
- Buy only what you need, source local in season, and train customers to expect seasonal substitutions.
- Beware greenwashing: aim for reusable and compostable over "biodegradable," and transition at a pace that keeps your customers with you.