Under the spell of flowers

They’re everywhere. They’re at your prom. They’re at your wedding. They’re at your funeral. They creep up your wallpaper, grace your bedspread and infuse your home with sweet-smelling scents.

Flowers have been around since the beginning, and it doesn’t look as if their popularity will wilt anytime soon. Symbolic of beauty and emotion, flowers express for us what is difficult to verbalize. They light up an otherwise dull room and brighten someone’s day when he or she is feeling blue.

Those who make flowers their business, who spend their time arranging them into aesthetic and meaningful messages, explain why flowers are so important and why they love doing what they do.

Leana Fitzgerald, 30, along with her parents, Sam and Donna Abdullah, has run Ambrosia Custom Floral Design and Gifts at 23 S. Eighth St., for five years. In the beginning, Fitzgerald said, she only dealt with the paperwork and the administrative aspects of the business.

Fitzgerald’s mother saw in her daughter something Fitzgerald overlooked, a true talent and gift for arranging flowers.

“In the beginning, I was nervous, but my mother mentored me and taught me the ropes,” she said. “I began to grow into a true artist, just like her.”

Fitzgerald said there is an organized form to the artistic profession of flower arranging. She said it’s important not to be messy and to maintain a professional attitude with the customers’ orders.

“Each piece has to be done with your heart or else it won’t look good,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in a bad mood.”

Fitzgerald said Ambrosia is different from many floral shops. She said a lot of customers are surprised when they walk in and see only a couple of flower arrangements set up in the freezer. Ambrosia is a custom floral shop.

“We have a lot of flowers,” she said. “We just make (the bouquets) for you on site.”

She said doing it this way is less wasteful, more personal and allows her to work directly with the customers to achieve their vision of the perfect arrangement.

She also said she doesn’t see the point in hiding the room in which the arrangements are made.

“We’re doing art here,” she said. “And art is to be seen.”

Fitzgerald said the holiday seasons and spring are the busiest times. Keeping up with supplies is the hardest part during busy months. She said flower arranging involves far more than flowers. She also needs baskets, ribbon, wire, flower food and more. Paperwork is also a hassle, she said.

As far as designing the arrangements, Fitzgerald said it’s something that comes naturally to her.

“Either you have it, or you don’t,” she said.

Fitzgerald said anyone can try his or her hand at arranging flowers at home. She advises people to keep it simple, without a lot of greenery. She also said it’s a trend to cluster the flowers. In other words, don’t spread them out within the vase.

For Fitzgerald, being able to stand back after completing a big project and seeing the result in its entirety is the most rewarding part.

“When we stand back and look at everything, we’re like, wow,” she said.

In Fitzgerald’s opinion there is always a need for flowers. She said having flowers on your table when you get home makes a difference. She said it brings life to a room that otherwise would be lifeless.

“Having something living in a vase . . . there’s just something about that,” she said. “It’s a spiritual thing, I think.”

Unlike Fitzgerald, Ruth LaHue, the founder and owner of My Secret Garden at 16 N. Ninth St., took it upon herself to learn everything she could about the floristry business when she had the chance.

She had an epiphany and realized she could combine her artistic abilities, her love for flowers and her desire to make people happy into a career.

When LaHue and her husband moved to Albuquerque, N.M., in the early 1970s, LaHue planned to work until she saw an advertisement for the Albuquerque School of Floral Design. Then she broke the news to her husband.

“Honey, I don’t want to work, I want to go to school,” she said.

After graduating, LaHue was hooked and has continued to be for 32 years.

LaHue and her daughter Stephanie LaHue, who also works in the shop, agree on the importance of people being familiar with the medium in which they are working.

“You need a basic horticultural knowledge because a lot of that comes into play,” Stephanie LaHue said.

Ruth LaHue also said florists must be able to stay up for days at a time to complete big projects, to take criticism well and to not be materialistic.

“No matter how hard you work on it, in three to five days, the flowers will fade,” she said.

Stephanie LaHue, also a professor of fashion merchandising and management at Stephens College, said floral trends tend to parallel those in the fashion world. She said from the beginning of time flowers have played an important role in dress and cultural traditions.

Her mother agrees.

“If you look at fashion trends it bleeds right over into floral design,” she said. “Right now, you’ll see a lot of citrus and spring colors.”

Just as in the fashion industry, Stephanie LaHue said trends also evolve in the floral business to keep them alive and interesting. For instance, many flowers are bred to be unusual colors. For instance, she and her mother explained that though it may be unusual to see a green rose, this is what is in style.

Also, Stephanie LaHue said there is an increasing focus on other parts of the plant, such as seedpods and branches, when it comes to arrangements.

There has also been a movement toward exotic flowers. Ixia from Japan, Aramarus Lilies from Israel and other species originating from places such as South Africa and Holland can be found in their arrangements.

Stephanie LaHue said there is always a need for flowers. She said people have a basic need for sharing emotion and flowers can express a lot when people can’t find the right words.

“Flowers can just say so much,” she said.

She also said that whenever it comes to something symbolic or ceremonial, flowers always make an appearance.

Ruth LaHue said through the research she has done, she has discovered that even in the midst of rough financial times, such as the Great Depression, the floral industry has not suffered.

“They’re just that important,” she said.

The LaHues love doing what they do, and they said this is a business that someone doesn’t do for fun. Instead, florists have to be committed.

“I tell people I’m rich,” Ruth LaHue said. “I don’t have tons of money, but I’m doing what I love to do.”

Lisa McGill, 19, an art education major at MU, was hired at the Hy-Vee floral department without attending a floral design school and without any experience in the floral business.

McGill said she watched other florists not only arrange flowers, but also maintain the department. She said she got hands-on experience with the flowers, learned how to make an order and also saw how to clean up the store.

“A lot of people don’t think we’re real florists because we work in a grocery store,” McGill said. “But we’re trained.”

McGill said flowers bought from a grocery store are less expensive because there are no overhead costs. For example, smaller floral shops have to pay for rent, which is passed along in the price of the flowers.

Although the prices might be lower, McGill said the florists work just as hard. She said the florists have stayed in the store working until midnight the night before a prom, one of their busiest times of year.

She also said if people come in and don’t like anything they see in the freezers, that they will arrange a bouquet for them on site.

The best thing about this job for McGill is that she gets paid to use her creativity and imagination to do something she enjoys.

“And you never leave work stinking,” she said.