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From Farm To Vase
An Insight Into The Journey Of Fresh Flowers from farm to vase
The journey of fresh, cut flowers from Farm to Vase is an interesting ride. Customers generally absorb the freshness and beauty of the flowers they receive. They often don’t think twice about where these flowers have actually come from. The process from start (flower farm) to finish (arriving in our customer’s home and onto the kitchen table) is not given much thought.
Fresh flowers that we buy in Australia, come from farms all across the world. Whilst we try to support local flower growers, sometimes there isn’t enough local supply or variety that we need. We might source a mix of local and imported ingredients. This we do a few times a week is from different Australian suppliers at the Sydney Flower Markets. The local flower growers are often family-run businesses. They grow their own flowers, cut and harvest them, transport and sell them in the early hours of the morning. They usually have a stand at Sydney Flower Markets, where we pick them up.
Once flowers are sourced from the growers, they are carefully taken back to our studio. There we unpack unpacked, clean, condition and separate them into their types and place them into fresh, clean water. A lot of time is taken to strip the leaves and prepare each stem ready for bunching.
At The Fresh Flower Project, our focus is on minimising waste. So, we only buy what we need from the Flower Markets. If we sell out, which we generally do each day, that’s it. We prefer to sell out rather than throw out. There’s so much waste in the industry that we’ve always been conscious of over-purchasing. As a result, we have simplified our offering to include a handful of carefully designed bunches. We choose to not offer 100’s of different styles as that leads to more wastage. If we do have an oversupply for some reason, we like to donate these to charity. Sometimes we give our extra supply of flowers to our loyal customers as a Thank you for supporting our business.
Once the flowers are ready for bunching and the order slips are ready to go, we simply take the flowers and arrange as per the design selected. This involves a lot of time and careful placement (and love + creativity!). Then we wrap the raw bunch around with twine or cotton so it stays well placed. We wet recycled paper towels to keep the flowers hydrated, tie a biodegradable back over the top, cut the coffee sacks to size and sustainably wrap each bunch. We use premium quality twine to tie the coffee sack and place the cards and label ready for our drivers to pick up – they are looking oh so beautiful by this point!
Our drivers pick up at a set time each day, put their flower babies in the car and off they go delivering all over Sydney, through the different neighbourhoods, on highways, across bridges, beside the beautiful Sydney beaches, always with a smile on their face (unless there’s tooooo much traffic! 😉
Then the best part of all, the flowers arrive to you, our wonderful customers fresh and lovely as ever. You take them home or keep them at the office, place in water in a vase (unless you ordered the bunch already in the vase!) and smile at them for the next 1.5 – 2 weeks! Yep! As we buy fresh flowers so frequently, they last (unlike supermarket flowers that have been in the bucket watching you walk by for weeks!)
If you have ANY questions about the farm to vase process of flowers, please feel free to email us anytime! We always love hearing from you.
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