Q: How did you get into this industry?
A: My grandmother was a florist and my mother was a florist, so we’re three generations of florists. I’ve been working in the florist industry since I was 12. I have been making bud vases and learning how to make bows and things like that since I was a little girl.
Q: Being a florist takes a specific skill, tell us about the artwork that goes into making a bouquet or the eloquent bows you have around the shop?
A: It’s tricky. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of finger cramps to get used to making them. But it just takes lots of practice. I don’t really know how to even tell you what goes into that part of it — it’s just lots and lots of practice. In making flower arrangements, it’s more color and learning different designs, and what things go well together that are pleasing to the eye. I’ve been doing it a long time, so it comes pretty easy now, but when I was first starting it was very difficult.
Q: Have you always been in Hoover?
A: Yes. My mother opened Hospital Floral Designs in our garage in, I think, 1978. We were making things that would go to hospital gift shops, bud vases and small arrangements. But we were making them in the garage. We started in the garage, then leased across the street from where we are now. I know we moved in there in 1981, and we moved into this location, 1905 Hoover Ct., in 2006.
Q: What does it mean to you to be able to bring people beautiful flowers and arrangements to the Hoover community?
A: It’s not just arrangements that we bring here at Hoover Florist. We’re building relationships with our customers. I’ve done wedding flowers, I’ve done funeral flowers for families. From births all the way through to someone passing. We get to know these families and what they like, and it just makes me feel good to know that I can take care of somebody in a celebratory kind of situation and also in a death, when it’s the last way you can honor somebody by doing something beautiful for them.
