After years of growing and managing our own flower farm, sustainability has become an integral part of our sustainable floral design studio. We are so glad to see more and more florists turning away from floral foam and embracing locally grown blooms. I’m sure most of you probably don’t even know what floral foam is and why it is bad so let me let you in on a little secret. The green flower foam that became an integral tool in the traditional florist’s toolkit is super bad for the environment. It is the flower world’s equivalent of single use plastics plus when it breaks down it contaminates our waterways with micro plastics that cannot be cleaned or removed. What is a huge bummer is that floral foam makes designing pretty dang easy. It is a plug and play tool that you soak in water and then put into your vase or compote. As you insert each flower stem, the foam holds it exactly in place. And to be fair, there are some settings where floral foam is still a necessity in the flower world. But for wedding flowers, we definitely don’t need it.

Instead we as a company have invested in sustainable floral mechanics and tools so that we can create the same gorgeous installations and arrangements without the toxic floral foam. For ceremony flowers, we have worked with Shickel Corps to weld custom structures that can hold water that then gets camouflaged by gorgeous blooms. For centerpieces, we create a nest of reusable chicken wire in our compotes to secure blooms in place that gets pulled out, washed, and used wedding after wedding. It is our job to educate ourselves on the best, most environmentally friendly techniques, not yours to worry whether your wedding flowers are creating even more waste than they should.

Shickel Corporation in Bridgewater, VA

We also make sure to educate you on what is and isn’t florally possible on your wedding day. Because let’s be honest, even using floral foam, dinner plate dahlias are going to wilt in a ceremony structure under the beating August sun. So we guide you to make choices that will hold up in the weather your wedding date throws at us and always have extra blooms on hand to swap out for anything looking less than gorgeous.

While you might not initially think about sustainable flowers for your wedding day, once you start learning about it I can guarantee it will become important to you. For an industry that is so reliant on nature, we have to keep making steps to protect this gorgeous Earth and all the living things on it. If you are also passionate about being environmentally friendly on your wedding day, drop us a line on our contact form.