Owner of Albury’s The Real Florist, Renee Williams, is gearing up for Mother’s Day this Sunday and expects to make at least 300 mums happy with her beautiful bouquets. Photos: Vanessa Hayden.
Flower trends may come and go, but the tradition of bestowing your mum with a bunch of blooms on Mother’s Day is still as strong as ever.
Renee Williams, from Albury’s The Real Florist, is gearing up to deliver more than 300 bouquets this Sunday and says it’s a custom that appears to be withstanding the cheerless chant of “cost of living” pressures.
“We have noticed there’s been a difference, but it’s not in the number of people ordering flowers but more so people being more conscious of how much they spend,” she said.
“They still want to do something really nice and whether that’s buying flowers from a florist or a supermarket, at the end of the day it’s the thought behind it that counts.”
Renee said her customers would spend between $45 and $300 in her store and she enjoyed nothing more on the day than opening the doors at 6 am to pyjama-clad children excited about buying something special for their mum.
This year, chrysanthemums, roses and oriental lilies are on trend.
“The trends seem to cycle around every five years,” Renee said. ”I’ve been doing this for 15 years now, so I’ve seen the shifts several times. One time it will be all about Baby’s Breath, other times roses, and then there’ll be surges like the last few years of more alternative bouquets, which are always fun.
“This year I’m seeing people wanting the traditional flowers, so I’m blending them with seasonal blooms, natives and some tropicals and that way you get what’s in fashion at the moment with long-lasting, good-quality flowers. It’s the old with the new and that works really well.
“The natives are always really popular and the oriental lilies, which are the scented ones, always bring memories that remind people of their mums and grandmothers, and we love to honour that.”
Renee’s favourite combination is a mixture of different textiles and blooms, creating “a colour vibration” and something that lasts a long time.
May will mark five years since Renee opened her florist/cafe/locally made gifts store in Albury’s Swift Street. She sources locally grown flowers whenever she can and stocks a range of handmade products from other creatives in the region.
“This was always my dream, having a florist cafe,” she said. ”I said to my boss during my apprenticeship many years ago that we needed to put a coffee machine in and she said, ‘No-one will buy coffee from a florist’ and I said, ‘Yes they will!’ When I opened this store, she came and said, ‘You were right!”’
Renee says when ordering your flowers through a florist, you can be assured a great deal of thought and expertise have gone into the process of creating a bouquet that will have wow impact and longevity in a vase.
The build-up to Mother’s Day is a month-long process for professional florists and it’s a fine-tuned lead-in that goes into making sure the selection of flowers is the right quality, quantity and fit to ensure customer satisfaction and a profit for the business.
Renee said buying from a florist would ensure your bouquet would have the wow factor impact but also the longevity in a vase (up to four weeks) as the choice of each stem was carefully considered and came with education behind it.
“For us, it’s important that we have something at every price point, that suits every person. It’s not comparable to supermarket prices because we are not a supermarket, we are professional florists.
“Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with getting flowers from the supermarket if you just want to do something thoughtful and nice for somebody, but I have to make sure I’m covering the costs of running my business as well as my skill set as I’m a qualified florist.
“Sometimes that is hard in a creative industry because people don’t always recognise that, but it’s really important.”
Renee has loved flowers and floristry since childhood, spending time at her father’s nursery in Jindera and with her nan, who was a keen gardener.
“My Oma also used to call me her beautiful flower and I knew in high school this was what I wanted to do.
“Getting to have moments of time where you get to be creative is rare. Not very often as adults do you get to play and I get to play every day. It’s still work, but I love it.”
Renee admits the hardest thing about being a florist on Mother’s Day is not getting to spend it with her own two children, aged eight and 11.
“I make a big point of it during the week after, where I’ll take some time off and we make a special time of it.
“It’s only one day of the year and they understand this comes first sometimes. I take the girls and we go away for a whole weekend and they are pretty OK with that.”
