People imagine floristry as wafting around arranging peonies all day. It's more like running a tiny logistics company where the inventory actively dies. Here's a real week, minus the boring bits (there aren't that many).
Monday: the market run
Week starts at 6am. Dave does the grower circuit while we clean out last week's buckets. The chalkboard gets rewritten with what actually arrived, which is never quite what was promised, which is fine.
Tuesday–Wednesday: the regular work
Subscriptions get designed and dropped, the week's orders queue up, and the wedding spreadsheet gets its weekly nervous review. Wednesdays are usually when someone rings with an impossible brief. We take those personally.
Thursday: conditioning day
Wedding stems arrive and spend a day drinking. Every stem gets stripped, cut and sorted. The unglamorous work that decides whether Saturday looks good.
Friday: wedding build
Fridays belong to whatever wedding is on. The bridal bouquet gets built twice if the first one doesn't feel right. Ren's rule, and it's cost us more than a few late finishes. Meanwhile the week's last same-day orders go out with Dave at two.
Saturday: deliveries and the shop
Deliveries, buttonhole pinning, retail walk-ins, and the moment someone comes in to say the flowers made their week. That last one is why the rest of it works.
By the numbers
~40 orders a week, 2 grower runs, 1 wedding average, and roughly 700 stems through the bench.
Sunday
Half day. We open the shop in the morning, clear the week's stems into cheap bunches for locals, and argue about next week's orders. Then the cold room gets a scrub and Monday starts again.
More from the bench
See the bench in person.
Custom bouquets from $55, same-day Oamaru delivery when you order by noon.